In praise of sexy and older women

Frances McDormand sheds homebody image in Lisa Cholodenko's film Laurel Canyon

Cinema's favourite homebody has turned sexy seductress, a role Frances McDormand embraces gleefully and proudly. The 45-year-old actress, of course, is best known for her Oscar-winning performance as Marge Gunderson, the pregnant Minnesota police chief in the 1996 hit, Fargo, directed by her husband Joel Coen. She also played the protective, mother in Almost Famous, and the woman with powerful nesting instincts in Wonder Boys.
But in Lisa Cholodenko's Laurel Canyon, the leonine McDormand is changing that respected perception by portraying a different kind of mother altogether. In the film she plays Jane Bentley, a pot-smoking, champagne-swilling, free-loving Los Angeles record producer pushing 50 who's living with Ian (Alessandro Nivola), the thirtysomething lead singer of the British band she's currently producing. Jane's life is somewhat shaken when her uptight, conservative son Sam (Christian Bale) shows up with his fiancée Alex (Kate Beckinsale).
Tandem spoke to Frances McDormand when she was in Toronto.

Such an issue is made about the age difference between Jane and Ian. Does that bother you?
"I hated the fact the they kept bringing up that the lover was so much younger. At the end of the day, aren't you pleased that they are actually the only couple that seems to have any kind of substance in the relationship? I kind of love the fact that Lisa [Cholodenko] wrote it because she lets the audience tap into a lot of the clichés. Alessandro's Ian ends up a little bit wiser about it than Jane, and I think that when he says that she is ageist, he is right."

This is almost the opposite of your role in Almost Famous.
"Yeah, what a delightful thing. I was so happy I got to do it."

Don't you think it's too extreme for Sam to be such an opposite of his mom, Jane?
"No, I think that it is pretty psychologically sound. I think she must have had him when she was 15 years old. And given the numbers, I don't think that she really defined herself as a parent. I don't think that she was really an authority figure. He had to develop that responsibility early. I think psychologically it is really well founded, really well grounded."

I'm really glad that you mentioned the age thing because it's hard to picture you as his mother.
"I think for a lot of different reasons if I had been 10 years older, 55 instead of 45, there would have been a couple of things that would have happened. It might have automatically set off more of a generational split between the son and the mother. But it also would have added a bittersweet melancholia to the relationship with Ian. You would have sensed the end of it. I feel like maybe Jane and Ian's relationship won't last forever but there is something true and solid about it. Whereas, that little bit more of time and audiences, not me, could have written it off a little bit sooner. I also think that there is something interesting in seeing Jane and Sam so close in age."

How did the story come about?
"I read a script and I was really fortunate. Lisa was developing this book with another actress, and the manager had some second thoughts about it and decided not to do it. I read the script and it was completely serendipitous as far as I am concerned. She got the exact actor that she was meant to get and I got the exact role I was meant to play."

There was no concern at all?
"Absolutely none. As a matter of fact, she asked me at one point when we met earlier if I felt that Jane's actions were reprehensible, and I said absolutely not. I am not Jane, but I can completely understand all of her motivations."

Her seductions?
"I don't think that it is a seduction. And I think that we were really concerned that it wasn't a seduction. It is a natural habit of Jane to be sexually curious. She is not heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, she is just sexually curious. And the moral issue of it being her son's fiancée does come into play. You know, when they come together in the pool, it was really important that we choreographed it that way. There is nobody being chosen over somebody else. It is not the younger people excluding the older person, it is not the women excluding the man, or one man with one woman, there was a real sense that they are a team together."

You've done nudity before, in Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
"I have. This was specifically an agenda for me. A couple of years ago before I read the script, I was interested in doing some nudity. I am 45, I am happy with myself, and I don't see enough images of women that look like me up there. It was not the only reason I wanted to play Jane, but it was a good part of it. I ended up being nude on the set a lot more than I was in the movie."

There is such a concern still in California about youth and image.
"You know, there are pockets of California that haven't really left the environment of the 60's and 70's. The ocean being so close, the weather being so beautiful, there is certainly a concern with age and youth. But it is much more in the film industry than I think in the music industry. For me, it wasn't Jane wanting to be younger, or trying to recapture her youth, she just never left it. She is not with Ian because she wants to be younger, he just happens to be younger."

You alternate a lot between stage and film. How come?
"It is very hard play as the girlfriend of a movie star right now. As a job, I have to do something to cover the overhead. I am fortunate that I have a partner that makes a good living and that subsidies my theatre work. If women over 40 start whining over not getting roles in Hollywood we are breaking up the tribe because women in their twenties are not getting jobs in Hollywood either. If we are going to do those roles, and we will because we have to, I am certainly going to play supporting characters to male protagonists over and over again for the next 40 years. My intention is to do so well, and to do that job with as much integrity as possible so that audiences start saying, 'Where did she go? What is her name?' Hopefully writers, directors, producers, marketing people will start answering the audiences' questions and start developing those characters more. That should be an agenda for us women."

But you have a partner who is a filmmaker.
"I do. But he is not really good at writing women characters either. His argument has always been find the female writers. And it is a really good argument. I think that's more the future, for male characters as well. I think that it is less genre based, and more behavioural."
Laurel Canyon is currently playing in local cinemas.

Publication Date: 2003-04-06
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2574