Choice: Film

The Ice Storm, on general release

When it comes to future stardom I have two words to say to you, and they are "Christina" and "Ricci". People have rightly praised the superb acting of the central trio in Ang Lee's splendidly controlled picture of Seventies sexual confusion, but in our rush to laud the efforts of Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, and the preposterously underrated Joan Allen, let us not forget Ricci (above). She may be playing a troubled teen but she's no novice. Her startlingly droll, deadpan seriousness made its mark when she played Cher's swimming-obsessed daughter in Mermaids, a 1990 Richard Benjamin movie which tried (only partially successfully) to anatomise the Sixties. She was also quite brilliantly cast as Wednesday, the funereally- faced daughter of Anjelica Houston in both Addams Family pictures (and stole both of them into the bargain). Her Ice Storm scene of tentative sex while wearing a Richard Nixon mask is worth the price of admission.