OVP: In America (2003)

Film: In America (2003)
Stars: Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger, Djimon Hounsou
Director: Jim Sheridan
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actress-Samantha Morton, Supporting Actor-Djimon Hounsou, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're double-dipping today and completing our Best Actress quintet of performances with a fairly recent one (a movie tied for the most recent film I haven't seen in the Best Actress category, in fact).  In 2003, the Best Actress category was crazy.  At the time, no single lead female performance had been nominated at the BAFTA's, SAG's, and Globes (a year later, due to eligibility window rules this wouldn't be entirely true when Charlize Theron would be cited for Monster), and most assumed that other than Theron & Diane Keaton that it was anyone's game, with stars ranging from Uma Thurman to Naomi Watts to Jennifer Connelly all the way to a double-dip of Scarlett Johansson (in Girl with a Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation) causing category confusion.  Oscar didn't disappoint on nomination morning, choosing to cite Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider (a performance treated throughout the season as a supporting turn) and Samantha Morton, four years after her Academy debut for the small immigration tale In America.

(Spoilers Ahead) Morton plays Sarah Sullivan, who with her husband Johnny (Considine) have moved to New York so that Johnny can try his luck at acting.  The two are raising two young girls (the Bolgers), and all are mourning the death of their son Frankie, who died after a brain tumor was discovered when he fell down a flight of stairs.  The family lives in abject poverty in a tenement frequented by drug addicts, and a reclusive artist named Mateo (Hounsou) who is initially off-putting but eventually befriends the female members of the family (Johnny seems more apprehensive).  As the film progresses, we learn Mateo is fighting for his life in a losing battle with AIDS, and Sarah is pregnant, but is not expected to carry the baby to term.  The two stories cross when Mateo dies, leaving the surprise trust fund he has to pay off Sarah's doctor's bills, and both she and their new child are able to survive, with Johnny finally able to mourn his son who died.

The movie's more hopeful than I just described, though the script is about as sentimental as you can imagine.  The screenplay doesn't do a great job of grounding the movie.  Sarah & Johnny frequently are put through repetitive scenes, and Johnny-as-written suffers from mood swings that read like "we're going to make him feel this way because it helps the script" and not very organic.  The character worries oftentimes about money, and yet in a climactic scene bets the entire family's rent to win an ET doll for his daughter.  There's not a lot of logic to the characters, and the ending is really convenient (the dying man living in ruins is sitting on a gigantic $30,000 trust fund?).

This is all a pity as Considine & Morton are both giving compelling performances, particularly the former.  His Johnny is a man who has the confidence to pursue a dream he feels slightly too old to pursue (he's 30 and moving his family around the world to pursue a pipe dream?), and that pride is felt in every movement that Johnny brings to his character, whether he's having playful sex with his wife or confronting his neighbor or accosting a mugger.  It's a terrific bit of work.  Morton is good, too, though she doesn't add as much to the character (this role 100% would be considered supporting today, for the record-she's gone for stretches of the movie).  I loved the scene where she accuses Johnny of "killing" his son because they found out about the tumor-Morton plays her character not as insane or angry, but as someone desperate to find a place to pour the hurt she experienced by losing her child into, even if no one is to blame.

Hounsou is not in the same league as the other two.  His Mateo is intriguing, but he reveals little of the character, and fails in the movie's big moments.  The sequence where Johnny accuses him of being in love with Sarah, and Mateo replies that he's "in love with you" (meant to be Johnny) is meant to be played for laughs or shock value, but it just feels super flat, as if we haven't already guessed that he is gay, and that they were going to find a way to tell us that story (he is not, for the record, in love with Johnny, but in love with the normalcy of their family).  Hounsou at the time was a pretty big character actor, and had already missed out on a major potential nomination for Amistad, so I get why this happened, but it's another uninspiring citation in a 2003 Best Supporting Actor field full of them.