Crushes: Natalie Press

Like many a girl with a certain lust for coming-of-age novels brought to screen, I first fell for Natalie Press (or Nathalie Press, depending on who you ask) in Pawel Pawlikowski's gorgeous My Summer of Love. Natalie's raised-in-a-pub Mona and Emily Blunt's rich-girl Tamsin made the most innocently glamorous duo, dancing around to Edith Piaf and joyriding on Mona's scooter and sunbathing among the heather in the Yorkshire countryside. Both actresses are divine (especially in scenes like the one where Mona's playing dress-up in Tamsin's princessy clothes), but there's something particularly irresistible about Natalie's mix of fierceness and vulnerability. She's like some tough girl from a Rod Stewart song, written back when you might actually want Rod Stewart to write a song about you.

While Emily went on to wear Prada, Natalie's future roles include playing Emily Bronte to Michelle Williams's Charlotte and co-starring with Cillian Murphy in the upcoming sci-fi thriller Telepathy. But for now she's appearing in Red Road (opening tomorrow in New York and L.A.), the first feature from the phenomenal Andrea Arnold. One of the most gripping and eerily atmospheric films you'll likely see this year, Red Road stars Kate Dickie as a Scottish surveillance camera operator who - for reasons I can't reveal - becomes obsessed with following a redhaired ex-con who one day appears on her monitors. (It also contains one of the most scary-intense sex scenes I've ever witnessed, complete with the beyond-creepy soundtrack of screaming foxes.)

Andrea first directed Natalie in 2003's Wasp, winner of the Academy Award for best short film. There, Natalie plays a single mom who, when she can't get a babysitter on the night of a very important date, takes her four kids along to the pub and leaves them out in the parking lot for the night. Like Wasp, Red Road is built on moments so gut-wrenching you might forget to breathe for a while. But in a movie that's sometimes almost unbearably dark, Natalie shines a warm light into every scene. I got a little flutter in my heart upon first sight of her, big green eyes peeping out from under her fur hood in a graffitied elevator, a little tired but still so bright and hopeful.

Posted by Liz in Film
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