Antonia Quirke - Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Strangers

And Kinski, of course, handsomeness gone insane; a grotesque exaggeration of handsomeness, as though every feature on his face is trying to out-handsome the others. Alain Delon in Rocco and His Brothers, obviously. Adrien Brody in The Pianist, like someone from a different breed of men, taller, nobler and more hairless than us. Robert de Niro – just that once, but undeniably – as the young Vito Corleone with his otter-slicked hair in the section just after he has assassinated Don Fanucci in Godfather Part II. Buster Keaton, proving the point about mesmerism – without those good looks our concentration on his smooth, logically unfolding routines would be lessened. Gary Cooper. One feels amazed and almost grateful that people so physically gifted should condescend to have talent at something else as well. These are the hypnotists.

And Jeremy Irons's brand of hypnotism is the suffering of love. We are prettier when we're happy, but often we're more beautiful when we suffer. And we hate the beautiful because we don't believe that they do suffer. Watching Irons suffer, you see it especially in his slender and muscular throat - his expressive Adam's apple, those tortured tendons, that clavicle, the paper-knife jawbone. I love Jeremy Irons's neck. So to see him capsized, hyperventilating with joy, in that scene with Patricia Hodge is doubly delirious because we so rarely see him laugh. And that's what love is. It's a total surprise. It's not what you expected. It's a relief from those decades of consciousness which try to kid us that they're enough to be going on with.

Happiness in movies is a bit like love – the camera's always cutting away. You hardly ever get to see it. All you get are those ultra-casual but ever so slightly speeded-up kitchen sequences over breakfast just before Harrison Ford's wife gets murdered by a terrorist, or his kid gets crushed by a hit-and-run HGV. Instead we have happy montage sequences, like the one in Manhattan where Woody Allen dangles a hand into Central Park lake and comes up with an armful of muck. Woody was the master of these sequences. So happy

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