Joel Edgerton and Cate Blanchett in the New York production of A Streetcar Named Desire (picture Sara Krulwich, The New York Times)
Sydney actor Joel Edgerton is on fire – and so is Cate Blanchett, but we already knew that.
The New York Times theatre critic Ben Brantley has just anointed him for his “excellent” performance alongside massively praised Cate Blanchett in the Tennessee Williams epic, A Streetcar Named Desire.
(The play was universally applauded by critics, including John McCallum in The Australian, when it premiered at The Sydney Theatre Company in September).
And his next film, Animal Kingdom, is the only Australian movie chosen to screen at the prestigious 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it will make its world premiere.
Only 14 films were selected for the “world cinema narrative competition” from a staggering 1022 entries.
Not bad going, and great kudos for the Australian film industry.
Animal Kingdom was written and directed by David Michod and filmed on location in Melbourne during a tight seven-week shoot earlier this year. It stars a string of exceptional Australian actors including Melbourne-based Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and the indefatigable Jacki Weaver.
According to a report by InsideFilm.com.au earlier this year, Animal Kingdom is a “taut thriller set amid the explosive world of a family addicted to crime, as experienced through the eyes of a naïve 17-year-old youth who enters their lair. It’s the Wild West where criminals and police wage their war on the city’s streets, while the innocent suffer the consequences.”
Animal Kingdom film poster
With Edgerton and Pearce (he plays a cop) in the same film, it will be cheekbones at 10-paces.
Edgerton’s career has been on the rise in recent years (even Blanchett forgave him for throwing a prop-telephone at her during a Streetcar performance at the STC recently) and Brantley’s glowing review of his Stanley Kowalksi (originally shaped by the great – in every sense – and late Marlon Brando) has got to be among the highlights.
“Mr Edgerton brings out the childlike side of Stanley, both its simple joyousness and thoughtlessness, and it has rarely been clearer that Stella’s husband has the winning strength of youth,” Brantley wrote.
