Scarlett Johansson, Misfit Movie Star (part 1)

Tony winner. BAFTA winner. Twice named Esquire's Sexiest Woman Alive. Marvel Cinematic Universe's Black Widow. Scarlett Johansson is definitely an A-list movie star. But there's something about her that rebels against the Hollywood hype machine. Is Scarlett a Hollywood sex symbol? Or do the media and the public project that image onto her? Is Scarlett Johansson the anti A-list star?

Obviously, I don't know Scarlett Johansson personally. But her choice of films reveal a deeper relationship to her sex symbol status. She challenges it. Here's what I find interesting: Scarlett Johansson's characters are always the outlier, the misfit. She plays displaced characters, alienated sometimes by her voluptuous beauty, by her nationality, even by her lack of corporal form. My theory is that Johansson views her A list status ironically and spends her career breaking it down.

In this multi-part blog series, I'm going to look at some of Scarlett Johansson's performances, ranging from some of her best films to some of her more flawed (but still interesting) films.

Match Point, "Nola Rice" (2005)
When Chris (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) first meets Nola, she's playing table tennis and wins against some random guy. Off-camera, she says "So. Who's my next victim?" It's the perfect femme fatale moment. Woody Allen has Johansson play Nola as the ultimate male fantasy siren. She says the right things, has a smoldering gaze and has a tantalizingly messy life. But as the film goes on, Nola reveals her isolation, the cost of being The Sexy One. As the lone American in a cast of Brits, Nola is confronted with her lower class upbringing and her failures. Her affair with Chris exacerbates her insecurities, the residue of always being discarded. It's a fabulous deconstruction of the femme fatale. Her clothes become less glamorous, she starts to nag rather than seduce, she's a burden not a thrill.

Johansson's performance peels back the layers of a sex symbol. Her performance in the early scenes is so on-the-nose sexual (the way she hold her cigarette, her desperation for a savior) that Nola feels unreal. But it's only because that's the role she's expected to play. She's the mistress, the fun crazy fling before you settle down with a Chloe or a Heather. As the film progresses, you start to realize that Nola can't break from the cycle. As much as Nola tries to break from the patriarchal order, where she is the disposable "whore" in Madonna/Whore Complex, the more men shut her up by either dumping her or plotting her murder.

Nola Rice has become one of Scarlett Johansson's signature roles but I'm not sure if it's for the right reason. People identify Johansson more with the sexual Nola. Some viewers seem to forget that her performance in this movie is a harsh critique of the male fantasies projected onto her. For me, Nola represents Scarlett Johansson at her most courageous. She shreds down Nola's role as the femme fatale to reveal the tragedy, the broken but beating heart, beneath the archetype.

He's Just Not That Into You, "Anna Marks" (2009)
Looking at Johansson's career, she hasn't done a lot of conventional movies. Maybe The Nanny Diaries? The Island? The Other Boleyn Girl? But the late 2000s were a rough period for Scarlett. She had successfully transitioned from indie darling to adult roles but Hollywood didn't know what to do with her. A year before, she finished her 3rd Woody Allen movie. A year later, she'd enter the MCU. So Johansson doing a conventional rom-com like HJNTIY is weird. IF I recall correctly, it's her only traditional romantic-comedy. But is her character that traditional? Johansson plays Anna, an aspiring singer who begins an affair with Ben (Bradley Cooper). Again, Johansson is impossibly sexual, going skinny dipping in a public pool. Again, Johansson is the other woman. It would be easy for Johansson to capitalize on her fame and play the heroine in a bunch of cutesy rom-coms. But here she is in a cutesy rom-com and she's returning to the femme fatale.

Anna exists on the fringes of this movie, interacting with only a few members of the ensemble. And the majority of the deleted scenes concern her character so in the film, there's not much known about Anna. I just think it's interesting that Johansson is doing this kind of mainstream movie and she's playing a character who does questionable things. The film goes out of its way to paint her as the good guy and Ben as a pathetic villain. (The major flaw of this movie is how often it undermines itself in crucial ways). Anna's arc in this movie is similar to that of Match Point, where she experiences the cruel reality of being disposable. In one scene, Anna visits Ben at his office for a rendezvous. But when his wife Janine, played by Jennifer Connelly, comes by, Ben pushes Anna into a closet. There, she is forced to listen to her lover's wife seduce him. That is a majorly painful sign of her place in this world. Even when Johansson plays in a conventional rom-com, there is still some honest truth about how her seductiveness can lead to disposability and humiliation.

Lucy, "Lucy" (2014)
Not only is Lucy the outlier within the movie, but the film is an outlier itself within Hollywood. Rated R, not based on any preexisting property and starring a woman, the film opened at #1 in July of last year and went on to gross over 10x its $40 million budget. That's a major victory for female-starring films. Lucy was sold almost exclusively on Johansson's name, capitalizing on her success with Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which I'll discuss in a future installment). Morgan Freeman was also promoted in the ads but there was never any doubt that this was a Scarlett Johansson vehicle. That the movie opened at #1 (over Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson) indicated Johansson had passed the age-old test for being A-list.

When we first meet Lucy, she's arguing with this guy she's been dating Richard (Pilou Asbaek) in front of a Taipei hotel. He wants her to deliver a mysterious briefcase to Korean mob boss Mr. Jung (Choi Min-sik) and she's resisting, rightly balking at the shadiness of the situation. The scene clearly establishes Lucy as a misfit: she's an American in Taiwan, an innocent but not totally naive woman arguing with someone connected to the mob. The guy promises her half of the reward money, stuffing a wad of money into her bra, a clear sign of Richard's male entitlement and presumption of ownership over Lucy's body. Richard handcuffs Lucy to the briefcase and she's forced to deal with Mr. Jung herself. Johansson really plays up Lucy's fear. Not only is there a language barrier between her and the gangsters, but she's genuinely afraid for her life. Her lack of control over herself and  her lack of knowledge of what's inside the briefcase alienate Lucy to a horrific extent

When the gangsters hide drugs inside Lucy and they start to leak, she becomes even more isolated from the world. Her increased brain power capacity distance her from emotions and feelings, and give her newfound powers of controlling objects with her mind and freezing time. The powers are cool, making Lucy a superhero of sorts. At the same time, Johansson finds a sadness behind Lucy losing what makes her human. She kisses someone as a reminder of what that feels like. She makes a teary call to her mother when she realizes her ordeal only has one outcome.

Lucy is a weird movie. Director Luc Besson goes for broke in the absurdity. The only thing that grounds the film is Johansson herself. Her performance is very real and committed, even if everything around her is ridiculous. This may be a star vehicle but it's not a bland shoot-em-up like you might expect. This is Scarlett Johansson's version of a star vehicle. Absurd, messy, the film does take time to ask questions about what makes us human. I wouldn't call Lucy my favorite Scarlett Johansson film, but the movie is interesting in ways that most box office hits aren't. I wonder if any other actor, male or female or whatever, could have starred in this movie. Maybe, but who other than Hollywood's own A-list misfit could pull off playing a woman who becomes so far removed from mainstream society? Critics of Scarlett Johansson often accuse her of lacking emotions or using one facial expression. So don't you think it's funny that she has one of her biggest hits with a film where she steadily loses her emotions?

Stay tuned for Scarlett Johansson, Misfit Movie Star (part 2).

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