OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Angela Bassett, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Hong Chau, The Whale
Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin
Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once
Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All at Once
My Thoughts: The internet is kind of an ugly place. It has corners of wonder, information at your fingertips, friendships develop there (I'm literally typing this at the apartment of a friend I met on the internet), and you can make community with people oceans away. But it's also a place of extremes, where for some reason everything, even something as simple as an Oscar race, becomes about hatred & ragging on a longtime character actress getting her moment in the sun.
This is all to say, that I, unlike every person on the internet, am in the middle on Jamie Lee Curtis's win for Everything Everywhere All at Once. I think Curtis is the fourth best performance in the film, but that's not an insult, it's just a well-acted movie. She's a longtime trouper who knows how to land every comic line reading here, making a character that doesn't read as memorable in the script last in your brain throughout the movie (which is critical to land some of the film's best visual humor in the back-half). Curtis is charming, and may have won in part because everyone likes her & she was in a major Best Picture winner (she would not be the first person to get an Oscar by playing that card), but she's also someone who has deserved at least a couple of nominations by now, and who lands most of her (short) role. I'm fine with it, particularly given what we'll discuss later this week in Best Actor.
On the same side, while I do think her costar Stephanie Hsu is better than her, it's not a crime that she didn't win an Oscar (go to certain corners of Twitter, and people will disagree on that front). Hsu has the trickiest part in the movie, playing dual roles that need to be connected without it feeling like we're belaboring the metaphor, but she does it, stealing scenes from actors with decades more experience, and giving us an overlapping resolution with her mother, Michelle Yeoh. Like most of the actors in the film, I think the swirling end of the movie might undercut some of the points her performance is trying to make, but this is such a promising start to her career.
Angela Bassett is getting an Honorary Oscar later this year, which, honestly, is too soon (I didn't get to talk about this on the blog because time got away from me, but I think she's too young to get a "we're never going to give you a win" statue, particularly after she nearly won in 2022). Bassett is a brilliant performer, but this role is not good enough to give her a statue. She gets one great soliloquy, used to maximum effect in the trailers & her Oscar clip, but it's not enough-the movie feels aimless, and needs her character to have more grounding to underline the tragic nature of this movie (particularly given the real-life death that necessitated its melancholy approach). Good actress, forgettable performance.
Hong Chau is in a similar situation. Unlike Bassett, Chau is hampered by a terrible movie (Black Panther 2 is fine). She's the best part of it, and the way that she channels frustration onto the door-to-door missionary who keeps visiting Brendan Fraser's dying Charlie is good. But it's lost in a movie that has no logic. Her part feels so alien, this put-upon friend who clearly has not had any in-depth conversations with Charlie because she'd understand how messed-up he has become psychologically in the years that followed his partner's death, and Chau's natural ability to relate to the material can't work in a movie where the script is this bad. Getting nominated for her scene-stealing work in The Menu would've been a better option.
Our final nominee is Kerry Condon, the "only woman in a cast of men" nomination that happens frequently with Supporting Actress, but here, she's given more to do than just reflect the male actors around her. Condon's work is kind of spectacular. In a film where so many around Padraic are trying to find their dreams (which unbeknownst to him, they've been giving up for his happiness), she's the one who understands that it might be worth at least trying. Her final scenes, when she has to balance the joy of breathing for the first time in years and the heartbreaking guilt of potentially abandoning her brother to the life of loneliness she's escaping is haunting, and the culmination of a movie-long side performance.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Bassett, besting Condon, Curtis, Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness), and Carey Mulligan (She Said), while BAFTA picked Condon against Bassett, Chau, Curtis, de Leon, & Mulligan. SAG copied Oscar's lineup exactly, including the winner, which does beg the question of who was in sixth place. I called this lineup exactly and this was less something I was proud of and more something where I was predicting the five frontrunners. De Leon's film doing well otherwise might mean it's her, and she's the safest supporting actress, but honestly-a crazy nomination like Jean Smart for Babylon was clearly an option here (as would be some of the plethora of supporting actresses in Women Talking). I will take theories in the comments.
Actors I Would Have Nominated: Given that both Glass Onion and Women Talking had multiple performances that deserved inclusion in this lineup, it's weird women in neither of these movies got any love.
Oscar’s Choice: The EEAAO sweep and one of the most impressive awards campaigns I've ever seen got Jamie Lee Curtis the win over Angela Bassett & Kerry Condon.
My Choice: My victor is Condon-her work is the best fit for her film, and has the best-constructed arch. Behind her (in order) are Hsu, Curtis, Bassett, & Chau.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you want to stay with the Final Girl getting her statue, or do you have time for the stage actress making good on the big screen? Do we think it was Condon or Bassett who was in second place (history will write it was Bassett, but I kind of think it was Condon giving that film's strength overall)? And who was our sixth place? Share your thoughts below!
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