Welcome Back, Gwyneth

Enjoying the fruits of blonde ambition

20.05.08 / After a three-year break from acting, Gwyneth Paltrow is on a comeback roll. Last night she made a high-voltage star turn, attending the Two Lovers gala premiere in a black dress and then participating in the Chopard Trophy ceremony in white. And she makes an excellent neurotic party girl in Two Lovers. “I didn’t know if there would be a place for me anymore,” she told journalists. “I definitely knew I had lost the place I had when I left. Hollywood can be a pretty cutthroat place if you’re a woman and you’re not 25.”In James Gray's film, which is competing in the festival this year, Paltrow plays one of two lovers (Vinessa Shaw is the other) who may manage to save Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) from his self-destructive slide. Phoenix’s best characters (Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, Commodus in Gladiator) all crave human contact yet behave in ways guaranteed to keep anyone from wanting to get too close. Leonard, who Phoenix plays to perfection, may be his most needy-scary character yet. Neither medication nor understanding parents are enough to help Leonard, yet he surprises us (and perhaps himself) as he manifests a winning way with women.Gray says he wrote Leonard’s part with Joaquin Phoenix in mind. Too bad Phoenix, back home in the U.S. with a bad case of stomach flu, couldn't be here to enjoy the accolades for his part in this fine film. — R.K.