Here’s another taste of Judi Dench‘s performance in Stephen Frears‘ Philomena (Weinstein Co., 11.27), which I saw and reviewed at last September’s Toronto Film Festival. (I’ll be seeing it for the second time tomorrow night.) Ignoring words and going into gentle denial is part of a boilerplate “older uneducated lady from the provinces” schtick that Dench decided to use for her performance as the real-life Philomena Lee. Variety‘s Scott Foundas recently disgreed, calling her performance “complex and interesting in unexpected ways…Dench gets so deep under the skin of the part that I almost didn’t even recognize her.”
