Kate Winslet has not been seen on screen since “The Reader” was booked into theaters two years ago. After winning the Oscar for that performance, she surprised everyone when she chose as her next project a TV remake of the 1945 film “Mildred Pierce,” which won Joan Crawford her only Academy Award.
From the looks of the making-of featurette below, Winslet delivers another of her knockout performances. Expect her to be as strong an awards contender as Crawford. The meaty title role in “Mildred Pierce” is a single mother who struggles to provide for her two daughters during the Depression. Taking on a job as a waitress, she infuriates her older daughter, Veda, who has grandiose social ambitions. After younger daughter Kay dies of pneumonia, Mildred pours all her love into the ungrateful Veda. The mother is even willing to take a murder rap for the daughter, who offs her stepfather in a dramatic shootout.
Todd Haynes (“I’m Not There”) adapted James M. Cain‘s bestselling 1941 novel and directed the HBO miniseries, which will air over five nights beginning March 27. Haynes was a 2002 Oscar nominee for his script of “Far From Heaven,” an homage to the lush 1950s movie romances of director Douglas Sirk; he lost to Pedro Almodovar for “Talk to Her.”
