14 | AUGUST.24.2012 | FRIDAY WEEKENDER: GOING OUT LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER | LEXGO.COM Besides his action flicks, left another legacy

By Alyssa Rosenberg Slate The news came this week that movie director Tony Scott had committed suicide by leaping from a bridge, and many of the remembrances have focused on his most famous action movies, including Top Gun, and his kinetic visual style. But my thoughts were as much on who Scott told stories about as much as how he told them. Scott frequently directed black stars, including Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop II, Wesley Snipes in The Fan, Will Smith in Enemy of the State, and his frequent leading man Denzel Wash- ington in Man on Fire, Deja Vu, his remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, and Unstoppable. Action movies with male main char- acters made up the bulk of his career, but Scott also created a number of fasci- nating, unsettling roles for women. Scott made his feature directorial de- but in 1983 with The Hunger, an erotic horror movie starring Catherine Deneuve as Miriam Blaylock, an ancient vampire who promises eternal life and youth to her lovers: David Bowie as her husband, John, who is finding out the limits of that promise, and Susan Sarandon as Sarah Roberts, a doctor studying aging who comes to the attention of the couple after John begins to age rapidly. NEW LINE CINEMA Miriam is a fascinating combination starred in Domino as a child of privilege who rejects it for a much tougher life as a bounty hunter. of rapacious and tender, and the movie holds her nonchalantly. Knightley did before devoting herself responsible for the harm Miriam loves whom she loves, to period pieces like The Duchess she does to John, and without being constrained by a sexual and Anna Karenina and Manic Pixie for the years that she has identity. And it’s for her dishonesty Dreamgirl roles. given him. Sarah is tough that Miriam is punished, not for loving As Domino, a boarding school and confidently sexual. women. burnout and former model, Knightley “Don’t you snarl at me, As for Sarah, she ends the movie gets at how boring the expectations you lethal son of a b----,” kissing a young woman gently. Miriam for pretty girls can be. If you’ve only she tells a monkey in her might have expanded Sarah’s sexual ever been valued for your face and your research lab after he kills horizons, but it’s Sarah who understands body, the movie suggests, you might his mate. After she has that love’s real only when it’s chosen, want to smash a fist into another girl’s sex with Miriam, she’s rather than when it’s compelled by blood face, chop off your hair and make your fickle at dinner with her and magic. entrance into rooms following the barrel boyfriend, who asks her Domino, Scott’s fictionalized 2005 of a gun if only so people start to notice with exasperation why account of the life of Domino Harvey, the threat you present before they get she ordered a steak she the daughter of actor around to your looks. isn’t eating. “I thought I MGM/UA who became a bounty hunter, is a less Yes, Scott made lots of movies about wanted it,” Sarah shrugs, Catherine Deneuve played a vampire in The Hunger. successful movie. It’s splashy and exces- tough men and the women they fall for. preserving her right to sively complicated, featuring Mo’Nique But other action directors could take change her mind. asks Miriam of the song the latter is as an exaggerated scheming employee a note from him in remembering that For a movie that treats vampirism as playing on the piano. “I told you it was of the California DMV, Dabney Coleman women can tote a gun as the lead rather a metaphor for lesbianism, The Hunger sung by two women,” Miriam tells her. as a casino boss and Riz Abbasi as an than simply as a love interest, and that is remarkably subtle about the fluidity “It sounds like a love song,” Sarah says. Afghan freedom fighter. But it’s one of love interests have priorities and prin- of sexuality. “Is it a love song?” Sarah “Then I suppose it is,” Miriam tells her the last truly unusual movies that Keira ciples of their own.