my favorite namesake
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Manila, 6 September—The first time I watched the Titanic was via a pirated VCD. My uncle, a seaman, had brought it home one summer, and we watched it on our shared family desktop computer in the middle of the living room, moving silhouettes of people’s heads in the corner of the screen and extraneous laughter and all that.
That was also the first movie I watched that starred Kate Winslet, but at the time, I was more obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio, who I think sat for a time as the communal desktop wallpaper. I suppose it was the movie’s intention anyhow, to leave the viewer aching for Jack, as idealized in an old woman’s 84-year-old memories:
Anyway, I’ve never really re-watched Titanic intentionally—I may have caught it midway quite a few times on cable—so I can’t really remember much about how Kate Winslet fared in this one, save for that one iconic art scene. (And that other car scene which I’m sure you also remember.)
That said, what I do remember Kate Winslet the most for is her performance on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where she and Jim Carrey erase each other from their memories. For her performance in the 2008 movie The Reader, where she played an illiterate Auschwitz guard who has an affair with a much younger man who reads classic literature to her after sex (this movie is so much more than that summary), she won her first Best Actress Oscar in 2009, winning over Anne Hathaway, Melissa Leo, Meryl Streep (in Doubt, no less), Angelina Jolie (for Changeling).
(I watched this to hear Marion Cotillard call her “Kate”)
I talk about Kate Winslet because of this profile from The Hollywood Reporter in light of her upcoming movie “Ammonite”. [READ: “Oh F***, I’ve Forgotten How to Act”: Kate Winslet, Back in the Awards Race With Same-Sex Romance ‘Ammonite,’ on Getting Back to Work” via THR]
Premiering on Sept 11, “Ammonite” is set in 1840s England and follows the life of fossil-hunter Mary Anning (Winslet) and her romance with another woman (played by Saoirse Ronan.) The THR article describes one of the movie’s more intimate scenes, in comparison to Carol: “Distancing would have been unfeasible considering the love scenes she shares with co-star Saoirse Ronan, with one so intimate that it makes the 2015 lesbian love drama Carol, an awards contender starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, seem tame.”
If that doesn’t quite excite you, here’s Kate explaining how she and Saoirse choreographed the scene themselves:
“It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe. Francis (Lee, the director) was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did. ‘We’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’ I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative. I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”
Kate Winslet describing shooting a lesbian sex scene as “not like eating a sandwich” is THE highlight of 2020 for me. (I could probably compile a list of articles where actors talk about filming lesbian sex scenes. That would probably be informative, no?)
Anyway speaking of informative, I did not ask for this video but the YouTube algorithm gave it to me, so here’s Kate interviewing Saoirse in 2015 about acting and accents:
Imagine going from this to choreographing sex scenes with Kate Winslet. I get feelings sometimes.
Thanks for making it this far.
Have a great weekend,
xo,
K