AMANDA PLUMMER

. A lot has happened to Amanda Plummer in the almost-a-decade between her first movie with Robin Williams, The World Acccording to Garp, and her second, The Fisher King- the trouble is, very little of it has occured on the movie screen. Her acclaimed triumphs have been on the New York stage, where she's a Tony award-winning star, and on TV, where she recently won a Supporting Actress Emmy for the TV movie Miss Rose White. Moviemakers just don't seem to know what "to do" with Plummer and admittedly, her parents figure into this, from her mother, actress Tammy Grimes, Plummer got her unconventional looks, a great ear-to-ear grin, and that voice which sounds like wind chimes in the fog; from her father, actor Christopher Plummer she got her strange, downright otherworldly swings- resolute stillness one second and freewheeling madcap the next, often during just one line of dialogue.
After roles you can't recall in movies you don't remember [Daniel? Made in Heaven? Cattle Annie and Little Britches? Joe Versus the Volcano?], Plummer last year got the break she had long deserved: a great role in a good movie, playing Lydia in The Fisher King. The bad news, though, is that no one noticed. As the prim, suspicious wallflower loved from afar by over-amped sprite Robin Williams, Plummer's Lydia inspired sequences of a truly grand mad passion. Just by walking through Grand Central Station, she moves commuters to begin a sweeping waltz around the concourse, at work, she receives balloons from a badly-bewigged transvestite, Michael Jeter, belting out a Mermanesque "Everything's Coming Up Videos." Despite all this hoopla, Lydia confides to Mercedes Ruel, "I don't make an impression on people." Sadly, the line rings truer now than it did then, for it was Ruel, not Plummer, who got an Oscar nomination when, at the very least, both deserved the honor.
If you doubt this, just go out right now and rent The Fisher King. Skip over the terrific teamwork when Plummer and Ruel are on-screen together, and fast-forward instead- past Plummer's hilarious "playing with food" duet with Williams- the better to zero in on the five-minute sequence where Williams walks Plummer home and she foresees, aloud, an imminent one-night stand she'll inevitably regret, while Williams is trying to be heard as he's professing his undying love. This is among the most exquisitely written, directed and acted exchanges in movies, contempory or otherwise. In this part-heartbreaking, part-crackbrained version of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene, played here on the front stoop of Plummer's apartment building, watch as winsome, sad, hopeful Plummer and nervous, devoted, wry Williams become that rarest of pairs, an authentic screen team. Now, if only Williams will use his considerable clout to start making more movies together with Plummer, pronto. Robin, are you listening? B.H.