“Critics, male critics in particular, have turned her into a withholding figure.”
“The New York Times’s A.O. Scott wrote that she “possesses an uncanny ability to turn her natural charisma into diffidence. You can’t take your eyes off her, even as she seems to be making every effort to deflect your attention, to obscure her radiance, to disappear onscreen.””
“The New Republic’s own film critic Tim Grierson said there is “something beguilingly mysterious about her that you can’t quite quantify. She’s there, but she’s also not there.””
“Scott and Grierson appear to mean that Stewart is un-giving.”
“She does not move her features around a lot when she is making facial expressions, and her voice stays roughly at the same pitch most of the time.”
“Grierson called this look “placidly edgy.” David Edelstein at Vulture wrote that “something in [Stewart] will always resist capture.””
“The problem with this type of characterization is that it defines Stewart’s magic through a gendered absence. Stewart refuses to give herself over to the audience, these critics say, and so she is mysterious and effective through a logic of subtraction.”
“But we don’t have to see Stewart this way. Traditionally, hammy Hollywood actresses have offered themselves up on a plate. Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, and Jennifer Lawrence over-emote, not because they are incompetent, but because they are acting in the tradition of film melodrama.”
“Kristen Stewart does not do this for the simple reason that she is a naturalistic actor. Her voice does not modulate wildly because most real voices do not. Her eyebrows do not flail because most eyebrows do not. Stewart does not take something away from her performances in order to tantalize her viewers. Instead, she intentionally fails to reach the pitch of thespian overcookedness audiences are accustomed to.”
“Stewart is not a minimalist actor, despite the critics’ takes. In Personal Shopper, her hands shake and her eyes fill with tears. She gasps as an atelier assistant zips her tightly into the harness section of a dress, as if Maureen is being forcibly reminded of her own physical existence.”
“It will take a long time for Stewart to fully fly free of the Twilight legacy. But she has worked hard to become the naturalist she is on screen today. Still Alice, Certain Women, even the slightly hokey Equals and Café Society—these films together represent the beginning of a serious career. As that career builds, the critics will come to see that Kristen Stewart is a screen presence, not an absence.”