Noomi Rapace

Previous: Magnolia Client Rachel McAdams Fires UTA Magnolia Entertainment manager Shelley Browning’s inexplicable and one-sided battle against UTA co-owner Tracey Jacobs rages on. Last month, Browning was behind Rachel McAdams firing UTA after a seven-year stint with Jacobs. Now two Swedish actors who are both Magnolia clients follow: Joel Kinnaman and Noomi Rapace. Since becoming Browning’s client, Rapace has bounced between Hollywood agencies: first UTA, then WME, then back to UTA, and now out of UTA. The only Magnolia client left at UTA is Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) who is directing Kinnaman and Rapace with Tom Hardy in Child 44.

If Michael Haneke's "Amour" presented death as a sobering inevitability, one that will test the bounds of our ability to love, actress Valeria Golino has a slightly more nuanced perspective in her directorial debut "Miele." While the subject of euthanasia is the entryway into the story, Golino wisely strays from turning her film into an Issues Movie, and instead opts to explore death both as a vessel for closure and a window into appreciating the life we have. The Noomi Rapace-esque Jasmine Trinca (all cropped hair, switchblade scowl and tomboy figure) leads the film as Irene, aka the titular Miele (meaning honey), her code name when she's on the job as an assisted suicide practitioner. But since it's illegal in Italy, it requires almost Lisbeth Salander-ish levels of covert maneuvers. She travels to Mexico once a month and smuggles back veterinary grade barbiturates which she uses as part of her procedures, and she adheres to a rigorous set of rules to prevent...