Ellen Page: Will Inception and Freeheld Allow Her To Shine?

Regular readers may have gleaned that I have a growing fondness for Ellen Page. The fondness isn't overtly displayed but that's basically a matter of caution. Young obviously talented stars can have inexplicably short careers and young obviously untalented stars can have inexplicably long ones and you just never can tell. That's why it's safer to love actresses of a certain age and depth of filmography. If you can survive a good dozen years in the Hollywood rapids with all the tossing about, you're probably in it for as long as you have the stamina for it.

Too often Page is connected with Juno (2007), her starmaking role, and because that film is so divisive, she tends to be. Once the fog of Juno dissipates (let's give it one more year) people will probably wake up to the fact that she isn't that pregnant smartass. She was just very smart about how to walk in her shoes and find her voice.

If more people had seen Whip It (2009) they'd already know that Juno was neither fluke nor prison. Page can carry a film and shift to accommodate a different character without any visible strain. That's the mark of a confident charismatic actor, if not always a sure sign of inevitable A List stardom.

I don't think anyone fully knows Page's screen persona yet... including Ellen Page. That's an exciting thing -- particularly since Ellen herself seems eager to experiment with her image -- provided Hollywood comes through with roles that challenge her and tease that star identity out. As a movie star isn't she still in larva stage?

It's one of the reasons I think about her with caution. I have no idea who advised her to be that spokesperson for Cisco but a ubiquitous endorsement deal near the beginning of your acting career seems like a decision made with only short term goals in mind. Endorsements can raise your profile but they don't do a lot for conceptions about your gifts (if anything they detract) and they definitely don't increase audience affection. Commercials, especially those which air frequently, tend to bring irritation. Will anyone ever look at Justin Long and not think of "I'm a Mac". And isn't it a crying shame that people are far more likely to think of T-Mobile when they think of Catherine Zeta-Jones than they are to think of the Oscar winning role that directly preceded that deal? By all means make money with your celebrity but big noisy endorsement deals aren't a good idea unless you're wrapping up your movie stardom.

Page is one of several members of Young Hollywood's elite that people have held up as a casting possibility for David Fincher's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2012). Varying reports tell us 'no, he'll go with an unknown' or 'it's definitely Carey Mulligan' or 'Kristen Stewart for the box office!' or what have you. Those rumors will keep rotating until some lucky girl signs the contract. Though I'd love to see Ellen try her hand at action, I doubt that that coveted role will land in her lap.


Next up for Ellen is Chris Nolan's Inception (pictured above). Page's role looks fairly large but I doubt it will be anything like a game changer. The cast is huge, Nolan tends to focus on the men in his movies and her role -- again just judging on promotional materials -- doesn't seem particularly interesting. I suspect she's the audience proxy... i.e. a structural device more than a character. You know the kind. Complicated stories with deeper than usual mythologies or concepts often require an outsider character to help the audience along. You can find countless examples in film or television of this template. The outsider is brought into a world they don't understand and the insiders (everyone else) explain and show the world/situation/plot to them and in so doing explain and show it to the audience watching. Whether or not the film lives up to expectations, what it will do for her career is an entirely different question.

But never mind all that because she's just signed on for Freeheld. That should keep our imaginations about her cinematic future occupied for now.

Freeheld is the true story of Laurel, a veteran detective who died of cancer. After diagnosis and with the knowledge of how little time she had left, she attempted to transfer her earned pension over to her life partner Stacie. Her elected officials wouldn't allow for it. So began a heated contemporary civil rights struggle in New Jersey. Sadly, the story will surely still resonate by the time the film arrives, whenever that will be, because such a vocal conservative portion of Americans still support discriminatory practices against their fellow citizens.

The real Laurel and Stacie in Freeheld (2007)

Page will play Stacie, the mechanic girlfriend. It's an interesting choice for the actress given the rumors that have swirled around her own sexuality. Page's arguably butch energy could be fascinating in this fresh context. She's done thrillers, sports films, scifi and comedies. A dramatic political movie with a romantic anchor sounds, if artistically successful, like a sure bet to help audiences and Hollywood to see her with fresh eyes. It could even be an Oscar film. The Academy loves a good social issues movie and the documentary won the industry's top prize.

Ron Nyswaner is writing the screenplay. While he's most famous for writing Philadelphia (for which he was Oscar nominated) we can only hope that he'll get at something deeper and less two dimensional than an Issue Movie. It's always hard to know if any movie's screenplay has been undermined or abetted by the other elements: acting, directing and executive decisions can significantly alter any screenplay. But I'm hoping that the relationship heart of this film will be a lot closer in quality to another film he wrote, The Painted Veil. That film, roundly ignored in the annual glut of December releases in its year, succeeded in churning up complicated emotions and true depth of feeling.

There's no word yet on which actress will play the Laurel role but one assumes it'll be hotly contested. At the very least she'll need great chemistry with Page. Laurel was nearly 50 years old when she died (Stacie was younger) and there's plentiful 40-50something actresses that'd be wise to start fighting for it. And besides... what woman wouldn't want to wrap her legs around Ellen Page in friendship?

How does Ellen Page strike you as an actress or star? Which older actress would you love to see paired with her? And if you've seen the Freeheld documentary (unfortunately I haven't), please speak up.
Share
*