Juliet Stevenson lets grief look private, awkward and consuming, without asking us to admire the person suffering. Smaller wife and mother parts have not always made enough use of that commitment.
Fi1m perspective
In Truly Madly Deeply (1991), Juliet Stevenson's Nina cries with an awkwardness that makes watching her feel like an intrusion. We were moved because she makes the longing for Jamie embarrassingly private, without asking us to admire her courage. Before Anthony Minghella's romance has anything supernatural to explain, Stevenson has made us understand why this woman needs the impossible to happen.
Drowning by Numbers (1988), Peter Greenaway's ensemble film, came before the breakthrough of Truly Madly Deeply, which Minghella wrote for her. The latter gives her the responsibility of making a fantasy believable through one woman's pain. Her subsequent screen work has not always offered so much, with the supporting Paula Paxton in Bend It Like Beckham (2002) an example of the wife and mother parts that can underuse her. The frustration is that she has already shown how much of a film she can carry.
Minghella gets that weight of feeling from her without making the film depend on solemnity. Alan Rickman's Jamie makes the ghost convincing, and the pair give the romance its humour as well as its hurt. Remi Adefarasin's cinematography keeps Stevenson's performance prominent without drawing attention away from it. Barbara Gosnold's production design supplies ordinary domestic surroundings that help make Jamie someone Nina might actually live with.
The difficulty comes when the film tries to help her. John Stothart's editing is more persuasive with the grief than with the shifts into comedy, which can set Nina's pain aside too readily. Barrington Pheloung's music sometimes presses for tenderness Stevenson has already supplied, while Minghella's writing reaches for sweetness before an uncomfortable feeling has had time to settle. We recommend the film warmly, but those interventions make it cloying in places.
On stage, she has continued to take demanding leads, including Ruth Wolff in Robert Icke's The Doctor (2019). We would welcome screen roles that give her comparably substantial work, without requiring another bereavement. Start with Truly Madly Deeply, and forgive the occasions when the film does not leave her alone.
Biography
Juliet Stevenson is an English actress of stage and screen. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company before appearing in numerous National Theatre productions.
She is known for her leading role as Nina in Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991), for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress. Other film roles include Mrs Elton in Emma (1996), Paula Paxton in Bend It Like Beckham (2002) and Amanda Armstrong in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). In 1999 she was appointed a CBE for services to drama.
