Charlie Wilson's War, The Jane Austen Book Club, My Summer of Love

What do these three movies have in common? The enchanting, daring Emily Blunt. I've become a great admirer of hers. The first time I saw her in a film - which I won't discuss right now - was actually something else, something called "Gideon's Daughter." That was beautiful, too, but I've decided that in this blog I'm going to write reactions to movies I've just seen. I won't start writing about all the movies I've seen in the past. It would be fun, but then I'd never get anything else done.

So let's talk about these three. In "Charlie Wilson's War," Emily Blunt has a very small appearance, but it's crucial. It happens so fast you almost don't realize it's happening. We've just barely been introduced to the character of Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks); so far we've seen him in two settings: 1) Las Vegas and 2) his office. In his office we see women with big hair, cleavage and a mysterious efficiency belying their bimbo looks. So we've gotten a quick and dirty impression of who the man is and what he likes and the way he likes it. OK. Then there's a small scene in which Peter Gerety comes in as a Texas preacher demanding a defense for displaying a creche on secular land. He brings along his daughter Jane (Emily Blunt), for no apparent reason. Note she seems quiet, reserved, conservatively dressed - a good Christian girl. And she's just sitting there, waiting patiently while everyone runs around. Cut to the next scene. Jane is now in Charlie's suite, wearing only his shirt, sipping a cocktail. She continues to undress until she's wearing only underwear, and then we see her lounging on the sofa, her perfect long legs extended gracefully before us. She is a vision of seduction. Charlie, however, opts to take the phone call from Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) instead of paying attention to Jane.

Why this transition in Jane? Why is she in her underwear? How did Charlie seduce the nice Christian girl? How did the nice Christian girl turn out to be so sexy? And why is Charlie not taking advantage of the situation? Why give Emily this short and seemingly meaningless appearance? The phone call has to be really important.

It is. It's the phone call that gets the whole plot moving. Joanne gets Charlie to go to Houston, then she gets him to go to Pakistan, then she gets him to go into Afghanistan, and the rest is history. So think of it! Think of how important this phone call has to be to get the movie rolling. And then, further think how attractive and seductive Emily Blunt has to be, in order to highlight the importance of the phone call - that Charlie should choose to ignore her and stay on the phone.

In "The Jane Austen Book Club," Emily Blunt plays a lonely, snobbish young French teacher named Prudie, unhappily married to a man who doesn't appreciate her. She's the odd woman out in the book club, having been invited on a whim by a stranger, while the other women know each other already. At the outset, Prudie's probably your least favorite of the women in the club, (Maria Bello is probably your favorite), unless you like lonely, prude-y, pale-faced women with dark hair and light eyes. At first we don't sympathize with her plight of being married to an unappreciative husband. (That is a worn-out cliche and the film suffers for it as well as others scattered throughout.) No, the only thing worth noticing about Prudie at the outset of the movie is that she is very pretty in an unopened-flower kind of way.

Then one of her students forms a crush on her, and this blurs her sharp borderlines for a minute, and then her aging-hippie mother shows up with some marijuana and this too, creates a mess in Prudie's life and she begins to be more interesting. At some point in Prudie's gradual mellowing, when she begins talking to the book club members, we find out she has never even been to France. She cries, "A French teacher who has never been to France!" (or something like that). Ah, no wonder she was so upset her hubby wouldn't take her abroad.

I won't tell you how, in a climactic moment, Prudie unfolds, but I will say that it takes a really good actress to achieve the scope of change her character has to come through in a limited number of scenes. (And she's taking turns with Maria Bello and Kathy Baker and Amy Brenneman and others, almost competing with them for attention in a badly-constructed movie.) In an otherwise lame movie, Emily Blunt takes us from uninterested to curious to hooked - and admiring. Once again.

And if you really want an exciting performance from Emily Blunt please see "My Summer of Love," an exceptionally daring film about two British girls who try each other on for size. One is poor and orphaned and being raised by an ex-con-turned-preacher brother. That's Mona (Nathalie Press) whose accent tells us everything we need to know about her. The other girl is Tamsin (Emily Blunt) whose accent is very refined. Tamsin rides in on, literally, a white horse to save Mona from her brother, poverty, and boredom above all. She says in effect, 'Mona, you're a wild one, but come into my mansion and try on some beautiful dresses. Try on my life for a summer. See if you don't come out feeling beautiful.'

Tamsin is a self-described "fantasist" and she sure can weave a tale, whether it's a ghost story or a love story. She does tell Mona these and other stories quite convincingly, sipping red wine and making the viewer feel haunted or bewitched, right along with Mona. There's even one tall tale about Edith Piaf, and her alleged crimes of passion (I will admit, adding the gorgeous French voice belting out "La Foule" in the scene does provide support for Tamsin's spell-casting over Mona). What crime of passion will Mona commit at the end of all this, we wonder.