Julie Christie has never played even a minor role in our love of movies. Despite the fact that our eldest sister was named after her character in Doctor Zhivago, to our knowledge up until a few days ago the only films we had ever seen her in were 1975's Shampoo (which so bored us as a teenager we didn't even realize that our childhood idol Carrie Fisher was also in it) and Nashville. We only really noticed her in Nashville probably because Karen Black improvised the line, expressing her character's disbelief that Christie was a film star, "She can't even run a comb through her hair!" Color us ignorant if you will but we are now prepared to devour her entire filmography after seeing Sarah Polley's utterly unforgettable(ba dum bump!) Alzheimer's weeper Away From Her.
The story concerns Fiona(Christie) and Grant Anderson(Gordon Pinsent, also quite magical), a married couple coping with the onset of Fiona's Alzheimer's Disease and her subsequent entry into a home for the similarly afflicted. On his frequent visits, Grant must contend not only with Fiona's faint memory of him but also with her newfound attachment to a gentleman patient while also sensing he may be being punished for previous transgressions. To say that Christie's performance is incredible is a genuine understatement. She plays it all with both unforced charm and effortless gravity.
Were it not for our belief that Marion Cotillard's performance as Edith Piaf in La vie en rose was pretty much the knockout characterization of the year we would give our left arm to see Christie pick up what could be her second Oscar. She probably will anyway. Despite having already obtained a little golden friend for Darling in 1966 the Academy is highly likely to honor the established film icon once again rather than the largely unknown-on-these-shores Cotillard(even though her Piaf is far more transcendent than Jamie Foxx's wobbly but apparently Oscar-worthy Ray Charles could ever hope to be). It'll be glorious either way... even if the lady still can't run a comb through her hair.
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