I’m watching Scarpetta on Amazon Prime. Watching it and enjoying it for all its worth; the story is gripping, the cinematography is wonderful, the foreshadowing is perfection because I am drawn into both timelines, the family drama is bonkers, it drives me insane but I love it; Jamie Lee Curtis should always play the batshit crazy big sis because what perfect casting she is in this role. It is all that.
But as engrossed as I am in the series, I cannot, for the life of me, help but obsesses over Nicole Kidman’s face, especially compared to those of her co-stars. Someone took the scapula a bit too tightly.
Age has always been a taboo subject in Hollywood; from the dawn of time it would seem. Being cast as grandma is akin to a death sentence in showbusiness, there is an insane obsession with youth that is as boring as it is desperate. Ageing is an inevitable passage of life, and a privilege should one get to experience it. At 58 I don’t know that you should want to be stuck in the face of a 38-year-old. Compared to Simon Baker who plays her spouse in the show and looks his age, she is older by a couple of years if google is to be believed, but she looks like the young thing he’d gone for after his wife of forty years left him. The lines on Jamie Lee Curtis’ face are in stark contrast to Kidman’s fineness and tightness, and it almost makes me feel sorry for her because that was all I could concentrate on and the duality of its meaning. Age as a celebration of one’s life and age as a declaration of death for one’s youth and a signifier of all the things we didn’t get to do.
The bodies on the red carpet are emaciated; everyone looks hungry and tired and any minute now a wind will knock them sideways. Faces are sunken and gaunt with a haunted look in their eyes; all senses look out of place on heads now too small or too big to accommodate distinct features, necks too frail to hold heads up, hips look like they belong on prepubescent boys. It reeks of a particular kind of shame, a sinister one. No one is against a little nip and tuck here and there, but bright stars of yesteryear are fading into nothingness in a bid to hold on to the trappings of the past including youth.
It is time to call time.
When it comes to character work, few can rival Nicole Kidman; whether she is playing the socialite rich wife on a Netflix drama, a stone cold and robotic Stepford Wife, or a witch… her range cannot be questions and few can command such presence one on screen, so much so, the other characters, no matter how good, simply fade away. On screen she carries herself in a way that makes her co-stars want to carry themselves better, she delivers lines with such suave, such finesse, such panache, she draws you in, it’s a Kidman signature and she is ever so good at it. It beggars belief that she would feel the need to tinker with her appearance whilst holding on to what is left of her youth, in a bid to what? Always play the hot girlfriend? You are Nicole Kidman damnit! We will watch whatever you are in.
We are going back to the days of adolescent bodies being the norm, but I hope this time we buck the trend because it’s not normal, it’s very weird. I am not certain where the blame for the fear of growing old lies but if it is in Hollywood then people need to start leaving asap. Far be it for me to speculate on the mental gymnastics going on in someone’s mind but it does not bode well for younger girls coming behind us, and boys for that matter. We have been here before, these cycles of perfect bodies and dysmorphia shown on screens and in print so cavalierly is a dangerous rope to walk. To look hungry, face sunken, tight like a stretch fabric over curves, and trapped in a moment where one can never tell if you are happy or sad, just stark, whilst being photographed and put on a pedestal by a warped media is not the place we ought to find ourselves.
Growing old is a privilege some never get to witness, the smile lines are your story keepers, they weigh in every emotion and moment of your life happy or sad. They tell the world you have lived a full life however the cookie crumbles, and you could do with eating a cookie or ten. They are a road map to your memories and stories you will tell your children’s children as you grow old and soft. To grow old and soft is to make life’s memories have an indelible mark on your body, so, for the love of all things holy back away from the scapula and eat some pasta… that was meant to rhyme but my brain is too addled to think of a better word to fit.
In any case watch Scarpetta, it’s a good adaptation of an even better series when read.
But here is also a bug bear; can we please have a series where the detective who is married is not sleeping with his partner… this storyline is such a bloody bore. People are not all that way indecent; yes, they can be, but I refuse to believe that people are so unscrupulous they behave in such an indecent manner. Another thing for Hollywood to consider, I guess.
In any case, as I said, watch Scarpetta, it’s really good if you can get past the lack of lines of her forehead and the lines on everyone else’s’.