What a lovely day!

Charlize in Cannes with Sean.

It's hard not to fall in love with Charlize Theron. She really knows how to make an entrance, be it as hateful mankiller, evil queen, forsaken daughter or desperate driver in the post apocalyptic desert. I really thought I wouldn't go to see the new Mad Max movie, but I did, and I slowly realize that it's a knock out.

Or rather, she is a knock out. From her first moment on screen, with her anguished look, shaven head, forehead painted black, making the eyes glow like diamonds in a deep cave. 

And of course, she can't be bad. She can't be one of those ugly, vulgar, death wishing men painted in white and silver, posing in scary masks or strumming a crazy guitar strapped on to the grotesque vehicles thundering down the roads to nowhere, screaming silly things like "witness this" before they go.  

She, with the ridiculously stellar name of Imperator Furiosa, is a saviour, on the run from all those hellish men, with a cargo full of beautiful young women, all dressed in white like vestal virgins - although they are the wives of the crazy king in a citadel filled with ghostlike figures and slaves - all vaguely reminiscent of the monster city in Fritz Lang's classic Metropolis. 

She is their saviour, and of course, she reminds me of other great screen females on the run: Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in Thelma and Louise, Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. 

Dazed and confused after seeing the film last night in one of the oldest and most beautiful cinemas of Stockholm, I didn't really get it until I read a tweet by Swedish fantasy writer Sara B Elfgren: "Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the most beautiful things I've seen."

The way she walks, with her left arm hanging with the lower part of her arm and hand missing. The way she talks, just like Humphrey Bogart, not a syllable goes to waste. The way she raises her good arm to shoot and then leaves the wheel, crawling under the big steel belly in motion, to fix something. The way her eyes silently give away the message that she will save not only the girls in the back, but all of us. She certainly will, that's what she promises Tom - or Max - in the end. 

All she needs to do is to nod.