
Kristen Stewart? How has an actress so sullen, so dour and unemotive managed to steer the Twilight franchise into the hearts and pocketbooks of movie audiences worldwide?
So visibly awkward, it's like she's been coached not to hunch but keeps forgetting. Her chin juts like she's on edge even as her eyes zone out. Wear-wolfs? Vampires? Stewart's Bella seems ready to doze off any second or go stand in the corner and sulk.
Her very particular talent made sense in, say, Adventureland, where her character was the same sort of sullen beauty. But, setting her performance aside, we constantly hear the other Twilight Saga characters--from the vamps to the wear-wolfs to the cafeteria kids--obsess over her. They keep telling us she's special as they orbit around her like she has some special power. There's a tremendous disconnect but Stewart must be doing something wright. New Moon made more than $150 million domestically in its first weekend, quite an achievement for a film that, judging by the look of it, cost a fraction of the cost of other members of the $100-million-plus club.
I think it's because she's so utterly replaceable in the viewer's imagination. Any viewer who wants to imagine themselves as the focus of New Moon's very sexy love triangle--and that would be pretty much anyone who went to the film on their own steam--can banish her from registering on their cerebral cortex, leaving a blank spot onto which they can project themselves. She's not a star--someone who's inherently watchable--and she's no character actor either. We can essentially place our thumb between us and her face and let ourselves take part in the fantasy that her Bella doesn't really deserve.