There's no way for Vesper to realize Bond has her mimicking Solange Dimitrios ( Ivana Miličević), the murdered wife who was essentially a kept woman to her husband: dressed to the nines, catching every man's eye at the poker table, and cruelly spurned. It's flirtatious, yet not a verbal dance of intellectual equality echoing the film's theme that poker rests not upon chance, but reading the person across the table. Vesper wears a nigh-constant sardonic smile that's as purposefully selected as the rest of her elegant appearance (subtle makeup, an all-black suit skewing traditionally masculine), and it's her primary armor as she ripostes back and forth with Bond with lines sharp enough to cut diamonds: 'I suppose you've given some thought to the notion that if you lose, our government will have directly financed terrorism.' A line that leaves Bond temporarily speechless, for once. From the moment Vesper unceremoniously interrupts the blond Bond's ( Daniel Craig) dinner by tossing down her purse and folding into the seat across from him, declaring with wickedly sparkling eyes, 'I'm the money,' Green radiates a sense of assured capability and established personality. You'd never tell from the way the actress slides through scenes with the same fitted ease as a tailored suit. Eva Green had few film credits to her name before Casino Royale, and of those four, only director Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven wasn't a production from her native France.
