The Case For Revenge

Jodie Foster can certainly talk. She can hold forth like a college professor on any theme related to the movie, the depiction of violence, existential terror, and the fact that women in movies who tote guns are usually glamorous cartoon figures in jiggly pants and heels. Our culture, she said, is uncomfortable with women who use power aggressively. Yet Foster, when asked how and why she transformed from the victim in "Taxi Driver" to the disassociated murderess of "The Brave One," paused . . . and then laughed a little too hard.

"I don't know," she said as if busted by the principal.

A solitary figure

UNDENIABLY, the issue of women and violence runs like a ragged stream through her work -- marking almost every one of the movies that have made her a great star, from "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," which won her Oscars, to more recent popcorn fare like "Panic Room" and "Flightplan." Unlike Meryl Streep, Foster is no chameleon, but an essence charged and recharged through various movies, like a repeating motif of music. The appealing nub of her remains -- vulnerable, smart, someone who fights victimization both internally and externally.

And she is almost always alone.

Aside from Clint Eastwood, Foster might be the most solitary figure in American cinema. The reward for a cinematic history of brutality, of wrestling with evildoers, is not catharsis but loneliness.

"I do play this solitary thing. I do that a lot. I'm drawn to it," she mused. "Sometimes I find myself killing characters off so that I can really understand this solitary journey in film."

Her burrowing into solitude is a reflection of Foster's own creative process.

"It's hard to drag me to make a movie," Foster explained. She has two young sons, 5 and 9, and has spent the last few years prioritizing their existence, buying them shoes, driving them to school, taking them on play dates. She works infrequently. "It's an incredibly difficult thing to know you're going to walk away from your life. I check out in a lot of ways." Not just physically, but emotionally. "Part of that is terrible and lonely . . . to do something you can't really explain to people," she sighed.

"It's not like I method out and turn into a writhing junkie, but I can't explain what it is to lie in a pool of fake blood at 3 in the morning in Prospect Park," as she did in the brutal beating sequence in "The Brave One."