By nature alone Vesper's a striking contrast, owning the room entirely for her purposes with a freedom and independence the film intentionally denies its other women. Even after moving to the bar, Vesper's comfortably engaged in the game's proceedings, whereas Solange rested in her tragic misery.

Moving through the world as a woman, she's likely endured many in her professional career, let alone her personal life. Vesper recognizes a playboy accustomed to manipulation, though.

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.

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