Outgoing Link: A Little More on Van Damme

["Van Damme and the Action Stars"]

More on Fake Beards

Fire of Conscience (Dante Lam, 2010)

Above, Leon Lai and the ostentatiously fake beard he wears throughout Fire of Conscience. The false donegal clings poorly to Lai's slightly pockmarked cheeks, but the real kicker is the moustache, an unnaturally-shaped sliver of hair spirit-gummed to his upper lip.

Further material for pseudopogonological studies: slapdash fake beards are nowadays largely the domain of supporting characters and cameo roles, so seeing a lead actor sport one throughout a film is a little disconcerting. Also: the beard seems to be restricting the movement of Lai's face, which is normally pretty expressive, giving him a perpetually glum expression; he looks like a man whose lower face is being strangled by a stubble-parasite. And: the presence of plenty of actors with real beards (unlike in, say, Landru, where everybody has a fake beard) leads to plenty of strange moments, such as a confrontation between Lai and a supporting player who sports a real beard similar to Lai's fake one; Lai, his face constricted, looks a little like the other man's waxwork double.

Radziwilowicz's Face

From the International Journal of Slawkenbergian Studies:

There's a moment in The Story of Maire and Julien when Madame X tells Julien that she's suspicious because he doesn't have the face of a blackmailer and you realize that she's totally right, and that Jerzy Radziwilowicz's face, the most Polish face in film history, is almost inscrutably honest.

Everything about Radziwilowicz looks honest: big hands (another moment from Marie and Julien: Radziwilowicz is sitting alone at a round cafe table and he scoops up the change he has left over into his bulldozer palms), big ears and big cheeks that hide his cheekbones. His skin: ruddy in youth, pockmarked in old age. And, most importantly, a big nose which (like Gabin's nose) has only grown bigger as he has grown older. There is an unusual sense of trust and complicity inspired by big-nosed actors: W.C. Fields, Jean Gabin, Gerard Depardieu, Walter Matthau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, John Krasinski (who could star in a Radziwilowicz biopic if someone were to make one; he could play the young JR and Martin Donovan could play the old one), Clive Owen.