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Stage Beauty is everything Shakespeare in Love promised to be... but never delivered.The parallels between the two films are inevitable - both deal with the subject of law prohibiting women from playing in English theaters.
But there the similarity ends. While SiL gives us only the pretty wrapper with paper confetti inside, Stage Beauty offers plenty to chew on.
The film is complex in its almost playful complexity. Comedy and drama get intertwined in an entertaining spectacle, where the participants start playing... themselves. There is sudden depth to the story that starts on a light note, at the point where you almost ready to write it off as yet another ball of fluff, and that seriousness begins to take its grip on you... the sensation being strange and... welcome!
It is very easy to recommend this film. It covers wide territory in its 110 minutes, and it keeps you interested, entertained... and thinking along the way. That in itself is an accomplishment.
Good performances abound. Tom Wilkinson shines as theater director, Rupert Everett, whom I never liked before, is incredible fun to watch as King Charles II, Claire Danes shall get a few more words later on, and Billy Crudup is simply superb!
One could speak volumes about Crudup's performance. It is deep and emotional, with broad range of feelings, sufferings and joys. It is simply the kind of performance we all so long for... yet so rarely find.
Just watching his performance alone would be more than rewarding.
Claire Danes... here we have a difficult case. The actres with an obvious good ability is struggling with her cross. That cross is her apparent visual similarity with another popular star... but to make the matter worse, it is not star - it's stars.
The feeling is aery and at times almost unpleasant. In some scenes you suddenly see Scarlett Johansson, and in others - Cate Blanchett. While I love Cate, and have moderate appreciation for Scarlett, the similarities are distracting and do get in the way of enjoying her performance for what it is - a solid good acting.
Stage Beauty is an intriguing film with solid performances and great story line, good directing and interesting perspective at historic events. It is fresh like very few films are - one might consider The Music Teacher as another representative of that rare category.
Great period costume dramas, great acting... great entertainment with a dash of intelligent insight.
Follow Ups:
Not having yet seen this one, I cannot comment. But Ebert did have a small comparison between the two that perhaps sounds appropriate:"Like "Shakespeare in Love," which is set half a century earlier and also centers on men playing women (and on a woman playing a man, and a woman playing a man playing a woman), "Stage Beauty" explores the boundaries between reality and performance. The difference is, the Gwyneth Paltrow character in "Shakespeare" knows she is a woman in real life, while Ned Kynaston (based on a real actor), knows he is a woman on the stage but is not so sure about life."
"The movie lacks the effortless charm of "Shakespeare in Love," and its canvas is somewhat less alive with background characters and details. But it has a poignancy that "Shakespeare" lacks, because it is about a real dilemma and two people who are trying to solve it; must Ned and Maria betray their real natures in order to find love, or accept them?"
...despite mixed reviews, I thought it was a much better film than many critics gave it credit for being.Intelligent movie, entertaining and gorgeous to look at.
I thought Crudup's performance was quite special.
There was perhaps a faint whiff of tying things up a bit too neatly at the end, but on the whole, this movie delves deeper and into more layers of emotional complexity than many recent, more rewarded films.
SiL is just...a bon-bon. Stage Beauty is the DVD I want to own.
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Yeah! You copy my review.PS: I am back.....
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