gotta love a man in black

And the first one is the newest inductee -- he’s so new, in fact, that that initial flush of infatuation has yet to wear off. Not that I’m not giving him a good workout.

So, this is Hugo, and we’re madly in love, and have been since Wednesday, when, during my screening V for Vendetta, it finally sunk in how totally clueless I’d been not to invite him to the harem earlier. And darling Hugo really is the perfect way to introduce you all to my harem, because it genuinely is totally not about good looks but about talent and passion and creativity and that kind of geeky intellectual chocolate frosting. Not that Hugo isn’t completely handsome and adorable -- as I’m sure his *grrr* wife of 20-plus years would agree. But what is amazingly thrilling and toe-curling about his performance in Vendetta is that we never see him and he’s still so utterly riveting that you fall, you know, madly in love with him. Or, at least, we never see his face. Reportedly, the first actor cast as V, whom I won’t name (James Purefoy) quit because he didn’t like the idea of being hidden behind a mask, to which I can only say this: Idiot. A real actor, like Hugo, isn’t invisible in this role: he is all over it.

Part of it is body language: the tiniest tilt of the head, or tensing of the shoulders, or clench of the fist, and V, mask or no, is speaking volumes of expressiveness. But it’s that voice -- oh, that voice -- that really does the job of turning V into something complex and scary and seductive and authentic. V, in the masterful hands of Hugo, is not “merely” a comic-book supervillain/superhero -- he is the blood brother of Darth Vader and the Phantom of the Opera and Satan and God.

It was that voice, in fact, that made me first sit up and take notice of Hugo, in that first movie in which we all, probably, took notice of him: 1999’s The Matrix. His Agent Smith is, of course, pure unadulterated machine evil, and yet there’s something viscerally awesome about him: I still get chills, after umpteen viewings of the film, when Smith chews out his speech about humans being a cancer on the planet Earth.

Hugo is a great introduction to my harem, too, because, as must be done by any thinking girl geek, there is a huge distinction to be made between falling in love with a character and falling in love with the talent that creates the character. Hugo’s characters are, generally, not particularly fall-in-loveable: they’re either inscrutably evil (Smith) or inscrutably elvish (Elrond) or inscrutably doggy (the voice of Rex, in the Babe films). Even V isn’t particularly someone you’d want to take home to meet the parents. Nope, it’s Hugo I’m in love with, and as soon as I can figure out a way to break up his sure-to-be happy marriage, I’ll be moving to Australia.

• Hugo movie I can’t believe I haven’t seen yet: The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

• Hugo movie you haven’t seen, and must: 1991’s Proof, in which he plays a cantankerous blind man who hires a pair of eyes (Russell Crowe!) to interpret the world for him. Reluctant-buddy drama ensues.

• There appears to be no Hugo Weaving official site, but it looks like Warner Bros. Australia owns hugoweaving.com. Throw up a site, dudes.

• Hugo Weaving’s IMDB page