Chichester film festival explores the work of Cate Blanchett

Worthing-based freelance critic, curator and film historian Pamela Hutchinson will be examining this and plenty of other questions when she gives a talk on Blanchett at this year’s Chichester International Film Festival (Mon, August 21, 11am) – from the young Queen Elizabeth to brutal Lydia Tár, the seductive older women in Carol and Notes on a Scandal to the high-society hysteria of Blue Jasmine. The hope was that Cate would be in attendance, but she said she felt it would be inappropriate in view of the ongoing film industrial action in the States.

“I'm thrilled that the Film Festival asked me to talk about Cate Blanchett,” Pamela said. "I think she is one of the most interesting actors working out there in the English language at the moment. I find her characters enjoyably complex, very glamorous but also intimidating. She really has nailed the market in intimidating women. And why not? Why wouldn't we want to watch people that are fearsome as well as sweet? And she does it so well.”

Pamela, who has got a book on The Red Shoes coming out in October, said: “I first saw her as Queen Elizabeth (in Elizabeth in 1998) and you just don't expect a young actress to be playing such a complex character and to be playing it with such force and gravitas. There are so many great actresses who have played Queen Elizabeth so it's very much a story with a lineage but what she did was put her youth to the foreground. She was a young woman and her youth is very much the point of how she played it, and it was a really really interesting breakthrough. She is an actor who is very distinctive. She really does have that classic movie star aura about her.”

As for her greatest role: “My heart says the great part she played in Carol but then you think of Tár, and it was one of the most intimidating characters she's ever played. She used every nuance for that character and she played it with such huge charisma. It was a very strange film. It begins with the end credits, all about the crew and every single last detail about the music so in a way it's an upside-down film. And you think it's going to be a lush drama about beautiful music but actually it becomes a modern horror story in effect.”

Also notable was her part in Notes On A Scandal: “She did those great British things of playing someone at the heart of a sex scandal but also playing opposite Judi Dench and it's such an interesting piece. She has played so many different roles but there is still something very recognisably Cate Blanchett in all of them. She has a certain charisma and a certain steeliness and she seems to have a strength that not all actresses put to the fore in their roles. There is something very compelling about her and even when she is being very intimidating she is also very exciting. There can also be something dangerous about her and I do think she plays characters that are far more complex than many Hollywood actresses would choose to play and that's why it is always a pleasure to be watching Cate Blanchett in the same way that it's a pleasure to watch Bette Davis or Katherine Hepburn. You always know it is Cate Blanchett you are watching and it is always exciting.”

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