Oscar Chances: Supporting Actress - Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)
Maybe the most pleasant surprise of this Oscar season is the arrival of Zoe Saldaña as a powerhouse performer. She's a revelation in Emilia Pérez. From the second she appears onscreen, she electrifies the film. It's not just her performance, but also the high degree of difficulty -- various styles of singing and dancing, a dizzying gamut of emotions, and serving as the audience's proxy, constantly trying to make sense of the increasingly maddening situations. She's the reason the film works (for the few of us that think the film does work, anyway.)
She's mostly known for crayon-colored, CGI-franchise fluff, both good and bad (the first installments of Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean) and the bad (all the sequels), with no end in sight. (Only three more Avatar films to go, if we're lucky.) And while that's been good for her pocketbook (and her agent), it's largely been a waste of her talent. This role is more reminiscent of her gritty work in 2004's underseen and underrated Haven, one of the first movies I saw her in.
She is the runaway favorite in this race, and also my personal pick. But lamentably, she's in the wrong race altogether. Category manipulation is nothing new, but the fact that she's in the Supporting category is a joke. Despite not being the title character, she's clearly the film's engine. Had she campaigned as Lead Actress, I think she'd win there too.
Regardless, she's the star. And soon, she'll have an Oscar to prove it.
