August 29, 2008
In praise of Sanaa Lathan
Wonderful actress. Fluid, emotional, easy on the eye, funny, deep, unconventional in some of her responses, she creates characters - and very specifically - she does not repeat herself - and you also don't catch her working. It looks easy. I've been a fan for some time (my writeup of Love and Basketball is here). I saw Something New last night and fell in love with it, and with her specifically. She's the kind of actress your heart goes out to. You want her to succeed. You want her to be happy. This is the kind of thing all great romantic female leads have - from Irene Dunne to Marilyn Monroe to Kate Winslet. You worry about these people a little bit - they don't seem self-sufficient, not completely anyway ... and so your heart goes out to them, you hope for them, you invest. It's a rare kind of contract between an audience and an actress ... and not all romantic female leads can pull it off. I think it's somewhat intuitive ... it's a thing that cannot be taught. Whether or not you agree with my choices of female romantic leads is not really the point. The point is that when you are an actress in a romantic film, and you are the lead, it is crucial that the audience want what you want, that they leap into the action (in their hearts) and root for you ... as though it were a sports film. Sanaa Lathan has always had that, and I will look forward to seeing her work for years to come. I'd like to see her hit the big-time, although her last couple of years have been pretty damn spectacular, what with movies and a Broadway hit ... She's a damn fine actress. The character in Love and Basketball, the fiery-tempered tomboy, is nothing like the uptight vaguely sad and yet driven career woman she creates in Something New. Not the same person. I love to watch her work. Her face, even with that scar on her right cheek, maybe even because of the scar, is made for the movies. It's a very beautiful face, but human, open, itself. Emotions are not strived for, or sought after ... they are experienced organically. You don't catch her pushing. Ever. She goes through the gamut of emotions in Something New, and although the movie itself has some issues (mainly with the direction) - the acting, across the board, is a delight. But it's Lathan's movie, and I'm happy for her.
I'm a fan.
What can I say, I'm invested.
She had a very long story line in most of a season of "Nip/Tuck" a few years ago, and that show has been one of my guilty pleasures for awhile, so I watcher her story line with interest because I'd already seen her in several things and was QUITE impressed with her talent and beauty. Alas, her character and the story line went waaayyy off-course: they sacrificed her character for weirdness. I had such hopes for her in that show, and it was such a disappointment. They even managed to make her look far less gorgeous than she can be, which is tragic in a show about beauty.
I've always been interested in her, even since I first heard of her, because of her name. She was named an Arabic name which is actually mostly known as the capital city of Yemen. I wonder if she's ever been there, doubt it. I grew up in that country, in the 1960s, when it was a very isolated and technologically backward place, much as it had been for the last several centuries, and I spent a couple of summers in Sana'a, which used to be a magical place, a walled city in the middle of a huge plan, high in the mountains. The city was full of mud skyscrapers decorated with intricate designs drawn in whitewash. It is a completely different modern place now. I remember spending one month staying in a villa where the owner kept a caged hyena in the garden, and we were surrounded all day by the various weird cries of the hyena: laughing barks, eerie whining, otherworldly squeals. The name Sanaa has powerful memory recall on me. I hope that Sanaa Lathan gets the roles and characters and projects that she deserves. She's versatile, and has the potential to do so much.
Strangely, the woman who directed the film is named Sanaa as well. Weird!!
I was sorry I didn't get to see her Raisin in the Sun on Broadway - but she has a couple of films in the can (including Tyler Perry's latest) that I am eager to see. I LOVED Love & Basketball -she was terrific. Omar Epps was great, too - and their scenes together are just wonderful.
Posted by: red at August 29, 2008 6:36 PM