OVP: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Film: The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Stars: Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Natasha Lyonne, Garrett Hedlund, Rob Morgan

Director: Lee Daniels

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Actress-Andra Day)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

All week we've been focusing on next week's Oscar nominations with our reviews, as I finish off some of the biggest missing pieces of this year's award season.  Today will be our final film that is in contention of the week, and thus until we know the nominations.  I always think it's more fun to discuss the nominated films while they're still competing for a win, so if an unseen movie is nominated next week for the OVP categories (and I have access to it), I'll be seeking it out so I'd imagine we'll have more chats soon about this year's race but for now we're going to leave it with a movie that in the last couple of weeks graduated from potential Oscar nominee to sure thing.  Andra Day's surprise win at the Golden Globes is an indication that AMPAS will soon follow (Shirley MacLaine in 1988 was the first, last & only time an actress has won the Globe for Actress in a Drama and not translated with Oscar...and that was only because of a three-way tie with two future nominees), and so I had to catch this one before Monday.  What I found was the actress, largely making her film debut after only a big part in Marshall and a voice role in Cars 3, can deliver an interesting performance, but the film surrounding her is an abject mess.

(It's a biopic-do you need a spoiler alert?) The movie is about the extended life of Billie Holiday (Day) not always focused on her childhood (except for one flashback) but instead on her biggest star years, from the early days of "Strange Fruit" until her untimely death at the age of 44.  The movie explores her relationships with cruel men, including an FBI agent who double-crosses her named Jimmy Fletcher (Rhodes), and watches as her drug abuse is used as an excuse to have the FBI constantly harass her, eventually arresting her on trumped up charges because Harry Anslinger (Hedlund), the bureau's narcotics leader, is intent on using her for her connections to the world of drug dealers (and to make an example of a Civil Rights leader).  The film shows that while Holiday ultimately died, her message didn't-"Strange Fruit" was eventually recognized as one of the most important songs of the 20th century, and she is now considered an early figure in the Civil Rights movement.

Billie Holiday is a solid choice for a biopic.  Beautiful, talented, troubled, and complicated, Day sinks her teeth into the role.  Day uses fine mimicry with her voice, and brings an aching into her singing that others would have just used a recording for (Rami Malek, hint hint).  It's still an early performance in her career-she shines above the rest of the cast, but there's too much "tick tick tick" in her performance, giving us not enough of the Billie she's crafting & more of what the script needs to hang together.  This isn't entirely Day's fault (in fact little of it is), but as we're about to be discussing her alongside four other actresses fighting to claim the top acting prize of the year, I feel the need to be a little picky.

But the real problem here isn't Day, it's the movie itself.  Lee Daniels has not been able to hold together a coherent movie combined with his huge appetite for swinging between genres since Precious, and this is no exception.  Visually & technically Billie Holiday falls apart-at one point it becomes two intersecting narrations, and it leaves huge gaps in the plot that it never really picks up.  Natasha Lyonne might be in love with Billie?  We don't care about that.  Leslie Jordan is a gay man obsessed with Billie initially narrating parts of the story?  No, we'll drop that too.  The United States vs. Billie Holiday is a bad movie, the kind that shows up once or twice a year with a decent performance so we try to forgive it, but it's a mess, and one that both Holiday & Andra Day deserved better from.