Eva Green - goth goddess

I didn’t have high hopes for the remake of Casino Royale (it first appeared as an inept comic spy- spoof in 1967), despite the glorious casting of thespian beauty Daniel Craig. Having illicitly read all my father’s original 50s James Bond paperbacks, I knew that this was his debut in print and it was a slight work compared to the rich and racy tales that followed it. In it, Bond was the coldest and cruellest I ever remembered and his bitter comment at heroine Vesper’s suicide struck a sour note: ‘The bitch is dead.’ The Bond film franchise has since wandered far from Ian Fleming’s original conception of the character, with his tragic orphaned status, complex Swiss-Scots background and pragmatic penchant for married women. And yet the new Casino Royale, released in 2006, brought that slim volume of espionage, high stakes and deadly games to sophisticated life. It also fleshed out Bond, leaving behind Sean Connery’s portrayal of the character as a roguish alpha-male alley cat, and giving us Craig’s more modern take – arrogant, tough, predatory, yet succumbing touchingly to the world-dominating charm of Eva Green as love interest Vesper Lynd.

Speaking as a fellow woman (that’s all the common ground I can claim with this exquisite creature), Eva Green is the most charismatic screen actress since bob-haired belle Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box – and we’re going back to 1929 for Lulu’s debut. Interestingly, inky-haired goth goddess Eva is really a blonde – she dyed her hair raven-black because she felt it suited her better. That and the jewel-blue narrow eyes and the delicate, catlike face cast a strong spell. Lord knows what it must do to a male onlooker, but it certainly works in a ‘crush on the cool girl’ way for me.

Eva, who’s French (of course), scored a big critical hit in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers in 2003, which showcased her extraordinary feminine charms and also established her as an actress to watch. That led to Casino Royale and her role as Vesper, the accountant who brokers the game of power poker that dominates most of the film. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember the slow, reluctant building of warmth between cool customers Vesper and Bond, from their first sparring conversation on the train into Montenegro (I’m the money,’ says a designer-clad Vesper. ‘Every penny,’ says Bond), to the moment when Vesper’s carefully cultivated froideur melts. ‘Am I going to have trouble with you, Bond?’ she asks him when he gets a little heavy-handed with his sexist cracks. ‘No, you’re not my type,’ he replies. ‘Smart?’ volleys Vesper. ‘Single,’ lobs back Bond to win the game.

Fast forward to the scene where Bond finds Vesper sitting under the shower at the hotel, beautiful evening gown soaked, heavy make-up washed away, weeping and shivering because she’s just seen him bloodily kill two assassins. It’s the scene where she gets under Bond’s armour and makes him feel that his profession is wearing his soul away. Pulp fiction, maybe, but sweetly conveyed. So different to his encounter earlier in the film with the gorgeous wife of a local hoodlum who has the key to a major crime. As usual, the second-string Bond girl, seen only as prey, pays for his sexual attentions with a swift and uncomfortable death.

Eva makes Vesper fascinating. She’s lovely but never flashy, sexy but not overtly so, rapier-sharp and intelligent. And that constant, equivocal Renaissance smile of hers gives poignancy to all she does or says. She gives a big, shiny Hollywood spy flick true elegance and soul – maybe because she has Craig, easily her match in seductiveness, complexity and depth, to play with. We know that the romance has to be doomed, because after all this is the first of the Bond stories and he will subsequently go through a plethora of lovely women in the years to come. But Eva’s Vesper is so right for Craig’s Bond that her inevitable demise is to be dreaded.

And it comes in the most amazing scene of pyrotechnics and SFX in Venice, when Bond tails her to the last meeting with the villain La Chiffre and, quite literally, his world collapses. Vesper’s death/suicide in the crumbling Venetian palazzo is truly heartrending – down she goes into the watery depths, trapped in the cage lift she herself has locked, already a wraith that will haunt Bond for good.

An end for Vesper, maybe, but surely only one milestone in an interesting film career for Eva Green.