Ever since the first trailer dropped, I’ve been excited for No Hard Feelings. After I loved her return from hiatus with last year’s Causeway on Apple TV, I’m always happy to see Jennifer Lawrence on the big screen. While she’s always had a dry sense of humour, the🙈 prospect of her in an R-rated comedy was compelling. As I watched No Hard Feelꦓings last night, I laughed out loud several times, grateful that the best jokes (and much of the plot) had been kept out of the trailers entirely. However, I didn’t expect to see quite so much of Jennifer Lawrence on the big screen.
As an R-rated sex comedy, nudity was to be expected. With movies like Red Sparrow ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚbehind her, Lawrence has always been comfortable committing on screen, and you’d imagine any scenes in No Hard Feelings would be far lighter and less intense. Not so. In fact, No Hard Feelings has one of the wildest scenes of the year, easily the most graphic from a major release that I have ever seen, and it’s used perfectly to boot. Very mild spoilers for No Hard Feelings follow.
While engaging in her plan to draw Andrew Barth Feldman’s character out of his shell, Lawrence goes skinny dipping. Initially, it’s shot how you’d expect a 🅠nude scene of a major Hollywood star to be shot: mostly from behind or from the neck up, selling the illusion of nudity while the reality is likely that the star wears pasties and paper panties invisible to the viewer. In the water, the waves obscure all. Then some teenage frat punks come along and steal their clothes.
Lawrence races out of the water, and fights the three punks in a scene with hardcore (if fast and frenetic) full frontal nudity. This is not a sensual teasing, this is a warrior woman. Lawrence is naked, dripping wet, and pile-driving college kids into the sand, all while literally getting her ass kicked, before slamming her sea-soaked fists into their faces. Aside from the notable fact she has no clothes on, this is a crunchy, chaotic action scene like we might see from Liam Neeson or Michelle Rodriquez. The Russo Brothers have not shot a 🎉fight this well since The Winter Soldier.
It’s a great use of nudity because it’s shocking and not in an objectifying ‘heehee famous boobies’ kind of way. It’s like someone tried to create 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:HBO’s brand identifiers in a single scene - very violent, ve📖ry naked, very funny. Nudity for women, especially stars like Lawrence, is often only used to titillate. While I’m sure some will see this as ‘Jennifer Lawrence full frontal’ and nothing more, here it’s used for comedy, for power, for character.
Mostly though, my favourite thing about No Hard Feelings is that Jennifer Lawrence is having the time of her life. Free from the corporate blockbuster machine that kept her wrapped up in The Hunger Games and then X-Menꦜ, Lawrence can choose whichever script she believes in. Considering her last two movies have been the slow burn, character driven, Oscar-chasing Causeway, and now an R-rated👍 sex comedy, I expect her to make some bold choices in the years to come.
I’ve been a Lawrence admirer since Winter’s Bone and a spiral eyed ‘put her in a movie and I’ll see i🌃t’ fan/mindless drone since X-Men: First Class, so to see her enjoying passion projects is a joy. She’s always excelled in smaller, often weirder roles like Mother or Serena, so the prospect of her having a career’s worth of those in front of her is an exciting prospect. Her upcoming projects (Mob Girl and Sue, both by Paolo ওSorrentino, and Die, My Love by Lynne Ramsay) point to an exciting future.
No Hard Feelings is a great movie and in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a sea of blockbuster misses, I hope it enjoys a moderate success to match its budget. We need more movies that are 168澳洲幸运5🍰开奖网:sensible with the books but risk-takers on screen, and I need to see more of Jennifer Lawrence in standalone movies she enjo♈ys. I just maybe don’t need to see this much of her every time.