Newhouse News Service
June 27, 2005 Monday

Discussing the Art of Acting a Tough Role for Joan Allen

By TODD HILL; Todd Hill is film critic for the Staten Island (N.Y.)
Advance. He can be contacted at hill(at)siadvance.com.

The actress Joan Allen is being asked to do something she’s not only
sometimes uncomfortable doing, she’s not even sure she knows how to
do it.

She’s being asked to talk about acting.

The actress, who appears now in her third movie of 2005 a smaller,
independent film called “Yes,” directed by Sally Potter begins with
an analogy.

“When you ask a musician how they wrote that song they’re kind of like,
‘I don’t know, you know?’ And it can be one of the most moving things
you’ve ever heard,” she said during a recent interview.

“It’s not uncommon for painters and composers and actors, anyone
who’s creative, it’s not always easy to articulate how you do it.
Everybody comes at it from different places.”

But Allen has another reason for being reticent on the subject, at
least initially. “Sometimes I can get a little superstitious about
it and not want to analyze it too much, for fear that it will go away
if I look into it too much,” she said.

There’s also the fact that Allen has already invested many hours in
talking about her character in “Yes,” known simply as “She,” with
both Potter and her co-star Simon Abkarian (“He”). It’s difficult
to work on a Potter film without participating in extensive analysis
into character and motivation.

“Yes,” a supremely arty picture about the relationship between an
American woman and a Middle Eastern man, is Potter’s take on the events
of Sept. 11 and thereafter. It may be a love story, but it’s also the
British native’s chance to touch on the politics of today’s changed
world. And that gave the director and her actors a lot to talk about.

“We would sometimes go through certain scenes and have political
discussions,” Allen said. “It would bring up stuff for us, which
we would sort of talk about, but we knew the most effective way was
to make the relationship believable, passionate, intense, all those
things, and then the audience would take from it what they saw.”

Abkarian, an Armenian who grew up in Lebanon and France and who makes
his English-language debut in “Yes,” applauds Potter for addressing
the cultural chasm that currently exists between the West and the
Middle East.

“These days we are taught it is impossible to relate to each other
we are this and they are that, this is evil and this is not but it’s
beyond that simplicity,” he said. “It’s possible to create spaces
where we can relate to each other, accepting our differences.”

“Yes” is also notable for being spoken entirely in iambic pentameter.
The characters, in other words, rhyme throughout, and yet the device,
while perhaps pretentious, isn’t terribly distracting.

“Most people watch it for quite a long time a third, halfway through
and then they start to go, ‘Oh, does this rhyme?’ I’m very gratified
that that’s what’s happening,” Allen said.

“We were told when we were working on it to think much more Eminem
and Def Poetry Jam than Shakespeare. The point was to make it as
conversational as possible, to get the emotional meaning first and
then the poetry.”

Potter, who also considers herself a dancer, choreographer and musician
in addition to being a filmmaker, achieved her greatest success behind
the camera with 1992’s “Orlando,” based on the Virginia Woolf novel
and starring Tilda Swinton.

She’s also the first female filmmaker Allen has ever worked with,
despite a resume that totals nearly 30 motion pictures. Judging
from Allen’s effusive praise for her director, the experience was a
positive one.

“I felt so nurtured with her,” Allen said. “She said, ‘I will not put
one frame in this film where you do not look exquisite.’ I’ve never
had a director say that before.”

And indeed, the 48-year-old Allen does look rather fetching in
“Yes,” which she considers her most sensual performance to date. It’s
certainly a departure from her two other movie roles this year, as
an earth mother in the independent film “Off the Map” and an angry,
alcoholic widow in “The Upside of Anger.”

Last year Allen appeared as steelier characters in “The Notebook”
and the thriller “The Bourne Supremacy,” with Matt Damon.

“I do hope I get more opportunities, all actors want that,” she said.
“Well, most actors want that variety and range, so they’re not seen
in only a particular way.”