The Very Brief Reign of Annette Bening as a Sex Star
I looked at The Grifters the other day -- good movie, fascinating retro score by Elmer Bernstein -- and the amazing thing was seeing Annette Bening's extremely sexualized turn as Myra Langtry..the grifter whose main con is the use of her beauty, her strut, and her often naked body to pull off her cons.
My first thought was: man...time DOES fly.
That movie was from 1990 . Three decades ago , plus. It seems like only yesterday Annette Bening was parading around in her birthday suit with glee and -- VOOSH -- suddenly she's a Prestige Actress in Matronly Roles -- the mother, the grandmother.
Its a given, I suppose, that certain young actresses seeking to make it as stars agree to roles that involve nudity and sex scenes.
Bening was hardly alone. Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Madonna in Body of Evidence. No, wait...Julianne Moore in Body of Evidence, too. And Boogie Nights. And Short Cuts. And ...well, let's skip Julianne Moore, she remained a trooper for quite some time.
Save Moore, the rest of them "backed away" rather quickly from nudity and sex scenes in later films.
But Annette Bening was, I think, a special case.
Here's why:
Largely on the basis of her work in The Grifters in 1990, Bening was chosen to play Catwoman in Batman Returns" for 1992 release.
But in between, Bening played a very glamorous non-nude role in the interesting gangster movie "Bugsy." With middle-aged Warren Beatty in the lead as her lover, gangster Bugsy Siegel.
And it was just Annette Bening's luck: of all the conquests in his life, Warren Beatty finally decided to settle down and marry HER. (A canny move on Beatty's part; evidently he'd had all the fun he needed and saw late middle age as time to "go legit.")
I can't remember if it was the marriage or pregnancy, but Bening was out of Batman Returns -- and the less carnal Michelle Pffeifer took the role.
And soon Bening was with Beatty in a remake of the soapy "Affair To Remember"(Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr; remake of Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne?) that flopped.
By the end of the decade, the sexy siren of "The Grifters" was in the quality Best Picture production of "American Beauty" but playing a frigid harridan of a suburban wife -- whose affair(though portrayed as comic and carnal in one brief motel bed shot) wasn't really shown.
"American Beauty" rather re-launched Annette Bening into the somewhat snobbish sounding upper-class prestige often-in-indies actress she is today BUT...
Check out The Grifters to see just how Ms. Bening "made the Hollywood scene" and landed Mr. Beatty in the first place.
PS. She's good in the role in The Grifters, its not JUST about showing off skin. She hits the dark notes of her criminal character well.