Rewatching Jeanne Moreau in La Notte as the Durasian woman who sees but cannot speak, the woman at the party who morphs effortlessly from wounded swanbird to goofy waltzer, who talks to no one and notices all…the woman who, under speech arrest, keeps to her own tempo so as not to miss a beat: when she chats with the man who wants her we are not allowed to hear what she says, except when she says no, sorry, I can't...the woman who is so relaxed, so plum-ripe and ringed around her eyes, rings that make her plain no longer, you're so pretty now, her childhood friend observes, snide, but the woman takes it gingerly, with pride...that she does not care to hear from the girl about how she almost lost her husband. it's that he had lost her without noticing that keeps her at the edge of seen and not seen.
Moreau's acting reminds me of sculpture, where the most precise and quivering of expressions are found quickly and then disappeared, inside a mound of flesh.
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