Terrence Rafferty

[LO a little on character:]

. . . . What enables [Demme] to get his bearings in this unfamiliar territory is the richness of the central character, who--like most of the people in his other films--is someone who's changing, learning, trying to formulate an identity. He keeps our attention on Starling and her shifting reactions to the world, and his most striking achievement in this picture is his direction of Jodie Foster. Her clear, strong features--which have sometimes given her, in other roles, a slightly impenetrable look--have never seemed so expressive. Demme treats her to one closeup after another, and she rewards him with a steady flow of surprises. With amazing delicacy, Foster shows us the constant tension between the character's emotions and her actions--the omnipresent self-consciousness of inexperiences. When, at the movie's climax, Starling has to use all the moves she's been rehearsing in her classes, Foster gives every gesture a hint of tentativeness, and that subtle hesitancy makes the student's courage incredibly touching. We may not know quite how to feel about the fears and insecuritites and nightmare images that "The Silence of the lambs" makes us vulnerable to, but we know exactly how to feel about Jodie Foster's performance: the only adequate response is "Thank you."

Terrence Rafferty
New Yorker, February 25, 1991