I was maybe gonna write, “I think I have a crush on Florence Pugh” like I could edge away from this, but it’s a fact that at this moment, on this train where I am writing, I have a big fat fucking crush on Florence Pugh. It may not always be the case, but right now, it’s the truest thing brewing down there in that feeling belly.
I had maybe heard her name before on The Big Picture podcast or something, but I didn’t know who she was. Then, innocently enough, I threw on LIttle Women the other night with Sarah. The stars in that movie erupt at you like–I’m hesitating and using an over-the-top simile but I think this is right – like fireworks. Boom, there's Meryl Sreep. Boom, there’s Saorsie Ronan. Boom! Laura Dern! (and Emma Watson? Lol). Then, the grand finale – and this for me was like one of those explosions in a different movie, where the explosive device makes some small little noise that fakes your brain out about what’s to come, so that you're extra shocked when the loud noise and fire and smoke and shrapnel and shock wave come – Timothée Chalamet! My God.
But wait. In the middle of this symphonic display, who is that self-possessed, round faced, cutting gaze-possessing, spontaneous gurgles of fun-having beautiful woman I’ve never seen or heard of before in my life? Why, when this movie features like six of the buzziest and/or most legendary actors alive, am I waiting for their scenes to be over so that she can return to the screen?
Because of things like that flashback scene in the March family living room, where she’s prancing around and saying how one day she’s going “to be the best painter in the world.” And when she gets to the word, “world,” she pauses her prancing, her eyes drift up, and her hands on her sideways-outstretched arms cock back towards her face. It took me right back to that feeling, when you’re in your young teens and it feels like you could really be the best in the world at whatever you choose to do so long as it’s not professional athletics. It’s not a feeling that’s super commonly conveyed in movies, at least not ones that I’ve seen. And I feel warmth in remember it, but also a little bit of sadness to know that whatever she does or doesn’t achieve, that feeling is going to end for her. Which in one way is what the whole movie is about. That was my favorite scene.
Then she’s glaring down at Chalamet, boring holes in his fragile, drunk body, and scolding him in her smooth-but-rough velvety voice: “I waited an hour for you.” Here I see someone whose life is incredibly complicated, whose internal world is a buzzing hive of contradictory desires and fears and obligations but who can somehow twist and mold all of that into this very impressive and kind of sad resolution.
And then she can just turn around and be goofy and joyful, like that incredulous, “fuck yeah for me” look she gives when Meryl Streep promises her her fancy old ring. Or as a part of the girls’ little club thing where they play act as jolly pompous old man theater goers. Every previous production of Little Women has portrayed Amy as a treacherous blond snake in comparison to her quirky and interesting sisters, but inhabited by Florence Pugh, she can be prim and savage in a lacy ballroom gown or laugh like Santa Claus with a pipe and a top hat.
Saorsie and everyone else are exciting, but the feelings Florence Pugh delivers as Amy are so thick and layered that I feel like I could chew and swallow them. An actor who can serve up such straight-from-the-oven apple pies of humanity scene after scene, working with an erstwhile shallow character, is an actor well worth crushing on.
So we’re watching the movie, and I’m just delighted by all of these things that are happening, and every ten minutes or go I ask aloud, “who IS this woman?” And finally, like halfway through, Sarah says, “isn’t she the girl from Midsommar?” And then it all comes rushing back to me. How well she played in that terrifying movie. Her recent Oscar nomination. Now I understood all the buzz I’d heard on podcasts. Florence Pugh is now a big deal, and I finally caught up.
Good news for me. I’m getting Pugh season tickets.