A couple of hours ago I flashed on a 10.26 Hollywood Reporter interview with Shoplifters costar Maya Maysuoka, who’s 23. The co-authors of the piece, Patrick Brzeski and Georg Szalai, don’t use the word “rising” but the headline does. That’s because she’s caught on with a certain strata of film-festival-attending critics and columnists, but primarily because she’s perky, dishy, button-cute, etc. If I wanted to be coarse I’d…naahh, forget it.

I missed Shoplifters when I was in Cannes last May, but the word of mouth was such that I was surprised when it won the Palme d’Or. (Nobody grabbed me by the lapels and said “you must see the Hirokazu Kore-eda…it’s awesome!”) I recently saw Shoplifters at the Hamptons Film Festival, and I have to say that while I found it a confident, first-rate expression of its own tattered, downtrodden, hand-to-mouth realm, I was only mildly stirred and frankly not blown away.

But I liked Maysuoka right off the bat. My reactions to her character and performance were not limited to “she’s hot,” but she made that kind of impression. Certain actresses have been exerting this effect for roughly a century. Naturally Brzeski and Szalai’s article doesn’t even glance in this direction. It would obviously be tedious to do so, but still.

Shoplifters costar Maya Maysuoka