Naomi Watts: Tampax, Torture, Raw Talent
by
Tim Appelo,
posted Dec 29, 2008 10:13 AM
What is it about Naomi Watts that makes filmmakers want to hurt her? In the stupid-even-by-hygiene-ad-standards Tampax commercial she made circa age 17, she's tormented by a zit, an '80s frizz-do, a kid brother, an allegedly plump butt, "and that other [torment] you don't talk about." Her best friend Nicole Kidman's fame must've tortured her until David Lynch made her a famous femme fatale in the ineffably effing sexy Mulholland Drive. "Sometimes I felt like I was being tortured, that he was withholding," she said. In Ellie Parker, the tortured actress played an actress tortured by sex, drugs, Hollywood, and a smeary lipstick job strikingly like her late ex Heath Ledger's in The Dark Knight. As for what Michael Haneke does to her in her underwear in Funny Games, don't even go there.
The thing is, even at 17 in the worst material of her eventually to be incredibly distinguished career, Watts is always good -- in two senses, talented and innocent. She's like a fresh blonde snowdrift filmmakers feel compelled to fall into and despoil with a snow angel in their own evil shape.
What she needs is a straight up international hit instead of endless indie mini-glory. So here's hoping that hit is her 2009 movie
The International, a Clive Owens movie that sounds like a Bond picture for the arthouse crowd, by the director of Run, Lola, Run and
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (whose hero, Kurt Cobain's favorite in all literature, could give Naomi's previous tormentors lessons -- he murdered virgins to capture their precious scent).
