More comments on the set report (spoilers) - Correction

[Carol]

bboyminn:
> 
> Sorry to reply to my own post, but I took a closer look at the
> photo that was linked to and I noticed a lot of material 
> gathered around the waist. I wonder if this isn't a far more
> traditional dress than the photo makes it appear. I'm
> wondering if the actress hasn't lower the stifling formal
> top section to reveal a leotard underneath. Something that
> could be easily and quickly undone for the next shoot.

Carol responds:
I don't think so. Here's how she describes her own costume:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/fashion/article3752366.ece

"I play Narcissa Malfoy in the new Harry Potter film. If I told you
what I was wearing, I would probably have to kill you; it's a bit like
working for MI5. My costume is very couture, with beautifully sculpted
silhouettes. The costumes are designed by my Parisian friend. Of
course, style was battered into her at an early age."

I don't know what MI5 refers to, but she's clearly intending to be a
fashionplate. And the article I linked to yesterday explains that she
likes to play sexy characters, basing sex appeal not on looks (she's
not beautiful, though they seem to be trying to make her prettier than
usual for this role). She thinks that sexiness is an attitude. The
problem is, IMO, that Book!Narcissa is relying on femininity, not on
sexuality appealing to Snape's manliness and chivalry, not on his
attraction to her (if any). If feminine wiles have anything at all to
do with her conduct, it's her contrasting her helplessness--her son is
in trouble and her husband is is prison--with his strength, both in
terms of his position as LV's right-hand man and his ability to "do
the deed" ("You could do it! Of course you could!") Imagine a
genuinely stodgy woman like Professor Sprout (or a pathetically ugly
one like poor Merope) making that appeal. It only works if the woman
is beautiful and knows it. (BTW, I'll bet that Narcissa did use sex
appeal to get her way with Lucius, for example, not sending Draco to
Durmstrang, but this scene is different. She's not seducing Snape;
she's trying to save her son in whatever way she can.)

Carol, who nevertheless does detect a sexual undercurrent in the scene
as depicted in the book, like something out of an eighteenth-century
Gothic novel, and expects that Gothic element to shape the scene as
depicted in the film