Dark and mysterious - and curiously funny.
Even when she is present, Melania feels absent, two-dimensional. She has always been a fascinating void: blank of expression, largely mute, ramrod stiff of posture. We almost never see her have a natural, interactive moment with anyone. Think about it: When have we seen her engaged in conversation? Unselfconsciously laughing? Crying? Interacting with her child? Far more than any Hitchcock heroine, Melania’s surface sheen invites us to fill in the void she represents — what is she thinking? What’s underneath the careful hair and makeup? In a way, she is more like the vanished women of Hollywood classics than the plucky heroines who try to unearth their stories; more like the uncanny portrait of the deceased first wife, Rebecca, in Hitchcock’s classic, than the living second wife who succeeds her.
Melania’s lengthy disappearance was more a matter of degree than of kind. She has always been missing, in an existential way.
