Kirsten Dunst has always bugged me as an actress. And not cause of her distractingly unattractive little Chiclet teeth. That kind of physical kink can be quirky-cute on someone I don’t otherwise dislike — just look at Jewel and her own snaggle teeth; I kinda dig that. With Dunst, there is just something unlikable about her. Even in silly goodtime movies like Bring it On or Get Over It she always seems bored and detached to me, like she’s doing us all a favor by being there. This perception has never been helped by her often self-important and bored demeanor in interviews. But these very qualities make her perfect for her role in Melancholia – which I really loved – playing a detached, self-absorbed and unlikable depressive; for which she deservedly won an acting prize at Cannes. She also gets naked a lot in the film, which I presume was done to slowly win my favor (as they say, ladies, the quickest way to a man’s heart is through… your boobs).
Dunst has done an interview with The Guardian, in which she continues her trend of self-importance, such as when discussing Lars von Trier’s infamous Nazi analogy snafu during an interview at Cannes: “That’s what I don’t understand. There were a lot of us sitting there. There was Stellan [Skarsgård], John [Hurt], Charlotte [Gainsbourg]. And no one said something. No one wanted to help. I was the only one to lean in to Lars and get him to stop.” She rolls her eyes. “And, of course, I’m the one person that people would love to rope into that situation. They’d love to mess with me.” I suppose that’s true. I would’ve loved it if she had yelled “Heil Hitler!” during the interview. Though that’s somewhat unrelated.
Most interesting/humorous though is her philosophical analysis on the cinematic merits of her boobs. She agreed to make Melancholia because she loved the script. It’s not as if he had asked her to make Antichrist, the director’s previous film, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg played a bereaved mother who mutilates her own genitals. “That kind of film is harder for someone like me to get away with. I’m more in the public eye than Charlotte.” She pauses to reconsider. “It’s something about Charlotte’s body, too. You couldn’t have someone like me, with big breasts, in that film. Charlotte’s thin and her breasts are small and that’s easier to watch somehow. For someone like me to do that film – it would almost be ridiculously shocking.”
Anyway, I don’t really mean to bag on Dunst. She’s certainly not as obnoxiously self-important as Gwyneth Paltrow. And Melancholia has caused me to reevaluate her as an actress, reminding me that she is in fact good. But I certainly can’t pass up an entertaining boob breakdown like this. I’m only human, people.