Come back Natalie Portman

To provide a little context (in what is, after all, a notoriously arbitrary blogging world) I’m listening to a song called Vibrate by Rufus Wainwright as I write this sentence. It’s still playing as I write this second sentence, but will have finished by the time I get to the third.

The reason for this background information is simple, if marginally tenuous: it strikes me that said song would be an excellent choice to feature on the soundtrack of a film; more specifically in a film starring Natalie Portman and, to really hammer home this trifling tenuousness, an ideal song to hear playing in the background as Miss Portman fills the cinema screen with all her beguiling luminosity.

But now the album has finished and I’m sitting here in silence, I find myself inclined to fill this soundless void with a loud cry: Where has Natalie Portman gone?

I know the geographical answer: she’s been at the Venice Film Festival promoting a short film called Eve, her directorial debut. But what is she doing behind the camera when I’m still waiting to see a lot more of her in front of it? Putting to one side the 13-minute long Hotel Chevalier that preceded The Darjeeling Limited, what was the last good movie that she did? You’ve got to go back to 2004, when she did Garden State and Closer, to find anything of real merit.

I saw Léon again recently at Somerset House, in which she’s mesmerising at the age of 12, for goodness sake. So, why has she been squandering that talent on crap like The Other Boleyn Girl and Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium?

There’s a brilliant interview she did with George Plimpton for BlackBook magazine when she was 20, where she says: “I love acting and I care about it and I want to do a good job. So I think I will take the plunge. But I also think I’ll always have to balance it with something else. There are plenty of things to do, especially when you have the luxury of time and the money that acting affords.”

(By the way, you should read the interview, it’s a cracker. The only place I could find it online was here: scroll down to the fourth entry by Aleph and try not to let the dog put you off. Oh, and there’s mention of a short story by JD Salinger in it that’s also worth a look.)

But anyway, can it really be said that she has taken the plunge she promised? I reckon the problem is that this university-educated and socially conscious young woman has a lot of interests above and beyond acting and doesn’t really care if she goes a while without making any good films when there are so many other things to be doing.

That’s fine but of no use to me whatsoever, so here’s the plan.

Miss Portman has a new film coming up called Brothers; it’s also got Jake Gyllenhaal in it and sounds quite promising. What I propose is that when you’ve finished reading this, Natalie (of course she’s reading, only the best kind of people visit this site as I’m sure you’re aware), you get in touch, we’ll arrange a meet-up and publish the resulting chat right here at Arena.

We can talk about the new film, you’ll rediscover your passion for all things acting, realise you’ve been neglecting it all this time, launch into a fruitful and highly productive period and star in film after acclaimed film of extraordinary brilliance and splendour.

Okey-dokey? Marvellous. My phone’s on vibrate for you.