Saint Joan gets credit for her immaculately conceived performances –
she's been Oscar-nominated three times now – but she doesn't get enough
of it for daring to make her characters so unsympathetic up front.
There's a lot of melting to be done before she even becomes recognisably
human in The Ice Storm, and her other stoically virtuous wives have
their quite deliberate irritations. Very often she has to sully that
pristine virtue before she can emerge from it to move us. The Contender,
it must be said, makes too perfect a martyr of her - but she's never less
than compelling.
