Continuing with our Top Ten lists till the year’s end, we have decided to split what was once called our yearly “Indie Queens and Foreign Femme Fatales” top 10 list (see our 2006 selections here) into two and thus doubling our appreciation and pleasure. Today you’ll be getting our Top 10 Foreign Femme Fatale list, and tomorrow getting a Top Ten list for our favorite indie actresses of the year.
Once again this list is not necessarily a list of the year’s absolute best performances, but an appreciation for performance, grace, style, facial symmetry and once again that “je ne sais quoi” factor. Without further ado, here is our 2007 list of Foreign Femme Fatales.
10: Luz Cipriota
2007: Fresh young face was the center of attention and confusion for Gael Garcia Bernal’s character (and the actor's directorial debut) in Déficit.
2008: Those with a satellite dish can find her doing television work for Mexican viewers in Casi angeles.
9. Noomi Rapace
2007: If I promised to give a dime to every single person who saw her in Daisy Diamond I’d be short maybe a buck or two. The Swede actress brilliantly played a mother of a newborn at wits end in Simon Staho’s controversial and original film festival circuit pic.
2008: Local actress will work on feature film and television work.
2007: She’s been in the business since a little after the year 2K, but she grabbed international recognition (at least on the festival world tour) in a role where she played a vulnerable, yet head strong, eyes in the sky city employee in Andrea Arnold’s fabulous Red Road.
2008: In the new year we’ll see her in the role of another labourer in the book to screen adaptation of Gil Kenan’s City of Ember.
2007: She played lovely Rita – the damn cute Indian girl poking her head in and outside of the train in Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited.
2008: It was just released in the U.K and I’ve got no clue if it will make its way here, but she has a role in Barnaby Thompson and Oliver Parker school girls rule/remake called St. Trinian's.
6. Kierston Wareing
2007: If I’d want share my chips with anyone it would be Kierston Wareing. The actress nearly gave up on the business but a leading role in Ken Loach’s It's a Free World changed her destiny.
2008: The fake blond is listed on a television mini series called Trial & Retribution XVI: In Deep – but will most likely get a couple of more chances to prove her worth.
5. Zoe Bell
2007: Hard to pick just one from the mostly female cast, but it’s fair to say that we loved this butt-kicking, New Zealand new face in Quenetin Tarantino’s portion of the Grindhouse experiment. She made the acquaintance of QT during the shooting of the Kill Bill films – she is, of course, the stunt double actress who’s been in the biz for a couple of years now. She also did stunts in this year’s political action flick The Kingdom.
2008: We are glad to report that she’ll be in front of the camera acting and perhaps getting less bruised. The filmmakers behind Crank, Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine have her pegged in the 2008 release starring Gerard Butler called simply, Game.
4. Charlotte Gainsbourg
2007: We first saw her in the late to get into theaters period film Golden Door, but it is her bit part as Claire in Todd Haynes’ I'm Not There that reminded us why she is a dramatic spark plug.
2008: We won’t be seeing her much in 2008 either, except for a bigger role in James Ivory’s The City Of Your Final Destination.
3. Marie-Josée Croze
2007: The Canadian actress now making France her home starred in Laurent Boutonnat's Jacquou le croquant and was blinked at often in
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon).
2008: A pair of French titles in Jean Becker’s Deux jours à tuer and Le Nouveau protocole.
2007: If the real Ian Curtis had fallen for girlfriend in the shape of Alexandra Maria Lara he might still be with us today. Okay that was a lame comment, but Maria Lara is a looker. She was in Francis Ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth, and was one of the two muses for Sam Riley's character in Anton Corbijn's Control.
2008: She will play in the German production/filmmaker Uli Edel's The Baader-Meinhof Complex and in James Ivory's The City Of Your Final Destination.
1. Anamaria Marinca
2007: Played a bit part in Coppola's Youth Without Youth, played in the tv mini-series The Last Enemy and gave a commanding screen perf in 4 months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
2008: While a walk down the red carpet at the Oscars is highly unlikely (I,m keeping my fingers crossed) she is the lead in a Romanian product by filmmaker Radu Muntean called Boogie.
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