Robin Wright has hit back at critics who branded her Forrest Gump character Jenny as “anti-feminist”, describing her relationship with the film’s title character as “the sweetest love story.”
Jenny’s arc within the film, which takes her from childhood sexual abuse through drug use to an untimely death, has been widely criticised in the 30 years since the movie came out. The Independent’s Louis Chilton included it in a recent list of the “most problematic films ever made” thanks to “the film’s puritanical slut-shaming towards Robin Wright’s Jenny.”
In a new interview with The New York Times, Wright was asked whether Jenny was “punished for her choices” and if the role is “anti-feminist.”
“No! It’s not about that,” Wright responded. “People have said she’s a Voldemort to Forrest. I wouldn’t choose that as a reference, but she was kind of selfish. I don’t think it’s a punishment that she gets AIDS. She was so promiscuous — that was the selfishness that she did to Forrest.
“He was in love with her from Day 1. And she was just flighty and running and doing coke and hooking up with a Black Panther.
“And then she gets sick and says, ‘This is your child. But I’m dying.’ And he still takes her: ‘I’ll take care of you at Mama’s house.’ I mean, it’s the sweetest love story.”
Wright has reunited with Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis and star Tom Hanks for Here.
Wright and Hanks appear several decades younger as the film, which is based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name, takes place entirely in one living room over 100 years, with the camera fixed in one position for the entire 104-minute film.
Hanks and Wright play Richard and Margaret, the couple that lives in the house from the 1960s to the present day, thanks to makeup and digital de-ageing technology.
In another interview, Zemeckis explained what drew him to the film and why the single camera approach intrigued him.
“The single perspective never changes, but everything around it does,” he told Vanity Fair.
“It’s actually never been done before. There are similar scenes in very early silent movies, before the language of montage was invented. But other than that, yeah, it was a risky venture.”
Zemeckis also added that the technology can only go so far and the actors and their character work make the performances believable.
“It only works because the performances are so good,” he said.
“Both Tom and Robin understood instantly that, ‘Okay, we have to go back and channel what we were like 50 years ago or 40 years ago, and we have to bring that energy, that kind of posture, and even raise our voices higher. That kind of thing.”
