Emma Thompson Please Date Me!

Emma Thompson is a goddess. And if I ever saw her in person I would probably do a half-bow, realize that I couldn’t be more uncool if I tried, trip over one of my feet, realize that somehow I’ve fumbled my meeting with Emma Thompson even more, throw caution to the winds and just make out with her. Probably.

As if my embarrassing girl crush hadn’t already reached a fevered pitch, in today’s Australian there was an interview with the woman herself – obviously a puff piece spruiking the impending release of Brideshead Revisited (23 October, I believe… not that I have a giant calendar in the corner of my room marking each hour that passes before the release). The article glossed over her authorial ambitions, the discovery of her acting talents during her sojourn with the Footlights theatrical club at Cambridge.

Nonetheless, there was still a lot of juicy info for a swooning fan-girl such as myself. Apparently, when Thompson found out that the actress playing Julia in the film was asked to lose weight before filming, she through a hissy-fit tantrum and threatened to walk away from the entire film unless they revoked their request.

Swoon.

Asked about the incident in the Oz interview, she calmly stated:

This is where I get a bit fundamentalist, I’m afraid…put on weight and say, fuck off!

The article also engaged with her views about organized religion, explaining that she feels most religions (Christianity and Islam included) come up vastly short in the 21st century – failing to offer a feasible belief system in this day and age.

I mean, seriously. Swoon.

The fact of the matter is that I could not be more excited about the film, although I have to offer one caveat…qualification…thing. I have never read Brideshead Revisited (I’m purchasing a copy today, so give me a break). But, like most of you, I am familiar with the images and mythology surrounding Evelyn Waugh’s novel. The linen suits and teddy bear. The decadent parties. The acceptance into the bosom of the family before being unceremoniously spat out.

Oxford: the once place on earth where bicycles aren't lame

There is something so appealing about the image of decadence that the novel/tv series/film presents us with. Similar, no doubt, to the appeal of those ancient universities, Oxford and Thompson’s own Cambridge. That sense of tradition and sumptuousness belying the poverty-stricken student life of the inhabitants. There is something dark and fascinating about both sites of higher learning; the festering undergrowth of inherited dysfunction combined with the hotness of sandstone buildings. Locations bursting at the seems with contrasting associations.

Obviously, the lifestyles available to the world’s oldest and richest families – or even the day-to-day lives of Oxbridge students – are not available to most of us. And obviously, when the revolution comes, those families will be the first against the wall. But I can’t help my fascination with these places. The fact that they are so out of reach, static, lost in time. This is the same sense I have of Brideshead Revisited. And it seems that this has become a running theme in the films of our day. I can’t help but wonder whether the further forward we move into uncertainty, economic crisis, and wars abroad, the greater the need for a type of artistic endeavour that strains back towards a bygone era, and the endless possibilities of a time long passed.