Roy, played by Lee Pace, a familiar face from the delightfully trippy TV show Pushing Daisies, is glad to have Alexandria as a distraction from his condition, and begins to weave a story for her entertainment. Roy also quickly realizes that he has discovered a handy tool in the resourceful Alexandria, and he starts to manipulate her to steal morphine for him. Roy doesn't want to forget the circumstances that brought him there, an accident during a movie shoot, or the deeper injury caused by the loss of his true love into the arms of a Valentino-like movie star. Roy wants to die.
The interactions between Roy and Alexandria, both within and outside of the story he tells, are audacious and lovely. While Roy spins the story we see Alexandria's imagination paint it and, when necessary, make changes. Their rapport is established upon first meeting when Alexandria, struggling to learn English, asks Roy a mangled question about his visiting friend, a fellow stunt man who is missing a leg. Roy begins to tell her a story about buccaneers. What are those? Alexandria interrupts. They're pirates Roy answers. No, I don't like pirates, insists Alexandria. But you just asked me about pirates, says an exasperated Roy. No, Alexandria insists, she just wanted to know if his friend was a pirate, because of his peg leg.
As Alexandria's questions and imagination shape the adventure we watch characters morph and evolve. Roy includes in his story an "Indian" with a squaw and tepee. Alexandria, who is learning English, does not understand any of these concepts, although she does know an Indian, from India, who worked with her family picking oranges. Thus Roy's Indian, entirely unbeknown to him, becomes a fierce and Technicolor Indian warrior complete with turban and scimitar. One of the most delightful examples of Alexandria's influence on the story is shown in this clip where no one seems more surprised than Roy to discover the mysterious princess the hero has been pursuing is the lovely Nurse Evelyn, Alexandria's favorite caretaker.
Catinca Untaru, the young Romanian actress who inhabits the role of Alexandria, gives the most realistic portrayal (I can't bring myself to call it a performance) of a child that I have seen since Victoire Thivisol in the French film Ponette. I found myself wondering how Singh evoked such a naturalistic performance. Comparing Untaru's performance in this to a performance like Abigail Breslin's in Little Miss Sunshine it becomes so clear how rare it is to see a child behaving in every way like a child on screen, rather than an adorable moppet.
Article comments
1 - Hal O'Brien
"The result was also, interestingly enough, a film that 100% of my male acquaintances consider the most horrifying, time-stopping, hellish chick flick experience of their lives."
What an odd and limited circle of male acquaintances you must have. This says far more about them than about The English Patient.