TRUTH AND FANTASY OSCILLATE

PERFORMANCES RELY ON UNCERTAINTY CREATED

Film performances involve acting within acting along a long upward struggle for success.

Emma Stone almost parodies herself oscillating within a script from what is real to what is fantasy.

This uncertainty draws in the audience to pay more attention to her performances.

In La La Land (2016) Stone’s character has difficulty attracting the crowd to her solo performance in a small Hollywood theatre.

Mia has been set up on stage by Sebastian, her jazz musician boyfriend, played by Ryan Gosling as the camera follows the two wannabee entertainers through the dreamy days in search of stardom.

Stone continues to follow her dream through several intertextual references, with Mia and Sebastian going from a screening of Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to the location for several of the film’s scenes at the Los Angeles Observatory.

Director Damien Chazelle also brings in real life R&B musician John Legend to play a Jazz singer forming a band that needs someone like Sebastian to play the keyboard.

Stone won an Oscar for her intertextual, self-referential performance as a Hollywood actor sharing an apartment with other starlets with the same dream of one day being on the movie marque.

In Battle of the Sexes (2017) Stone personifies female liberation playing biopic tennis great, Billy Jean King.

King led women toward equality by creating a women’s tennis organization that sought equal treatment to men’s tennis players. Stone shows how King had to overcome personal and social barriers to set an example for other women to follow.

Steve Carrel plays Bobby Riggs, an American hustler who challenges King to a tennis match in front of the whole world. The global event becomes a defining moment for gender equality.

Stone’s screen character becomes defined a bit more in The Favourite (2018).

Abigail learns to act her way from a servant girl into the confidence of the Queen. Stone’s performance moves from truth to lies back to the truth as her character learns to survive in the Queen’s court after being bullied by the people around her.

Olivia Coleman plays Queen Anne, who must manage the political machinations of the court without knowing the true back story of each entreaty. Coleman received an Oscar for her performance.

Stone next lands a spot in the blockbuster, Cruella (2021). 

Estella finds her way into a street gang of young petty thieves after becoming an orphan. Stone shows how the child picks up a lot of talent on the street that does not get recognized as a young adult.

Emma Thompson plays Baroness von Hellman who gives Estella a chance to prove her dress design talent in her fashion house. Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser costar with Stone as the threesome muck about and gradually infiltrate the Baroness’s business empire. 

Stone makes a further play on the self-referential screen moments by playing Estelle and her alter-ego Cruella. The film oscillates between the two characters with the Baroness seemingly lost within the duality.

Cruella is currently streaming on Disney Plus.