The movie moment that sparked Mia Goth’s love affair with cinema: “The first time I’d ever been moved”
If you watch enough movies, and everyone should watch a lot of movies, then occasionally you will see a scene that has the ability to stop you in your tracks and make you think, “This is special”. It doesn’t happen often; most of the time, if the film is any good, then you’ll be too ensconced in the storyline, but now and then a performance will be so striking that it takes you out of the moment entirely. And one of those moments happens around three-quarters into the movie Pearl, starring Mia Goth.
It features Goth’s desperate titular character onstage for a talent audition, the camera tight in on her pleading expression as she begs to be considered, tears rolling down her cheeks as the understanding that she won’t be put through takes hold, and she begins to beg the panel, “Please, I’m a star, please!”
Perhaps because the moment ties in so well with the ‘famous at all costs’ mentality that has been prevalent in society since Simon Cowell began his weekly televised verso pollice, the moment became an internet meme with many using it to express their desperation in varying circumstances, from not getting Oasis tickets to needing cash for a new handbag.
The movie itself is fairly divisive. As the second part in Ti West’s trilogy that began with the fantastic X, it is a very different film to the first one and focuses far more on Goth’s character. Not a whole lot happens in it, certainly not compared to the sex and gore on show in part one. But as a vehicle for Goth to show off just what a talent she is, it is a compelling one.
While you wouldn’t know it from the note-perfect deep Southern accent Goth has in the trilogy, she is, in fact, an English actor; a former model who showed she wasn’t exactly shy of a challenge with her first film role in a Lars von Trier movie, the equivalent of someone being offered their first ever alcoholic drink and choosing a large shot of tequila.
Over the next seven or eight years, she took on some TV work and small roles in films like the 2018 Suspiria remake, but it was West’s trilogy that really put her on the map. One subsequent leading role in Brandon Cronenberg’s brilliant body horror-thriller Infinity Pool perhaps didn’t get her quite the plaudits she deserved.
She puts in a performance in that movie that’s on par with her work in Pearl, simultaneously tempting and unhinged, the conduit to a nightmarish world that Cronenberg delivers with no holds barred whatsoever.
There’s no doubt now that Goth is a serious talent, and it’s interesting to look at where she finds her influences. Speaking to Cultured, she revealed that while her actor grandmother, Maria Gladys, was a guiding hand in her career, she also took pointers from classic moments from the likes of Quentin Tarantino.
1994’s Pulp Fiction is one example, specifically the iconic Uma Thurman dance opposite John Travolta in the Jack Rabbit Slims diner, of which Goth comments, “I remember imitating Uma Thurman and doing the dance move myself. That was probably the first time I’d ever been moved by cinema”.
She was also taken by singer Björk’s turn in von Trier’s 2000 musical Dancer in the Dark, saying, “I think that’s a perfect performance, and I think it’s faultless. Really, I think all female performances in von Trier’s movies are just so perfectly flawed and human and vulnerable and honest and brave, and I watch those movies, and it’s something that I strive for in my own work. If I could ever come anywhere near to something that Björk does or Charlotte Gainsbourg does, I would be very proud of myself.”
Many would say she has already achieved that and then some.
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