OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2006)
The Nominees Were...
Adriana Barraza, Babel
Cate Blanchett, Notes on a Scandal
Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls
Rinko Kikuchi, Babel
My Thoughts: Category fraud is a big debate in the world of Oscars Twitter. There are people that fall into a few camps about it. There are those that are hardliners, breaking out stopwatches (which is extremely fascinating-this is not meant to disparage), and long treatises about the subject. Others are more laissez-faire about the topic, thinking that there's nothing wrong with it and the performance's value should more fully dictate whether it should be included. I tend to fall into the middle, perhaps a bit more to the former. I think there are grey area performances, roles that are part of an ensemble & therefore it's hard to fault Oscar, and then there are performances where it's clearly cheating, to the point where I dock a star in the rating as a result of the performance being so completely in the wrong category. Three performances today run the gamut between "definitely lead" and "arguably lead," and all three were among the most likely victors in 2006.
We'll start, though, with the two women that clearly weren't leads in their films, or should I say film because Babel scored the dual nomination trick in 2006. Rinko Kikuchi is one of those two women, and does bring a bit of grace to her role as a teenage girl who is self-conscious about being deaf. Unfortunately for Kikuchi, it feels like her character is underwritten, and she's definitely underperformed in the film, with not enough of Chieko's inner-world, and honestly this feels like Oscar honoring a baity role rather than a particularly interesting performance-we don't get enough of a sense of her isolation in relation to a unique onscreen character, and she's not very connected to the larger narrative of the story.
Adriana Barraza, though, is another story. Her Amelia is underwritten as well (real talk: everyone in Babel is kind of underwritten-it's not a great movie), but she brings depth & emotion to it in a way that totally elevates the character and was my favorite story in the movie. As a nanny who is illegally taking care of two children, and a woman who is forced to not attend her son's wedding due to Brad Pitt being unable to find someone else to take care of his children, she brings a truth to Amelia, giving us not just a heartbreaking look at what it's like to be illegally emigrated into the United States, but also how much of her identity is only at the discretion of two white employers who treat her with utter callousness. A fascinating, complicated performance from Barraza.
Jennifer Hudson is not the actress that Adriana Barraza is-that's reality & borne out by some of her later work. But sometimes actors get the roles they were born to play, and that's very much the case for her Effie White. Hudson brings so much soul, broken hopes & dreams into Effie White when she's singing, tearing down the house with "And I Am Telling You." Yes, there are moments in this that don't quite work (some line readings feel like Bill Condon should've given her another take), but there's so much heat & passion from Hudson's Effie that she totally makes the movie, stealing focus even when she's not onscreen. That's sheer magnetism, and I'm a fan-I return to this performance often, and I didn't even like Dreamgirls all that much. That being said, you could make a sincere argument that this is a lead role (I am debating it for my final My Ballot countdown)-it's hard to determine mostly because the script shifts its focus so often. Because I can't quite decide I'm not knocking down a star, but I might still shift this when it comes to my own selections (it reminds me a lot of Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers in that it's hard to tell if it's actually a co-lead role or if Hudson/Lopez are so much more dynamic than their costars they're the only ones you pay attention toward).
Cate Blanchett, on the other hand, it's impossible to deny this is a lead role. Not only is she in over 50% of the film, but it's very much the story of Barbara and Sheba. I'm docking a star here for her, a performance I wasn't wild on to begin with. It had been a while, and I wanted to revisit this movie before getting to our discussions of Blanchett & Dench, and I land a bit higher than I did when I initially saw it, though I don't hold it in the same regard others do. Blanchett, in particular, cannot handle the abrupt pivot to gorgon lady in her penultimate showdown with Dench...Dench is also out-acting her, and giving one of the most singular performances of her career. There's things to be mined in Sheba, particularly the way that Blanchett taps into her obsession with being young (notice how she's rarely in the company of people her own age), but it's not enough-she gets lost in the salaciousness of the plot.
Abigail Breslin, like Hudson, is probably a lead. But again, there's enough of an ensemble feel here to make an argument that she shouldn't be in the lead category so I'm not docking her anything even if I might personally have put her in lead. This is a pretty textbook definition of a cute performance from a plucky child in a likable movie. I didn't really like Little Miss Sunshine, but like Babel, I understand its merits, and Breslin is one of them. She totally sells this precocious girl, living in an atypical world and adapting to her surroundings, not yet rebelling against them. It's always hard to tell at this age how much is performing and how much is just solid direction, but this is not one of the more objectionable nominations this category has ever produced.
Other Precursor Contenders: We saw on Monday that the precursors were all over the map on Best Supporting Actor. The other three categories were not so lucky, and stayed relatively uniform. The Globes went with Hudson, and the only change from Oscar's lineup was Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) in place of Breslin, and SAG copied Oscar exactly in both winner & nominees. The BAFTA Awards also picked Hudson, but went with a pretty off-kilter nominee lineup, as Hudson beat Breslin, Blunt, Frances de la Tour (The History Boys), and Collette. All things considered, I have to think Blunt was in sixth place, though while that performance is well-regarded now, I assume it was a distant sixth place-this was a lineup that Oscar clearly wanted.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Blunt is one of the better-known actors working today who has never gotten a date with Oscar despite a plethora of opportunities. It was her first foray into awards season, though, that she should've triumphed-her work in Devil Wears Prada is basically the reason to have a category like Best Supporting Actress (totally elevating a performance that otherwise could've been window dressing), and she should've been among the nominees.
Oscar’s Choice: Unlike her Dreamgirls costar, Hudson didn't have an embarrassing movie premiering during awards season, and as a result she won easily on her film debut. In second, I suspect it was Breslin rather than a quick second trophy for Blanchett that was the runner-up.
My Choice: I'm torn, so we'll go backward. I have Kikuchi in last, and just ahead of her is Blanchett. Breslin is in the middle-not too good, not too bad. For the top prize I know that Barraza is the better actor, but Hudson is giving the better work, or at least the work I'm the most drawn toward, and I'm going to give this trophy to her just as I did in 2006. Debatable category fraud and some scenes in the memory have not worn as well as they did when I initially gave it to her (at the time, it was a slam dunk), but I can't shake her Effie White, and think it's the best of these five performances.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Is everyone with Oscar & I on Effie White, or do you think that someone else was best-in-class? Which of these performances was category fraud and which was just a big supporting role? And what's it going to take to finally get Emily Blunt a nomination, or is she her generation's Mia Farrow? Share your thoughts below!
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