The Academy should be eager to welcome new faces to its nominees list. Here is why these three leading ladies (should!) have a shot at awards glory.
Emily Blunt, “The Girl on the Train” (Universal Pictures)
First-person novels are always difficult to adapt for the big screen, so director Tate Taylor had his work cut out for him with Paula Hawkins’ bestselling thriller “The Girl on the Train.” Luckily, he cast the equivalent of a trump card: the reliably wonderful Blunt.
But Rachel, the story’s obsessive, alcoholic, unstable divorcée, may not seem like a match for an actor known for exquisite poise. Skeptics wondered if Blunt could inhabit such a character, often described as “puffy,” “blotchy,” and “frumpy.” While there’s no denying her beauty at first glance, Blunt gradually reveals a bone-deep ugliness, her mannerisms—cloudy eyes, slurred words, the tendency to stare at her own reflection with disgust—resembling an open wound. With little help from makeup or costuming, she grounds Rachel in her alcoholism, rendering its effects with all-too-believable revulsion. When the character’s focus is sharpened by the disappearance of a woman she watches every day from the train’s window, Blunt depicts the torturous process of trying, in fits and starts, to sober up.
In fact, amid the narrative chaos of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and tightly edited reveals, Blunt’s performance keeps the film on its rails. The Academy has, inconceivably, failed to ever recognize the actor’s talents. While a pulpy thriller may not capture voters’ attention, here’s hoping Blunt continues to book roles that highlight her astonishing range. —Jack Smart
Isabelle Huppert, “Elle” (Sony Pictures Classics)
In France’s official submission for the foreign-language Oscar, Huppert gives an Oscar-worthy performance of terrifying calculation and resilience. She stars in director Paul Verhoeven’s “Elle” as Michèle Leblanc, a video game executive and, as established to excruciating effect in the film’s opening scene, a rape victim. But where many women would immediately dial 911, Michèle instead cleans herself off and heads to a dinner date with friends. “I suppose I was raped,” she admits mid-order. It’s not the only surprise Huppert and her Michèle have in store.
Verhoeven has never before shied away from society’s taboos and crudeness, and he’s not about to start now. At once a psychosexual thriller, a familial melodrama, a societal satire, and a comedy of kink, his “Elle” leaps unexpectedly from one genre to the next, and Huppert is with him every step of the way. She flips our collective expectation of a rape victim on its head to build a case for the inherent contradictions and complexities of sexual desire. When her assailant returns, for instance, she looks up at him while pinned to the floor, daring and wanting him to “do it.” Huppert, whose award season chances have improved with her recent Independent Spirit Award nomination, doesn’t miss a beat through the script’s twists and turns. She’s electrifying. —Benjamin Lindsay
Ruth Negga, “Loving” (Focus Features)
Negga has an uncanny ability to bring a sense of regality to even the most mundane depictions of life. As Mildred Loving, a housewife, mother, and one-half of a couple who would go on to change the course of history, the actor is captivating in her yearslong depiction of a woman who takes what life in 1950s Virginia throws her way—until she doesn’t. Based on the true story of the Lovings—an interracial couple whose court case overturned state laws against racial segregation within matrimony—Negga’s Mildred is a pillar of strength through trying times, including being jailed, leaving her family behind, and calling upon lawyers for help despite her husband’s reluctance. Her chemistry with her co-star and onscreen husband Joel Edgerton, as Richard Loving, is palpable and underscores the true drive behind this accidental civil rights story: the right to love whomever the heart chooses. The Focus Features film directed and written by Jeff Nichols is never flashy, making space for the quiet subtleties of Negga’s richly rendered performance.
“Loving” picked up a Palme d’Or nomination at the Cannes Film Festival in May and thrust Negga and Edgerton (both nominated for Gotham Awards, and Negga for an Indie Spirit, as well) to the forefront of the awards conversation. It’s a well-deserved position in a season fraught with remarkable performances. —Briana Rodriguez
Find your career-making film role with our film audition listings!