Anne Lambert, also credited as Anne-Louise Lambert, was not Weir's original choice to play Miranda. The role went to Ingrid Mason, but Weir later decided that Lambert was a better fit for the part. Mason instead played Rosamund, and I have yet to find a satisfactory screenshot of her to post here and compare to Lambert. Rosamund was featured in a few scenes early in the movie and was the character who gleefully told Miranda about the math-themed Valentine for Miss McCraw.
I think Lambert's portrayal of Miranda plays a large part in the sense of melancholy and loss that Sara, Michael and others experience after she disappears. I read one review where the author sniped that Lambert's good looks won her the role.
I think Lambert had the right look for the film -- beauty with an appropriately ethereal quality, an expression that sometimes looked childlike and sometimes adult.
But she was more than a pretty face; she maintained a fey quality that advanced the story and sense of tension up until her disappearance, and she made an unforgettable impression that enhanced what a tragedy the outing turned out to be.
9 comments:
I agree that Anne Lambert had the right look and feel to be Miranda, but the treatment of that character in the movie bothered me. (I haven't read the book, so I don't know whether it has the same flaw.)
My problem is that her character is not developed enough to explain the power she has over everyone. Is it primarily her looks? Why do they all agree that she's the most attractive when all of the girls are very pretty? I think there is supposed to be more to it than looks, but that isn't shown very well in the movie.
I think in her limited role, Miranda was supposed to seem like a benevolent figure. She was kind to Sara even though the latter seemed to be an outcast. She rebuked Edith on the rock for talking about Sara's affections -- in that instance I thought Miranda came off as a little hammy. But otherwise I think she was appreciated for her kindness.
Mlle. de Poitiers compared her to a Botticelli angel, but other than that, I can't remember any of the others at school lauding Miranda for her looks.
I also didn't quite buy Miranda. Everyone clearly adored her, and she was made out to be much more important than the others who were lost, but I didn't get a good enough explanation of why. She hardly had any lines.
I was poking around and found this article about Anne Lambert's life after "Hanging Rock." Apparently she can't get away from the role and has had some problems with crazy, obsessed fans. So I guess Miranda did have a power to enthrall some people.
Interesting article. I looked at Lambert's career on imdb.com and thought she didn't do much of interest besides a role in a Peter Greenaway movie I'd like to see, "The Draughtsman's Contract." For the kick-start "Picnic" must have given her career, she didn't amount to much afterward besides TV roles.
I just did not buy Miranda as a love interest at all.
As some of you have suggested, I don't think there was any foundation laid at all for the reactions she inspired in people. None. It's like she gave the casting director a big huge boner so we are therefore supposed to buy into any and all magic he wants to ascribe to her.
It reminds me of this Dar Williams song where her boyfriend is scoping out some woman in that self-important way that womanizers have, and he says "if I could believe that stuff, I'd say that woman has a halo." And Dar Williams looks out and — realizing that he is simply deifying his own lust — says, "Yeah, she's really blonde."
Miranda is really blonde. That's it. And she seems to take for granted that everyone worships her, which I found really off-putting.
(She reminded me — rather fatally — of the blondes in "The Virgin Suicides.")
Lambert's ability to seem remote and fey are qualities that go beyond being "really blonde."
Maybe there wouldn't be this idea of Weir's adulation if he had chosen to finish the movie not with a vanity shot of Lambert but of the three girls in their last moments on the rock.
With all due respect, I'd counter that the Olsen twins look really fey and remote, aside from being really blonde. That doesn't an interesting character make.
The Olsen twins look hungry. Very, very hungry.
According to that article about Lambert (as well as another article I read), she got the role because Weir decided that the girl he originally cast was too fat.
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