Another take on the face tattoo ::SPOILERS::

I want to discuss the face tattoo with open SPOILERS, so you all have been warned. If you haven't seen the ending, and want to see it without knowing what's coming, [u]DO NOT READ THIS POST.[/u] Don't do it.

You have been warned: Here be SPOILERS!


Starting now:

I could have done just fine without the face tattoo if the director have just trusted Margo Harshman to act. She does a fine job, and I don't think she couldn't have done just as well as Anita Gillette, who essentially plays out the same dynamic, only without a tattoo. It would have been nice to have them in parallel.

Gillette, who is one of the most underused and underrated talents working today, wears her own facial covering at the beginning, only in her case, it's her constant, cheery affect, that gives no clue to what she may be feeling. She doesn't show any other facial expression until the night Victoria gets drunk, but she really breaks out of it when Victoria come in at night and tells her story. Her part in that scene is to give a series of reaction shots that show she isn't made of plastic. The photography scene is beautiful as well. She has a great deal of trouble doing anything but facing the camera and smiling, but Victoria breaks her out of it, and gets her to be silly. It's lovely, and the reason that scene is in the movie.

Now, instead of the tattoo, the director simply could have told Harshman to maintain a flat affect for most of the first part of the film. She gives us lots of moodiness with her voice, and her eyes are expressive: she could have confined some expression to her eyes alone at first, and then given us facial expressions the first time when she gets drunk, and also given us that look of contentment when Althea puts her to bed and strokes her hair (the first sincere smile we get from Althea, BTW).

I suppose we don't get that very dramatic moment when she forgives her uncle, and the tattoo disappears, but I didn't like that anyway. It would have been just as easy for her to kneel with a flat affect, in shadow, and come up smiling, with the sun reflected on her face, or something.

In fact, they could have used a device like having her avoid light in the beginning, and embracing it later. It would have been much more subtle than the facial tattoo.

I didn't like it, because it took me out of the moment; it made me worry for Victoria's future-- she's doing all this work in the present, but what kind of life awaits her with what is essentially a disfigurement (that's how future employers will see it). I'm not judging tattoos in general, just stating the fact that full facial ones are an impediment to employment. Anything that makes the audience get distracted by the wrong thing-- in this case, worrying about Victoria's future-- and and stop paying attention to the movie itself, is bad.