Embeth Davidtz

Two archive texts give two directions on Embeth Davidtz. Andy Richards, calling an Austen adaptation the most openly erotic one yet made, pins one of his reasons on her snake-like, cigar-smoking Mary Crawford. Ken Hollings writes that her otherwise sensitive presentation of Leah, in Simon Magus, is sent spinning by a clumsy display of jealousy; who the clumsiness belongs to, the playing or the script, the text does not say. So one record holds both a performance that sets a film's tone and a performance that comes apart at one point.