We’ve never been Kristen Stewart bashers here at PFC.  On the contrary, since her smelly crotch monologue in Jake Scott’s Welcome to the Reillys we knew that behind that brooding expression was a burning desire to create great work.  And why not? When you’re that young and you’ve made that much money, if you have to keep working, as you should, might as well make pieces you’re proud of.

We thought Jodie Foster‘s “Leave Kristen Alone“ piece in The Daily Beast was lame, unnecessary, and clearly laced with a shameless sub-ploy by that old Mel Gibson apologist to use the Pattinson-Stewart split to stay relevant and bring herself back into the spotlight she professes to be so ambivalent about.   The reason it’s unnecessary is Stewart and her team know where she is headed, and she is being expertly guided from the looks of it.  It would be better if Foster herself left Stewart alone.

HuffPo today published an article regarding Stewart’s rebound from disgrace, but we don’t see it as a rebound at all.  With one brief affair, Stewart managed to shed her twee Twihard fans, which has in turn let her make the leap into credibility with the sort of weightier material she is capable of producing. A happy accident, to be sure, and no doubt a painful one because her relationship ended and she was subjected to all sorts of over-the-top outcry, but still a welcome happy accident for those of us who want to see her firmly out of the Great Crap Mill.

Word from the Toronto Film Festival is that Walter Salles’ new film On The Road, which co-stars Stewart as a topless, double-fisting front-seat masturbator and fellator—those details are all anyone can focus on right now—is pretty solid, but not the most amazing piece of cinema anyone’s ever seen.  We felt the same about Salles’ previous road film Motorcycle Diaries: it was pretty, poetic, but in general unworthy of all the hype.

Kristen made an appearance last night at the premiere of the film in Toronto, and answered questions from the press and fans for an hour, which was another brave and wise move to restore her image.  As Michael Hogan said about the film in HuffPo :

This is definitely an “On the Road” for our times, directed by a Brazilian Boomer for a global audience of Millennials…. The toplessness itself is an extremely courageous choice for someone as famous as Stewart. There is no question that screen shots of those scenes will proliferate all across the Internet, in contexts that would make even Marylou blush. But Stewart has proven that she’s the kind of actress who puts her commitment to the role above concerns like that. To some people, her self-seriousness comes off as pretentious, but I see it as her way of protecting herself from the madness that surrounds her.

Watch the trailer here: