Out of the past

There’s nothing quite like a fistful of awards to help breathe new life into past credits that seemed destined for commercial oblivion.

So with just a change of title from The Other Woman to the more indigestible Love And Other Impossible Pursuits – actually the title of the original novel – and a DVD sleeve bearing the legend

‘Academy Award Winner’, welcome back shortly a long-forgotten – and some critics wish it was – 2009 performance by Natalie Portman.

Since playing Emilia in this New York-set piece of apparently miserabilist melodrama, Ms Portman has gone on to even greater fame and fortune with the likes of her Oscar and BAFTA winning Black Swan and Thor. Now 30, she has also just become a mum by her relationship with Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Milliepied..

Intriguingly the DVD, released in August here, portrays, among many other trials and tribulations, Portman having to deal with the death of an infant child.

According to the prestigious Village Voice, “Portman, neither courageous nor complex enough to fully embody an often unlikable character [something she'd do triumphantly two years later in Black Swan - Ed], succeeds merely in enervating us.”