Angelina Jolie Playing the Role of Tortured Lesbian – Part 1

Welcome to Friday! It’s time for a “Friday Movie Review”. Last week I focused on teenagers. It’s time to get back to more adult interests…

This Friday I want to talk about Angelina Jolie. First off, she’s bisexual. Everyone knows that. Among other things, she’s an intense and outspoken supporter of same sex marriage. Most of us in the LGBT community are aware of that. She’s also totally hot and many would agree with that. She’s played some great roles during her film career but two stand out for me that specifically play on her personal bisexual experiences, on her extreme intensity and on her beauty.

Jolie has a long history of playing strong women in title roles. The two movie roles I want to talk about this Friday and next Friday though occurred earlier in her career and, in one, she was actually a “supporting actress”. In both, she played a more tortured soul in a life of turmoil rather than the strong leading woman.

This week I’ll focus on the movie Gia which was an HBO, made for TV movie about America’s top model, and by some accounts, the first ever Supermodel, Gia Carangi. Gia was so big, when Supermodel Cindy Crawford first hit the runway she was known as “Baby Gia”.

Some thought Gia had it all. Unfortunately Gia, for all of her beauty, had low self esteem and didn’t see her own self worth. The death of her agent threw her into a tailspin of heroin addiction that ultimately led to her own death from AIDS because she didn’t care whose used needles she reused to get the drug she craved.

Angelina Jolie was completely and utterly believable in the title role of the film. She captured the total desperation of the model in a palpable way. To watch this today, 13 years after filming, you would be hard pressed to see her as “Laura Croft”, or any of her other more current characters, so immersed was she in this role of unfulfilled love and longing and the depths of drug addiction despite white hot fame. You’ll be on the edge of your chair watching many of the scenes.

Elizabeth Mitchell co-stared in the movie as “Linda”, Gia’s main love interest – her obsession. Linda actually did exist, in the real life form of make-up artist, Sandy Linter. In the final denouement of the movie, it’s “Linda’s” ultimatum that leads to Gia’s ultimate demise ending her tortured existence. It’s a powerful statement in a movie full of them and it says more about the pull of drugs and their destruction than anything. Did the scene really happen? Sandy isn’t saying but it makes for a very dramatic ending to a tragic tale.

This isn’t a pretty, happy film. It’s stark, emotional and moving. It tells the whole story and it shows all of the pain and the suffering.

Angelina won a Golden Globe for this incredible performance. It was the 2nd of her young career but, I feel, it was much more deserved than the first. As this was originally a made for TV movie, she was also nominated for an Emmy. It’s hard to believe she didn’t win that too. I promise you that you won’t be able to take your eyes off her. If you’re an Angelina Jolie fan, this one is a must see movie.