My close confidante Helen von Layers is so excited. She saw Tom Cruise when
he did a limited photo call at the Hotel Excelsior. Okay, so he doesn't
have a film in the festival, but he has a wife here, and she's the star
of "The Portrait of a Lady", and if that justifies a photo call,
well then, it's okay with me. And tonight Helen and I are going to a party
at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta, on Venice's Grand Canal, to help Nicole and
Tom celebrate the movie. I'm so glad it's starting at 11:00 p.m.: If I have
to watch Helen slobber at the windows in the Prada boutique one more time,
I'm going to slap her. I mean, it's one thing if Nicole wears Prada, but
Helen has been putting on weight lately, and a caftan is probably more flattering
in her case than a halter top.
I don't know who designed Nicole's outfit when I spoke to her, but it was
beautiful. She was wearing black satin pants, and a very tight black sleeveless
knit top. She is so thin, and has the most beautiful complexion and blue
eyes I've ever seen. And she's smart.
She enjoys talking about her role as Isabel Archer, Henry James's heroine
as re-created by "Portrait of a Lady" director Jane Campion. Poor
Isabel is a young American woman who goes to England in the 1870s, inherits
money from her uncle, enters the British class system, and, on the mean-spirited
advice of bitchy Madame Serena Merle (a startling Barbara Hershey), turns
down marriage proposals from good men (Richard E. Grant, Martin Donovan
in an Academy Award-worthy performance as a consumptive) for an opportunistic
American dilettante in Italy named Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich, playing
John Malkovich).
"Henry James taught me to throw myself into life and to stay emotionally
present, and not to be frightened of suffering and pain," Nicole says.
"It was the first time I went to a 'place' where I couldn't go back
to my hotel room and say, 'Let's go out to dinner.' Jane didn't want me
to do that. She's very demanding, but in a good way.
"I certainly had relations in my past where I was attracted to persons
for strange reasons, relationships you just can't get out of.
"When Gilbert Osmond kisses Isabel, it's the first time in her life
she's been kissed. Her whole body lights up. It sends electricity through
her body. Two people have a sexual attraction, and it just can't be explained.
It never is."
When I told Helen what Nicole said, she just looked at me with her beady
little eyes. "I'm glad Nicole at least knows enough to describe what
sexual attraction is!" Helen shouted. "I've been here looking
for an actor or a marketing exec or a gondolier this whole festival, and
I haven't had the opportunity to feel one volt of current surge through
my body."
I told Helen that we must remain optimistic, like Henry James. Everybody
finds someone sometime, whether it's Nicole or Helen von Layers. And since
the festival is over tomorrow, and Helen and I have an early morning flight
back to the States, we'll just have to wait until the next Venice for a
true Italian jolt. Daverro. Really.
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