Rosamund Pike — The Millennial Femme Fatale
Rosamund Pike’s psychotic characters gain a feminist approach to the femme fatale representations.
“There are two types of people in this world,” comes Rosamund Pike’s avaricious character to the scene of I Care a Lot:
“The people who take and those getting took. Predators and prey. Lions and lambs. My name is Marla Grayson, and I’m not a lamb. I am a fucking lioness.”
The close-up of her marble-like cold face and sharp blonde haircut reminds us of the Hitchcockian psychotic gaze. The ferocity of her appearance merges with her red dress, and the scene takes us seven years back to Gone Girl where she cold-heartedly stabbed Neil P. Harris’s throat while he was penetrating her in a white nightgown, and his blood washed her.
In the opening scene of I Care a Lot, she looks at the camera in a court while listening to the accusation similarly as she looked down on N. P. Harris. One can see the archetypical femme fatale in her gaze. Her successful portrayal of the psychotic and empowered woman in Gone Girl has carried Pike to her new role, and there is no doubt that…
