Keener has a knack for making supporting roles feel like leads. Her
toughness, angularity and poise can be impregnable – as in Being John
Malkovich, where you feel Maxine has fought her way above the title
through sheer force of personality. Or it gives way to vulnerability
and indecision. Her best role yet, in Neil LaBute's Your Friends And
Neighbours, allowed her to do both – she's impeccably vicious yet
memorably insecure. Not many actresses can vamp it up so well when
required, and yet be as convincingly maternal as she is in 8MM, or as
sweetly ingenuous as she is in Simpatico.
