Dept. of Enough Credit

I've just read this tribute to actress Greta Gerwig by A.O. Scott and added it to my list of reasons to see Greenberg. Scott heaps praise on Gerwig for having no acting background (save for a string of roles in microbudget indies) or visible technique but still being at the vanguard of a small wave of guileless young actresses. Scott is really walking the line between praise and condescension here; in the paragraph below he stops just short of saying Gerwig doesn't understand what she is doing. Just further proof of the impossibility of describing the affect acting has on the audience. (NYT)

In those cases the viewer is aware and appreciative of a trained and practiced performer using her craft to produce a range of intelligible effects. But Ms. Gerwig, without a background in Hollywood, television or professional theater, is different. She does not carry herself like a would-be movie star or sound much like one either. She is more goose than swan — a big-boned and a little slouchy, indifferent to the imperatives of gracefulness that can land you romantic-comedy roles and a spot in the Vanity Fair “Young Hollywood” group portrait. When she takes off her clothes — which is not infrequently — it does not seem teasing or exhibitionistic but disarmingly matter-of-fact. Her diction is more like what you hear at the next table in the local coffee bar than at the movies. She tends to trail off in midsentence, turn statements into questions or sometimes tangle herself up in a rush of words. She comes across as pretty, smart, hesitant, insecure, confused, determined — all at once or in no particular order. Which is to say that she is bracingly, winningly and sometimes gratingly real.

“I don’t like sarcastic fun,” Ms. Gerwig’s character declared in “Nights and Weekends,” which she directed with Mr. Swanberg, and this can be understood as a statement of artistic purpose. She will play — that’s what acting is — but she will also mean what she says.