Dynamic duos: who is your favorite director-actor team? – Blog

by Claudio Alves

Emma Stone x 3 in KINDS OF KINDNESS by Yorgos Lanthimos (2024).

Kinds of Kindness has just hit theaters and Yorgos Lanthimos is back in the news cycle. It seems the Greek director's Hollywood success set him on a path to unprecedented productivity in his Weird Wave Greek origins. At his side, we find Emma Stone, who quickly becomes Lanthimos' most emblematic collaborator. Since their first collaboration for the film The favouritethey shot the silent short film Nakedthe Oscar champion Poor thingsand the Cannes prize Kinds of Kindness. Comes next Bugoniaa remake of the South Korean film Let's save the green planetwhere Stone will play a CEO kidnapped by two men who believe she is an alien.

While it's nice to see such a burgeoning artistic partnership flourishing in today's cinematic landscape, I wish I was more attached to their bond. As it stands, I'm not sure they're getting the best out of everyone…

Maybe because Naked remains so difficult to track down, I have the impression that Stone and Lanthimos' collaboration has experienced a succession of diminishing returns. While The favourite sparked what is probably the actress's most impressive turn in cinema, I didn't really like what she did in Poor things. But even then, the director's vision survived the disorganized extravagance of his leading actress. Kinds of Kindness is almost a reversal, having Stone reign in with clean results – his final two scenes excluded – while Lanthimos' work suffers from disengaging cruelties spread across three successive tales that, like the dynamic duo's output, lose steam with each new entrance.

I understand that I'm in the minority when it comes to these two, and that many moviegoers couldn't be more excited about their continued pairing. Yet their success made me think of other faithful duos of directors and their actors, artists who improved and who seemed to understand each other's approach, best qualities and strengths like no one else. other. If I were asked to choose my preference for such partnerships from the pages of cinema history, I suppose I would have to choose Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Or maybe Josef Von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, and the union of Yasujiro Ozu and Sestsuko Hara. Count the masterpieces between these pairs and the mental reels.

Zhao Tao in CAPTURED BY THE TIDES by Jia Zhangke (2024).

And what about today’s dynamic duos? The subject is so vast that it’s hard to come up with a definitive answer. You know how much I love Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz, Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, Luca Guadagnino and Tilda Swinton, Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams, among others. But I’m not trying to think too much, so I’ll pick a duo that’s been on my mind since their new film came out on the Croisette. Is there a more captivating couple in contemporary cinema than Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao? Her camera loves her, and she infuses humanity into her experiments in social storytelling and political provocation.

Recently, their Captured by the tides has been picked up for American distribution by Janus Films and Sideshow, so you can hope to see it in theaters soon.

Another director and actress/husband and wife pair whose joint efforts have made headlines is, of course, John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Earlier this week, Nick Cassavetes confirmed that his mother had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for five years and was currently in the depths of dementia. Ironically, mother and son had already explored themes like these in their work. In the years 2004 Notebook, Rowlands played a woman who has lost lucid control and cannot remember the love of her life most of the time. Having seen loved ones suffer from this same illness, I cannot imagine what the Cassavetes clan is going through and I can only wish them the best.

John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands in their last film together, LOVE STREAMS (1984).

As a movie buff, it's hard not to think back to the works this theater titan made with his former lover and best director. Across a dozen feature films, the filmmaker forever changed the landscape of American independent cinema, taking character cinema to new psychological depths. Moreover, Rowlands' work has come to represent the pinnacle of this realistic approach to performance, full of improvisation and excavations of the human soul. John died in 1989 and we can say with certainty that Rowlands will never return to the big screen. Yet their legacy endures and their impact cannot be overstated. Indeed, few artistic collaborations have been as influential. For better or worse, they changed the way movies are made.

And you, dear reader? Who are your favorite director-actor dynamic duos? Which teams would you like to see more depth at The Film Experience?