Source : National Post
Date : 1999 / 05 / 21
Pleasant in every sense
Molly Parker
The British Columbia actor is the It Girl of Cannes
Jeremy Podeswa had a few
chances to come to the Cannes International Film Festival in the past,
most recently through his work on Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter.
He refused.
"I always thought in this pretentious way: I won't
go to Cannes unless they invite me to Cannes," he says. THat he says
this from a shady restaurant on the beachfront of the French Riviera means
that the invitation finally arrived.
The Toronto director's feature, The Five Senses,
is playing in the Director's Fortnight, a kind of salon de refuses for
films outside of official competition that has become, since its 1969 inception,
a showcase for some of the most radical work at Cannes.
The Five Sense - scheduled for Canadian release
this fall - is the kind of small film that feels like a find: Ambitious
without being pretentious, weighty but with a spine of humour. It
is the multi-layered tale of a group of people trying to connect, each
character identified with a heightened sense - touch, taste, hearing, smell,
vision. A small child disappears and her absence becomes the bleak
backdrop for three crucial days in the characters' lives.
The cast is international - including American Mary-Louise
Parker, and Marco Leonardi from Like Water for Chocolate - and features
big Canadian talent, including Pascale Bussieres and playwright Daniel
MacIvor. Newcomers Nadia Litz and 16-year-old Brendan Fletcher (Little
Criminals) provide two startling, equally risky performances.
Perhaps the most famous name on the marquee is Molly
Parker, the pale faced young necrophiliac in Kissed. She and
Podeswa have been fixtures on the Cannes scene all week, fielding dozens
of interviews, showing up at the party for Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey,
hanging on the sand with Heather Graham and Mel Gibson. At Podeswa's
own fête, Parker outdid the Euro-starlets in Studio 54-style glittering
pantsuit.
For the British Columbia-raised 26-year-old, this
year's Cannes is double duty; she's promoting the British film Wonderland,
in competition for the Palmes d'Or, as well as The Five Senses,
making her the Festival It Girl that Sarah Polley was at Sundance.
In true Cannes fashion - time is money, time is money! - Parker, followed
by Podeswa, sat down for a few minutes to talk about being the next hot
thing, before being whisked off to talk about it some more with someone
else.
Smoking a cigarette and sitting with the perfect
posture of a former ballerina, the diminutive Parker is feline beautiful,
but with her freckles and little girl bands, she makes an unlikely movie
star.
"She's got luminous eyes. Molly is a real
movie actress," says Podeswa, who first showed her an early draft of the
script three years ago. "She has a translucent, transcendent quality,
and for this kind of role, which could easily have been melodramatic, you
need an actor who is emotionally available. Molly is that."
In The Five Senses, Parker is English teacher
Anna Miller, the distraught mother of the missing girl. In Wonderland,
Michael Winterbottom's new film, she plays a pregnant South Londoner, also
a teacher.
"It's a coincidence," say Parker of the characters'
similarities. "I think I am incredibly maternal and I'd like to be
a mother someday. As soon as I put on the body [the pregnant belly],
I felt entitled to a lot more space. I loved that feeling."
The two movies couldn't be more different: Podeswa's
lushly lit, tightly edited work ("Jeremy had a very controlled, specific
vision. He tells you exactly what he wants," says Parker) is a stark
contrast to the gritty Wonderland, improvised and shot kamikaze-documentary
style in London's Soho.
Parker "did" Cannes two years ago for Kissed.
After that film, she had her choice of roles, and joined up with heavyweight
agency William Morris. But she's hardly gone Hollywood. Her
most recent projects have taken her to Budapest (the upcoming A Taste
of Sunshine with Ralph Fiennes), London, and back to Toronto.
"Working in different places, with different directors, is something I've
tried to cultivate over the last year or two," says Parker. But her
home is Toronto, and the anonymity of the north suits her.
"This is a career that matters everywhere but in
Canada. When I won the Genie last year, I couldn't believe how much
it mattered in the States," she says. "I'm still introduced as: This
is Molly Parker, she won the Academy Award in Canada. Most Canadians
don't even know what the Genies are. I mean, they didn't even put
them on TV the year I won." She lights another cigarette and grins.
"It's served me very well living in Canada because there's that mysterious
quality to it. It completely perplexes Americans."
A publicist appears, hovering conspicuously.
"You're lurking!" jokes Parker. "I'm trying to be discrete," the
publicist says sheepishly.
"That's discrete? Hiding behind the tree and
the shrubbery?" And with a friendly handshake, Molly Parker is gone.
- Katrina Onstad
National Post
