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Viggo Mortensen has finally become famous, after reaching the peak of stardom over and over with promising roles and fine performances. He finally won over women (and men) everywhere with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and then got to the even kinkier girls (and men) with tough roles in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. But girls were swooning over Viggo way before then, as he seductively caressed Nicole Kidman in Portrait of a Lady, beat the hell out of Demi Moore in G.I. Jane (while wearing short-shorts), and did the bad-boy flirt with Sandra Bullock in 28 Days. The favorite of fangirls everywhere, though, has to be his hippie lover to Diane Lane’s straying housewife in A Walk on the Moon.

Only Viggo Mortensen could pull off intense sexuality with a character known as the Blouse Man. A temporary gig as a traveling blouse salesman brings Walker the Blouse Man to the family summer retreat where Pearl (Lane) is staying with her mother-in-law and children while her husband works in the city. Hovering around Walker with his soft raspy drawl and misty blue-gray eyes and sensual languorous qualities makes Pearl weak in the knees, and it’s not long before she’s rolling around on the floor of his bus and the mud of Woodstock.

What brought the Blouse Man to my mind again (as if I needed an excuse) was scrolling through Roger Ebert’s reviews recently. I was checking to see if he’d reviewed Viggo Mortensen’s latest film Good,  an art film about Nazi Germany told from the perspective of everyday Germans. I noticed that Ebert had given A Walk on the Moon only two stars, and peeked in to see what his beef with the film was. Not that I thought the movie was perfect–it isn’t. But I was curious what Ebert’s take was.

Ebert’s criticism basically centered on the exact factor that makes women everywhere swoon over this movie: Viggo Mortensen. Ebert felt (and rightly so) that the movie was stacked unfavorably towards Viggo’s sexually charged character and that the mind-blowing “soft-core lust” scenes were too exciting to be ignored once the inevitable reckoning comes. Ebert gets it exactly right when he says:

“The movie’s problem is that it loads the casting in a way that tilts the movie in the direction of a Harlequin romance. Mortensen looks like one of those long-haired, bare-chested, muscular buccaneers on the covers of the paperbacks; all he needs is a gothic tower behind him, with one light in a window.“

Heh. For a dude, Ebert’s pretty perceptive. That’s a romance novel I’d buy, that’s for sure. And so would Diane Lane, apparently. IMDB lists in its trivia that Diane Lane wanted Viggo for the role so badly that she gave up part of her salary so they could afford him. This works well with another part of Ebert’s review: “I am reminded of a TV news interview about that movie where Demi Moore was offered $1 million to sleep with Robert Redford. ‘Would you sleep with Robert Redford for a million dollars?’ a woman in a mall was asked. She replied: ‘I’d sleep with him for 50 cents.”’ So it was with Diane Lane. Who needs a salary when you get to swim naked with Viggo Mortensen?

So, if you are a newer fan of Viggo Mortensen, and haven’t yet had the pleasure of the Blouse Man experience, buy yourself a copy of A Walk on the Moon today. Notice I didn’t say rent. Trust me. This one’s a keeper.

Viggo Mortensen Screencaps

A Walk on the Moon, c1999 Miramax Films.

Lord of the Rings Behind the Scenes, c2003 New Line Cinema.

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