Actress

Notes

Sections: (1) motherhood (2) Beacon (3) actress etc.

"Brandy Burre is: ACTRESS" — a fill-in for any name. Given both profession + woman. A non-household-name actress to begin with: small role in The Wire.

– Issue of camera vs. performance ('the acted non-awareness' of the camera).

– Kitchen 'aesthetic' shots — less Sirk than Jeanne Dielman.

– Tim as a bump-on-the-log — what's not shown can only be speculated upon — selectivity of 'creative nonfiction' — document shapes and creates characters just as much as any 'fiction' feature, cf. Wiseman, and A. R. Wilder's Approaching the Elephant, on which Greene worked as editor.

– Suspension of time — slow-mo shots (calculated at shoot, not post — camera must be set to higher frame-rate): suspension of time for Brandy's acting career on hold...

– ...Of the holidays and the elongation/prolongation of the family unit.

– The chance town-name of "Beacon," a coax-away, a place for retreat, promise of respite, but also a siren's song.

– Small role in the The Wire: scenes that are unrepresentative of the drama?

– After Tim's discovery of her indiscretion, he leaves; she keeps the house. — the invitation to speculate on the nuances of a couple's relationship.

– "Actress" as archetype; "actress" as manipulator.

– Friends who indulge her.

– The mixture of guilt and non-guilt.

– Auditions: a kind of soup, based on either wholly, arbitrary factors or very specific factors/traits that go undisclosed in the casting call — right face? right 'look'? — etc. — rolling the dice of the universe.

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This is one of the best movies of 2014. I wrote at the end of the year:

Actress by Robert Greene

"Actress" as archetype, "actress" as manipulator. Like the title card (and marvelous poster) reads: "Brady Burre is: Actress", and any name might be substituted, either that of one who acts by profession, or that of anyone otherwise. A major work that examines the relationship between camera and subject, the relationship between director and document, motherhood, place, and domestic partnership.

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