Every Penny Of It

When Eva Green as Vesper Lynd first comes into frame well into CASINO ROYALE, she has me right away. I’m a big fan of the movie anyway, but she puts all my feelings about it over the top. Like what happens with several Bond films, you’re waiting for the whole thing to fall apart, but it never does and even after several viewings it still holds together for me. The film pulls off so many things I look for in a Bond film. The tone, the action, the coolness, an actor in Daniel Craig who becomes James Bond in every possible way and a performance by a female lead who is able to live up to playing such a key role in the Bond mythos as Vesper Lynd. She’s smart, elegant and beautiful. She’s stylish, confident and yet it doesn’t take too long for Bond to poke a few holes in that façade. There’s a shyness in there which almost seems so genuine that I have to believe it’s a genuine element of Green’s personality coming through. She puts up a good front and you believe that every eye in the room is on her when she enters. And when Daniel Craig walks in to find her shivering, fully clothed, in the shower, it’s impossible for me not to fall for her and want to take care of her. When I first heard that Eva Green was playing the part it was hard not to think “Of course!” and wonder why I hadn’t thought of it before. And still, she brought to the role more than I would have imagined, just as the film was more than I expected.


If Green doesn’t come to Hollywood, as she has said she has no plans to, I honestly couldn’t blame her considering it’s hard to imagine what sort of studio films she could appear in. It’s hard to imagine her starring in a romantic comedy. And yet, I wish there were six films starring Eva Green in the coming year. A thriller starring her, a good thriller, a real movie, where she is able to play an adult woman in her twenties like she is, as opposed to a “girl”, could be very promising.

If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine myself standing next to Eva Green, seeming as cool as Daniel Craig does. But I can’t close my eyes that hard—even when imagining it I’d still wind up blabbering nonsense instead of getting out an actual sentence to her. That’s just the kind of girl she is. That’s just the kind of guy I am. I’m trying to live with it.