David Denby

"The Silence of the Lambs ... is paced at the speed of ambition--the desire of its heroine, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), a young FBI trainee, to catch a psychotic serial killer and rid herself of private obsessions. If ever there was a movie that felt like the tightening winch of adrenaline, this is it. Yet Demme achieves this emotional velocity without any of the stale, artificial emphasis of routine thrillers. He puts us inside Clarice's detemination from the opening shots, and he continues to dramatize her feelings from scene to scene, moment to moment, right to the end. A country-smart, respectful West Virginia young woman, Clarice is strong as a horse but also artless and vulnerable. She is a heroine, and Jodie Foster playes her heroically....

Clarice is the daughter of a state trooper who was killed when she was ten. Orphaned (her mother had died earlier), she has made her way through tough times and into the University of Virginia and then the FBI. She has her private demons as well as overwhelming ambition. All of this information is carefully woven in, given to us a little at a time. Foster is not the type to show us everything all at once. Her acting is a disciplined mixture of reserve and revelation. Short yet with straight-line, almost aristocratic features, she is both ordinary and elegant. The precise line of her features brings order to the spriritual tumult of lonely, embattled young women.

I thought she was terrific in The Accused as the tough-talking, defiant working-class girl who like to drink and show off and got into serious trouble in a bar one night. She stayed within the character and eventually revealed all of that girl's weakness and pigheaded nerve. Clarice is a much smarter and sturdier person, but she goes one step at a time, persistent, molelike, and Foster never allows any extra or false awareness to spill into the characterization. She remains deferential and self-contained--a natural FBI type--and makes us see the dignity in that kind of temperament. The West Virginia, up-from-white-trash accent is brought off with perfect confidence. Held in close-up in scene after scene, she anchors our responses to the movie, but she doesn't ask for special sympathy. A proud actress.

Clarice, longing for approval, has two substitute daddies...."

David Denby
New York, February 18, 1991