American Woman’s Sienna Miller
A winning performance that brings Sienna Miller back home.
I had always thought she was British. With an elegant accent, photos of her out and about in London and her tabloid worthy relationships with leading British actors, there was something utterly English about Sienna Miller. Delving into research about her 37 years, I discovered that she is at much ours as she is theirs. And her new role in American Woman brings her back to her birth country with the clear possibility of achieving the greatest honor in film, the Academy Award. Her assertive portrayal of a rural mom in her latest film pushes Miller into the stratosphere of actresses who once only co-starred and now play the lead. Come 2020, my bet is on Miller to be nominated for Best Actress.
Her incandescent performance in director Jake Scott’s (Welcome to the Riley’s) evocative new film (from the producers of Manchester By the Sea) is breathtaking. We’ve heard the story before; a child goes missing and mom’s unimaginable suffering ensues. But it’s the nuances in American Woman of lower-class life with all of its hardships, that make sometimes messy pain and disillusionment a universal theme of resilience for all. In this indie drama that takes place in rural Pennsylvania, Deb Callahan, (Miller) butts head with her daughter, Bridget (Sky Ferreira), a teen mom who seemingly sets out to repeat Deb’s bad decisions in life. When Deb wakes up one morning, to discover that after a night out, Bridget isn’t home, and doesn’t come back a search begins with the typical suspects.
It’s the years that follow that make this mystery utterly heartbreaking. Hard living, Deb (who chain smokes and knocks back beers) now raises Jesse, her grandson while struggling to hang in and make ends meet as a supermarket check-out clerk. Is her daughter dead or alive? The question lingers as the plot moves along skillfully. Deb gets emotional support from her sister, Katherine, (a fine performance by Christina Hendricks), who lives across the street. (Their quick-to-judge mom, played by Amy Madigan is divine.)
The simple yet complex story plays out for 11 years. Deb makes the wrong choices with men whom she relies on financially. She’s having a turbulent affair with a married man (Kentucker Audley), and then there’s Chris, the steady-nice guy, (Aaron Paul). Seemingly paralleling Sienna Miller’s own life, Deb changes from a free spirit to a matured woman who ultimately takes charge. The bombshell ending will leave you playing the movie over again and again in your mind with Miller’s knock-down drag out performance serving as a haunting imprimatur.
Sienna Miller was once an It girl—she even played one on the big screen in 2006’s Factory Girl as Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol’s troubled muse. With her career-changing performance in American Woman, there is no It about her. Miller’s once fun roles have now evolved into a fully realized character with deeper dimensions that will only grow richer in time for this remarkable actress whom these days, finds New York City home.
