She's so unusual

>> >> New Waterford Girl's Liane Balaban is the geek chic It-girl

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

"So, are you jeans or are you khakis?"

A silly subterfuge, I know, but it's the best I can do for openers. I confess to being a bit giddy, you see, meeting and interviewing Liane Balaban, because her performance in the title role of New Waterford Girl--surely one of the quirkiest, most charming coming-of-age films in recent memory--will catapult her to stardom, I have absolutely no doubt of it.

Balaban plays Mooney Pottie, a character as dejected as her name suggests. Fifteen years old and possessed of an "artistic" temperament, Mooney dreams desperately of living in a big city. But in the small, parochial coal-mining town of New Waterford, Cape Breton, that makes her a misfit. When a girl from the Bronx moves in next door and befriends her, Mooney's outlook changes. The plan they devise for Mooney's escape is nothing short of inspired, and Balaban's performance is splendid: moving and hilarious at the same time, with just the right notes of sassy rebellion and oddball insecurity.

"Oh, I'm definitely jeans," Balaban answers, graciously playing along with my gambit. "To me, it's more street, more urban." I note what she's wearing: beige cotton knee-length dress, small granny-style cardigan buttoned at the top, black tights under the dress. It's all very well put together, but it's, well, geek chic.

"But I'm a total geek--it's true! Can't you tell? I am Mooney Pottie," she says. "Brainy and bookish and a little bit strange: that's totally me in high school." Except, of course, that unlike Mooney, Balaban grew up in Toronto and in high school was already writing and broadcasting music interviews and reviews for Watch magazine, Venus, and Iceberg Media. In fact, she now studies journalism at Ryerson.

Casting call

Still, nerd credentials (when I meet her she is reading Mishima--in a French translation!) may explain how an unknown non-actor could land such a coveted role. The story is that Balaban was invited to audition for the part by the film's producer, Julia Sereny, who had known Balaban since she was a child. Despite the influential family connection, it took Balaban seven auditions to land the part.

"I know that Natasha Leone from American Pie was considered for the part, and Allan [Moyle, the director, originally from Montreal who upped Christian Slater's score on the coolness scale with Pump Up the Volume] told me at least once, and I think only half-jokingly, that I got the part only because they couldn't get Natalie Portman."

Balaban is quick to credit Moyle for her performance. "I didn't have any experience at all with directors, and he totally put me at ease. I was very comfortable around him. He trusted and let me go with my instincts, and if he wanted something else, he would just ask for 'another flavour.' He would say things like, 'Liane, that's so déclassé.' He's insane, but it was fun working with him."

Acting onward

But does she like the work enough to go on acting? Apparently so: since New Waterford Girl, she has done two films. One of them is Saint Jude, by Montreal native John L'Écuyer (of Curtis's Charm fame), and Balaban again gets to play the title role, which she says is radically different from Mooney Pottie. "Oh God, yeah. She [Jude] is Mooney's absolute antithesis: a tough-talking, street-savvy bad girl who's promiscuous and uses drugs."

By the time Saint Jude comes out in the fall, Balaban will be the It-girl. She has already endeared herself to Canadian critics, even moving the usually less rapturous Maclean's magazine critic, Brian D. Johnson, to gush over her "natural charisma that makes it impossible to take your eyes off of her."

Balaban seems unfazed by all of the attention. She likes it, but as she put it, "I also like being on the other side, conducting the interview." :

New Waterford Girl opens Friday, June 23