Nicole Kidman & Mia Wasikowska in ‘Stoker’
Photo © Fox Searchlight Pictures
High among the most promising films of 2013 is Stoker, the first English-language film from South Korean auteur Chan-wook Park. The trailer promises to smash the glassy demeanours of Nicole Kidman and Mia Wasikowska with the dark, magnetic, Hitchcockian sexual drawl of Matthew Goode (who will hopefully prove worthy of the obsession, as Hollywood hasn’t yet found much use for him). It looks like a slightly depraved, frosty, spindly kind of film. The first preview of the soundtrack has arrived, and it seems obvious the music will be instrumental in deepening the mood of the piece. Clint Mansell is quite possibly the finest composer working in cinema today – his majestic, devastating score for The Fountain still receives regular plays from me, while his twisting of Tchaikovsky for Black Swan dances with psychoses that may prefigure Wasikowska’s pencil-stabbing impulses here. ‘In Full Bloom’, below, puts me in mind of Philip Glass, who has also composed some music for Stoker, and, of course, previously accompanied Nicole Kidman for the tremulous timbres of The Hours. May Stoker, too, be full of such sexual indecision and maternal strife!
If Mia thinks being in a film with Nicole will make me more interested in her as a performer then she is sorely….accurate. *Shrugs* Mia bores me but my my disinterest with her is the polemic opposite of my interest in Nicole.
(Of course, in my usual way, I’m refusing to watch the trailer unless forced upon me…more anticipation.)
May it be be full of such sexual indecision and maternal strife, indeed. Words to live by.
Mia certainly seems one of the more divisive young performers who’ve appeared in the last few years. Personally, I find her quite fascinating – she was easily my favourite in ‘The Kids Are All Right’ (pleasingly aloof from the nuclear queer family) and her ‘Jane Eyre’ was refreshingly soulful. She does seem somewhat of an echo of Nicole, although she hasn’t proven any comic leanings yet so she might not be able to do it all.