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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Saturday, September 12, 2020

entry arrow3:15 AM | Dame Diana Rigg, 1938–2020



There's a scene in Guy Hamilton's very inventive 1982 adaptation of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun that made me a Diana Rigg fan forever: she plays a heartless, calculating, and cuckolding actress who would ultimately serve as the murder mystery's requisite inciting incident, and it would have been easy to dislike her immensely—heck, all the characters in the story want to murder her—were it not for one thing: she deploys charm that overwhelms mountains. In this scene in a hotel lobby overlooking the Adriatic Sea, she willfully and glamorously glides into the center of everyone's attention as someone plays the piano, singing Cole Porter's "You're the Top" with the gusto of a true performer and the poison of a vamp with an overwhelming desire to burn all bridges come what may. She uses the lyrics of the song to unleash all sorts of venom directed at specific people—but her glow is so unmistakable that those same people, knowing there is no antidote to her stings, nonetheless cannot help but applaud her. I saw that scene years ago, and I was like, "This woman can do anything. You may want to strangle her, but you also want to kowtow before her." That double-edged appeal has always been at the root of my fawning admiration for Dame Diana—she unleashed that power in everything from On Her Majesty's Secret Service to The Avengers to Game of Thrones. In the latter, for example, you knew her Olenna Tyrell was manipulative and corrupted by her privilege and power—but you also loved her. To be able to limn these contradictions and make meaty roles out of them was her mark. I love Dianna RIgg, present tense, and she will be missed.

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