Angelina Jolie once took off her clothes for a ‘gia’ movie
When given the right material, the right director, and the right co-stars, Angelina Jolie is one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses. She’s made some absolutely awful movies, but also some great ones, and she’s one of the few actresses around that’s consistently performing well. Even when a movie is bad, she’s usually the best in it.
Jolie’s bravest performances come early in her career, with Gia recognized as one of her two best roles to date, with her Oscar-winning role in Girl Interrupted. Either way, it had incredible scripts and a talented supporting cast. In Gia, she is supported by the superb Elizabeth Mitchell and the always formidable Mercedes Ruehl.
The story of Gia Carangi is well known and sad. Flying too high, too fast in the world of international modeling, Carangi took a nose dive into drugs, became an intravenous drug addict, repeatedly failed rehab and eventually fell victim to AIDS in the early years. of the epidemic. No one really knew how the disease was transmitted back then, and no one knew what predator it would become.
Carangi was also known to be a lesbian, an oddity in the high fashion world. She had several prominent and well-documented relationships with women, both during her glory years and her declining years, all of which were combined in the film into one character, Linda, a makeup artist played by Elizabeth Mitchell. Linda becomes the center of Gia’s love and obsession, but is ultimately powerless to save Gia as she hurtles towards her own destruction. During their good times, the couple are contagiously happy and we can’t help but cheer them on, hoping beyond hope that Linda will somehow avert the tragedy that lies ahead.
Jolie is captivating. From street urchin to haute couture model, the transformation is amazing. She plays both with equal passion. Whether Jolie actually bears a physical resemblance to Carangi is irrelevant. Even if she hadn’t, I feel like I still would have believed her. Gia sucked the life out of everything around her to fuel her own personality. As Jolie chews up the scenery, we notice that when she’s onscreen, everyone seems a bit more boring. She is the shining light, the star, the center of her own universe and that of all others. It must have been extremely tiring to love the real Gia Carangi, and the supporting actors play that to perfection.
I can’t say enough about Elizabeth Mitchell. Used to playing gay (she brought Kim Legaspi to life in the ER), she has this shyness inside of her that never goes away, even when she’s having sex or dealing with Gia’s worst drug addictions and love feuds. In one of the film’s semi-interview segments, she (like Linda) describes Gia’s love as being like a puppy. Love me, love me, love me, all the time. The look in her eyes as she says she loves him, right now, it just leaves you feeling bad.
We ache for the life these beautiful women could have had together. We laugh at their first encounter where she’s convinced to throw her clothes away for a nude photo shoot with Gia and ends up falling into Gia’s bed. She really is a nerdy straight girl underneath. Gia was simply irresistible. We mourn the terrible way she is finally cut out of Gia’s life after giving so much.
Ultimately, the story disintegrates into a procession of drug-fueled days, rehab attempts, and failures as Gia loses control of her life. When she is hospitalized with AIDS, our attention is ultimately diverted from Gia to the people she leaves behind. We see their devastation, but also how his death brought both Gia and those close to her some peace. It’s a gruesome conclusion, but one that Gia herself comes to before the end, as read in the real Gia’s personal journals. She used every bit of her body and soul to live a life that couldn’t be sustained. It was time for her to let go, so that the people she took with her could once again live their own lives.
If sad movies aren’t your thing, you might want to avoid this, it’s about as depressing as it gets. It’s a doomed life, but a powerful and essential storytelling element.
Note: There are two different versions of Gia. Get the unranked one if you can. The rated version freely cuts Jolie’s nude scenes, which insanely detracts from the film as a whole because her physical presence is so important to the role. Also, I still believe in watching the movie the filmmaker intended to make, not what the rating board thinks I can watch.
