We Like Your Style: Cate Blanchett in I'm Not There

Even with a sock down her pants and a swagger in her pelvis-led step, the ass gives Cate Blanchett away. It’s still a lady bum: even constricted in slim black plants, it remains unmistakably pert. I’m Not There director Todd Haynes purposely chose the svelte female actor to play Jude in his Bob Dylan biopic. Blanchett’s thin frame in men’s clothing personifies the androgynous femininity of Dylan during a period of reevaluation in the mid 60s. The iconic musician’s gender ambiguity represents a defiant fuck-you to the music industry’s depiction of masculinity, closely rivaled by Kurt Cobain’s donning of a pink slip and combat boots in the 90s.

As Jude, Blanchett wears thick black shades with a frazzled mop of hair, a thin black tie and platypus leather kicks. She epitomizes Dylan as he transforms from a suede-wearing, cherubic folk singer into a modish, incisive rock-n-roller. At one point, the drug-addled musician chases an Edie Sedgwick-like Michelle Williams through a garden maze. Williams is expensive, heroin chic with smoky eyes and a short blond bob; she flits about shoeless in a silver-sequined, baby-doll Chanel dress. Jude follows her like a hunter attracted to some shiny unattainable lore, stumbling to keep up. The dichotomy of the characters, desired model and horny rock star, as played by two women, is Haynes messing with his audience - just like the man himself, smearing the absurd confinements of gender and sexuality through style and characterization. We’re left to wonder, stewing in our own skinny jeans.