Emma Thompson, a daring actress who put her body to her characters and the troubles of her life

Emma Thompson returns to teach. The imminent release of Good luck, Big Leo. not only shows her as a widow who decides to hire a taxi boy to expand her sexual life, but as a mature woman who ventures into a change of life. A life with desire and without asking permission. But In this field, that of changes and adventures without permission, Emma Thompson continues to show that she can be the best, hold the timing of dialogues by dint of talent and craft, but also of a security acquired over the years. From Shakespeare to Jane Austen, passing through judicial dramas and comedies of disenchantment, Emma Thompson has known how to imbue her profession with risks and consistent reflection, without fear of being in tune with the climate of the times, jumping into underestimated genres, infecting her characters of his state of mind, his personal concerns, the troubles of his own life.

In Good luck, Big Leo., that chamber piece that Thompson plays with the young Daryl McCormack, in which the bed becomes a stage, of the passions and of the consciousness of time itself, his characters from the past also parade, the most distant, the most emblematic , even those we thought we had forgotten. Go through some milestones of his career, even those available in streaming these days, he prepares our reunion, he invites us to see Thompson in full exercise of his mastery, to enjoy his inexhaustible art that always leaves us satisfied.

It was the second collaboration between Emma Thompson and her then-husband, Kenneth Branagh. Together they had shared Shakespeare’s umbrella in Henry V (1989) and now the disturbing world of Hitchcock and the sunny city of Los Angeles became the territory of a passion that crosses years and curses. About the credits – in which Thompson appears lagging behind names like Andy García, Derek Jacobi and the fassbinderian Hanna Schygulla-, shows the news of the brutal crime of Margaret Strauss, an eminent pianist, at the hands of her husband, an opera composer sentenced to death. That past seems to disturb the dreams of a woman who arrives at the doors of a Catholic home and ends up in the care of private detective Mike Church, a former pupil of that institution. What Branagh does is an effective alchemy of various Hitchcock titles (Rebecca, Psychosis, The Paradin caseand some others) in which the love story that unites Mike and the forgetful Grace has enough magnetism to forgive some missteps with the plausible, some foresight in the gears of the mystery, and an aesthetic that abuses idle and camera tricks to reach the brilliant ending. Available on Apple TV and Google Play.

Based on the autobiography of Gerry Conlon, In the name of the Father is the story of the Guildford Four, as the press called them, charged and sentenced to life in prison as IRA terrorists for the 1974 bombing of a city pub. What Conlon reveals is how he and his three friends were framed. by the British police who needed a coup against the actions of the IRA in those years. Beyond the historical facts, Jim Sheridan’s film assumes tragedy as a horizon from the voice of someone who, without being an exemplary citizen, is charged with a crime that he did not commit. We see Conlon (Daniel Day Lewis, in one of his first consecration roles), an Irishman from the city of Belfast, who robs prostitutes and goes on a spree with his friends, confined to a cell and locked up forever. life. The key to his fate lies in the presence of his father, an honest man who will inspire his own defense, and in the lawyer played by Thompson, capable of taking on the case against all odds and undertaking a merciless fight. against injustice. This role of Emma Thompson in the judicial meanderings, turned into a shrewd speaker or a champion of a justice that does not always bring the best, is key to understanding the thickness of her talent as an actress, even when interpreting gray or lateral characters, which in his hands acquire an unparalleled greatness. Available on Apple TV and Google Play.

sanity and feelings is one of the great adaptations of Jane Austen in terms of reinvention, which shows that it is not necessary to betray her spirit to make her contemporary. Directed by Ang Lee but adapted by Thompson herself, the film eludes the demand for literalness when transposing a classic text and maintains its fidelity to Austen’s thought by reflecting on the autonomy of women and the relationship with their economic independence. The Dashwood sisters represent the perfect counterpoint of reason and feeling: Elinor (Thompson) is thoughtful and patient; Marianne (Kate Winslet) is pure passion and drive. The story begins when, after the death of his father (Tom Wilkinson), Mr. Dashwood’s second wife and her daughters are subjected to the misfortune of the strict rules of English inheritance. From there, love becomes less an ode to romanticism than a game of chess to find the best and most convenient match. Thompson since the rewriting managed to impregnate the dialogues with a colloquial air without absurdities or banalities, and dressed Austen’s bumbling men, most notably the shy Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant), in an unusual charm befitting the vital ’90s romantic comedy. Both Thompson and rising Winslet became the exquisite embodiment of the look. of Austen about love, in a time that owed her so much without knowing it. Available on Netflix, Apple TV and Google Play.

Noah Baumbach’s dysfunctional families have always had their appeal, from the Berkmans of family stories (2005) to that of the Greenberg brothers precisely in Greenberg (2010); all marked by neurosis, conflicted loves and irremediable separations, but none like that of the Meyerowitzes. The patriarch is Harold (Dustin Hoffman), a sculptor whose work has been somewhat forgotten, and whose ego sustains much of his legacy, remarried to Maureen (Thompson), a recovering alcoholic who tries patiently and without forgetting that eccentric link that unites them. But the Mayerowitzes are completed by Harold’s children, all of them dependent on that expansive father figure: Danny (Adam Sandler) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), bound by silences and grudges, dressed in pathos and warmth, and the successful Matthew (Ben Stiller), an inhabitant of the west coast and who, in his rejection of money and the family legacy, also accuses his inevitable dependence. Baumbach drinks from that unforgettable cinema of the 70s, especially from Woody Allen, from the comedies of Paul Mazursky, from those sharp portraits of families that love and mistreat each other with equal dedication. In that scenario, Thompson offers an exquisite counterpoint to the perfidious manipulation of Hoffman’s Harold, turned into a tyrant with ailments, demanding a devotion that does not admit half measures. With her eccentric airs, Maureen dodges the poison darts with deliberate unconsciousness, becoming the partner perfect for that dynamic in which hair and glory can be lost, but never the tricks. Available on Netflix.

an act of hope It is a film of decisions. In the first few minutes, family court judge Fiona Maye (Thompson) must decide whether or not to authorize surgery on two conjoined twins. If she performs the operation, one survives; if it is not done, both of them run a sure risk of dying. Faced with pressure from the press and the family, the magistrate must decide, in a scenario in which it is about opting for the lesser evil. But their dilemmas do not end there, but they move to the domestic sphere. Her years-long marriage to Jack (Stanley Tucci) has reached such a point of disagreement that her husband tells her that she will find a lover for her. What to decide then? Leave her absorbing profession for a fulfilling personal life, or find someone who accepts her terms? At that crossroads, Fiona must also take responsibility for a case involving the faith, freedom of choice and right to life of a Jehovah’s Witness teenager who refuses a blood transfusion. Again the personal questions are entangled with the declaration of justice. Based on a novel by Ian McEwan (Atonement), an act of hope It features one of Thompson’s best performances in recent years, in a field where many actors tend to play their trade and prestige, such as the arena of a court. Available on Amazon Prime Video, Movistar Play, Claro Video, Apple TV and Google TV.