Bridget Fonda can make a woman lying on a sofa the sharpest person in a crime film. We rate her dry humour and understatement most when a thriller gives her someone morally awkward to play.
Fi1m perspective
In Jackie Brown (1997), Bridget Fonda's Melanie Ralston lies on a sofa and needles the people around her. Robert De Niro's Louis lets conversations drift past; she has their measure, and Fonda gives her laziness a cunning edge. We laughed because Melanie's judgements are so accurate, however little kindness there is in making them. Quentin Tarantino gives her room to be disagreeable without demanding that she become more likeable. It is a sharply defined supporting part in a film whose middle runs too long, and a good place to see how little she needs to do.
Her breakthrough was Grace Hamilton in The Godfather Part III (1990). She went on to play Allison Jones in Single White Female (1992) and Maggie Hayward in the action-thriller remake Point of No Return (1993). Across the nineties she moved between thrillers, comedies and dramas, taking leading and supporting parts. Our preference is for the crime films, where her naturalistic style makes dubious people easy to recognise.
A Simple Plan (1998) puts that quality to harsher use in Sarah Mitchell, a wife whose greed helps enable crime. Sam Raimi's patience gives the characters' choices time to hurt, with Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton central to the film's force. Fonda's understatement is useful here: Sarah's greed belongs to a recognisable person, and that makes it harder to dismiss. The plotting can be predictable, but we rated the film highly because the people matter enough to make its warning painful.
Tarantino gets the more immediately enjoyable result from her, though Jackie Brown rightly reserves its best scenes for Pam Grier and Robert Forster. Her final screen role came in the television film Snow Queen (2002), but we would rather watch the performances than speculate about the parts she might have played. There is enough to attend to in the work she did. Start with Melanie; save A Simple Plan for an evening when pleasant company is not a requirement.
Biography
Bridget Fonda is an American retired actress. She is the daughter of actor Peter Fonda, niece of Jane Fonda and granddaughter of Henry Fonda. She trained at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, graduating in 1986.
Fonda began her screen career in the late 1980s. Her film roles include Scandal (1989), The Godfather Part III (1990), Single White Female (1992), Singles (1992), Point of No Return (1993), Jackie Brown (1997) as Melanie Ralston, A Simple Plan (1998) and Lake Placid (1999). She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Scandal. Fonda retired from acting in 2002. She is married to composer Danny Elfman.
