no stabbing wednesdays

I am ALSO seriously into Nat's guardedness. I think that media very rarely knows what to do with women who aren't either great at emotions or complete robots, and in past movies Natasha has given us just enough to show that she's neither. And Nat's reliance on performativity, in particular, has always worked for me; I grew up with the belief that you have to behave in certain ways for people to accept you, and seeing characters get emotional with very little provocation makes me actively uncomfortable as a viewer, like I'm seeing something private I shouldn't.

Nat's emotions in this movie worked for me for a few reasons.

One is one of my favorite details of the movie: Natasha (and Melina) were psychologically conditioned, while Yelena (and the other Widows in her cohort) were brainwashed. The conditioning required the Widows to be extremely carefully controlled, because of the negative consequences if they didn't. The brainwashing removed the ability to control, because it was never their choice. So we see that in Morocco Yelena is extremely controlled, and then right after that we see her expressing emotions far more freely than we ever see from Nat (even ten-year-old Nat) or Melina. She doesn't have the instincts to not.

Another is that in most of the scenes where we see Natasha showing strong emotions, positive or negative, it's with people she was only close with from ages seven or eight to ten or eleven. There's an element of Nat unintentionally regressing and needing to consciously regain her Adult In Control Of The Situation approach, repeatedly; we see it most clearly in the "don't slouch" scene but for me her first scenes with Yelena are that much more telling. She's metaphorically an adult staying in her childhood bedroom at her parents' house and trying to figure out why the bed doesn't feel like she remembers.

A third is one that I didn't actually realize until thinking more about this movie: yes, Natasha is smiling sincerely more here. But she's also angry more. It wasn't until I had seen this movie a few times that I started to think of all the times I've identified Nat as angry in other movies. I still think she HAS been angry, but she's grit her teeth and she's smiled a very tight smile and she has done everything in her power to defuse the situation. (I can't help but think of how Carol's anger got so many fanboys to be like "Why doesn't she smile more?" while Natasha's anger has passed by them entirely unnoticed.) Her smiling, to me, is connected to her ability to express her rage: to try to drown Yelena before offering a truce and drinking together; to yell at Alexei rather than coquettishly convince him to find the Red Room; to call Melina a coward to her face.

Compare it to her conversation with Ross; her tone never wavers. When she has her first conversations with Mason, even though he can tell she's run-down, she's presenting Public-Facing Natasha, who just wants to Get Shit Done. When she thinks Taskmaster is sent by Ross, her ONLY emotional reaction is to say that she's a better shot when she's pissed off. It's only once the Red Room is brought in, and her history is part of things, that her emotions show more on her face.