Don't you think that the actress playing Sonia (Ana Caterina Morariu) would have been a much better Natasha? Clemence Poesy is pale, lacks personality, emotions and class. She didn't touch me at all. Besides she always has a sheepish look on her face. Ugh, I didn't like her performance at all.
Everyone can't be straight. Everyone can't be beautiful. Everyone can't be the same.
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Poesy played a primitive country whore.
She does lack the depth that Natasha should have. Perhaps she would have been okay as Julie, or Maria, or better yet, Lisa Bonkonskaya.
shareI agree that Poesy was miscast, but I don't think Moriaru would have been a good choice either. While Poesy (and the writers) made Natasha a melodramatic, scary-looking, and unsympathetic heroine, Moriaru's Sonja was irritatingly bland and totally uninteresting. Poesy isn't a bad actress - I found Natasha involving enough, though completely unlikeable. Moriaru's performance, on the other hand, was decidedly below par. While watching her, I couldn't forget that she was simply an actress playing a part. I think it would have been best if they had gone with someone completely different.
~Hoist by my own petard in a moral lesson for everyone!~
As Mademoiselle Lemon said in parts, i don't think it's a problem of Poésy being miscast : she's a great actress. But that of the way the directos/writers wanted to "modernize" War & Peace and changed the angle of portrayal for Natasha's role. They made Natasha's role way too naive and youthful.
shareI came to this board precisely to see what others thought of Poesy. I liked her well enough in other stuff and was terribly disappointed by her Natasha. To be fair, I blame the writing more than her acting. I don't think anybody else could have come across as less unlikable or less engaging. Why did they chose to do that with Natasha? Did they hate her character when they read the book?
I can feel no shred of pity for her when she falls for Kouragine, and I even resent her thoroughly for beginning to doubt her prince long before that. How childish and selfish she appears when she's standing in that wedding dress at her fitting, complaining he hasn't come back yet, and then there's a cut and next we see Bolkonski in Napoleon's tent, negotiating, working hard, doing important stuff for his Czar and country... She's a silly little girl, not a Russian heroine.
My other problem with Poesy is she looks terribly underfed; I wish she'd put on a bit of weight because the fashion of the 1800s-1810s is very unflattering on twigs like her or Keira Knightley.
"Occasionally I'm callous and strange."
I did not like her either. I am not wild about the character anyway, finding her silly and impossible for me to believe than Prince Andre would fall in love with her in any real way. And I really feel she should have been dark-haired for the role, if she had to play it. Tolstoy always mentioned her dark hair.
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