One of our finest actresses, Miranda Richardson, in a dazzling triple role in the disquiet

One of our finest actresses, Miranda Richardson, in a dazzling triple role in the disquieting psychological character study Spider (2002, David Cronenberg; pictured with Gabriel Byrne and Bradley Hall). Some critical context:

“A triumph of both quality and quantity, Richardson gives a nightmarish triptych of performances as, alternately, the mother of Ralph Fiennes’s mentally hollowed protagonist, his father’s mistress and his present-day landlady, vividly embodying an entire, terrorising wall of femininity in his psyche. Favored for the Best Actress award at Cannes, she emerged from the festival with no prize, but a cloud of Oscar buzz that vanished into thin air. A shame; it’s her best screen work.” — Guy Lodge, Hitfix(August 2012)

“This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role… Richardson shows her range, depicting Mrs. Cleg as a woman sadly hanging onto hope, still trying to pretend she has some kind of satisfying family life despite her errant husband’s surliness; her Yvonne is trashy, vulgar, graceless and totally without morals, in the latter scenes injecting that same brassy sexuality into Mrs. Wilkinson’s cold authoritarian manner.” — David Rooney, Variety (May 2002)