Emma Stone’s Way Better Than All The Girlfriend Roles Woody Allen Keeps Putting Her In

Woody Allen needs a muse. A performer whose talents inspire him to produce classic films, like Diane Keaton with Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), Mia Farrow with The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Cate Blanchett with Blue Jasmine (2013). Despite his personal life, working with Allen is typically a good idea career-wise — his skills as a writer can give actors a whole range of emotions to navigate within a single monologue, and when he’s not winning Oscars himself (he has four), he may just win them one, too. His films have garnered 18 acting nominations for seven wins, which is almost an all-time record.

His latest inspiration, seemingly, is Emma Stone, but sadly for the actress working with Allen has only resulted in lacklustre disappointments thus far. As a 1920s clairvoyant in Magic in the Moonlight (2014), Stone appeared to be perfectly cast, with her big, wide eyes capable of expressing equal amounts deception and innocence while the jazz-era flapper dresses simply cascaded over her. But she was swallowed up by the unpleasant romance with twice-her-age and chemistry-free Colin Firth, and the movie received lacklustre reviews.

In their latest collaboration, Irrational Man (2015), Stone plays a WASPy pawn in the perfect-murder plot of a college professor played by Joaquin Phoenix. It’s a story we’ve seen from Allen before in Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) and Match Point (2002), but yet again offers Stone no real showcase for her talents.

Allen’s expertise with actresses is usually well done, especially those like Dianne Wiest, Penelope Cruz, or Scarlett Johansson who thrive under the tutelage of less mainstream filmmakers who don’t have to buffer their unique edges for multiplex audiences. But just because he’s failed Emma Stone so far doesn’t mean fans of the talented actress should be worried.

–

And Starring Emma Stone As The Love Interest…

Emma Stone’s breakthrough role was in Easy A (2011), a film so perfectly timed it’s as if it were manufactured in a Hollywood laboratory to break the internet. The physical nature of the role, full of wacky faces and sight gags coupled with a witty, fast-paced script, made it ripe for gif-picking when they were just picking up steam.

Meanwhile her goofy, self-deprecating, girl-next-door persona made her ideal for the expanding press circuit, where she was always quick with a one-liner, as well as the then-burgeoning landscape of gimmicky TV appearances like her lip sync battle with Jimmy Fallon.

Coupled with the lead role in Oscar-winner The Help (2011) and she was “the movie world’s Next Big Thing” for whom “Hollywood [was] her oyster”. Sounds awfully familiar, really, but Stone at least appeared to have the talent and the smarts to avoid the pitfalls of being a young, successful actress in Hollywood.
What followed is sadly all too common. She played the girlfriend with mad Photoshop skills in Crazy Stupid Love (2011), a film more interested in having Steve Carell and a ridiculously chiselled Ryan Gosling remake the Will Smith rom-com Hitch (2005); followed by a badly miscast role as a mobster girlfriend in Gangster Squad (2013) that was foolishly modelled on Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface (1980).

Earlier this year Stone reached Peak Girlfriend with Aloha (2015) in which she was cast as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl of Asian descent and was rightly criticised. Most frustrating of all, she was cast as the girlfriend once more in the big-budget (and highly unnecessary) superhero franchise reboot The Amazing Spider-Man (2012).

That Spider-Man casting was especially disappointing, given that at the time she was riding high as one of the industry’s freshest and well-liked leading ladies with several well-regarded hits to her name. That she was offered — and accepted — such a boring love-interest role speaks much to Hollywood’s cluelessness about what to do with actresses of Stone’s vibrant energy. Her charisma could light up a city block, yet while male actors are being handed multiple franchises at a time, that all Stone was being offered (or even worse, all she was accepting) was stock supportive girlfriend roles is distressing.

–

History Repeating

This is hardly the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last, that an actress has succumbed to a glut of roles unworthy of their talent. The last 30 years are full of actresses who, like Stone, broke through with a high school hit, but who struggled to find scripts that captured that initial lightning in a bottle while the men around them were lifted to fame and glory. Who expected Paul Rudd to be the uber-famous one from Clueless (1995) over Alicia Silverstone? How come John Cryer and Anthony Michael Hall have been allowed second act comebacks when Molly Ringwald’s career has languished in winking cameos and supporting roles on ABC Family? Where is Amanda Seyfried’s big career, or Neve Campbell’s?

Despite a high-profile, award-winning career in her home country, it took Nicole Kidman over a decade to land Moulin Rouge! (2001), her first starring vehicle in a studio production that didn’t have Tom Cruise, George Clooney or Sandra Bullock to back her up. Anna Faris, a deft and extremely talented comedian, moved to television to find a sustainable career after her brand of raunchy big screen comedies like The House Bunny (2008) –featuring Emma Stone in a pre-fame supporting role, funnily enough – failed to culminate in bigger and better films.

The most obvious recent example is Rachel McAdams, who blasted onto the scene with a breakthrough role in the smart, surprisingly sophisticated and hilarious Mean Girls (2003), but who has spent the twelve years since predominantly appearing as second (or third) tier love interest roles in the likes of Wedding Crashers (2005), Sherlock Holmes (2009), Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), To the Wonder (2012), About Time (2013), Southpaw (2015) and Aloha (again – damn you Cameron Crowe!). She’s only 36, yet this year’s True Detective was considered a “comeback”. If these characters had names beyond “The Girl” I certainly don’t remember them.

–

Breaking The Mould

The 22-30 age bracket can be tough for popular mainstream actresses — they’re no longer young enough for high school flicks, but not old enough for upscale dramas and adult thrillers. Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley and Kirsten Dunst have all had career slumps and been written off, yet persevered through bad scripts and costly flops to find artistic highs in recent years like Black Swan (2010), The Imitation Game (2014) and Melancholia (2011). Likewise, once her role as teenage hero Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games trilogy concludes, it will be interesting to see if Jennifer Lawrence continues to play older characters as she has in American Hustle (2013) and the upcoming Joy (2015).

Stone is too talented and popular to be tarred too harshly by bad films, and two movies offer hope. Birdman (2014) was the first time since Easy A that Stone’s career matched her star status. She was very good in the eventual Best Picture winner and hopefully her own Oscar nomination (she lost to Patricia Arquette for Boyhood) will inspire her to seek out greatness rather than Woody Allen’s musty ol’ throwaways.

The second movie is La La Land (2016) with Ryan Gosling from the director of Whiplash (2014). It’s the lead role in a musical, which is exactly the sort of original, star-power oriented material she should be doing. She has the talent – remember “Knock on Wood” from Easy A? – so let’s see it. It’s doubtful anyone other than Woody Allen die-hards will see Irrational Man so most won’t hold it against her, but hopefully it brings about a close to the girlfriend chapter of her career.

–

Irrational Man is out 20 August.

–

Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne. He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much @glenndunks.