Team FYC: Obvious Child for Best Picture
Tuesday, December 9, 2014 at 3:00PM Editor's Note: We're nearing the end of our individually chosen FYC's for various longshots in the Oscar / Globe / SAG race. We'll never repeat a film or a category so we hope you enjoy the variety of picks. And if you're lucky enough to be a voter, take note! Here's Matthew Eng on "Obvious Child". (Do you think it can swing a Globe nod?)
In the category of “Movies That I’m Thrilled Even Exist,” Obvious Child would easily take the cake this year, without question. Writer-director Gillian Robespierre, in the first of a hopefully long line of complex, female-focused comedies, has crafted a film that takes such confident and unfussily righteous pride in its pro-abortion stance, all the more crucial considering the efforts still being made to demonize and outlaw the act.
Working with co-writers Karen Maine and Elisabeth Holm, and in tandem with the warm, witty, and wondrously empathetic efforts of redoubtable leading lady Jenny Slate, Robespierre has produced a near-rarity: a romcom heroine we can believe in. [More...]
Stand-up comedienne Donna Stern—faced with sudden singledom and an unceremonious pregnancy—is very much a mess, but her problems aren’t artificially adorable or superficially solvable, nor are they problems that exclusively define her. Slate and Robespierre are united in envisioning Donna as a woman carefully re-evaluating her place in the world (personally, interpersonally, and professionally), who is deciding what she does (and doesn't) want to be both to herself and to others, and who is realizing, slowly but surely, that sometimes the best choice a person can make is to surround herself with the best possible people.
How wonderfully generous then that a film centered around the very solitary achievement of stand-up comes intact with a small but credible network of friends, family, and one nervous sweetheart of a suitor. Gabe Liedman’s chummy fellow comic is a perfect match for Donna’s sly brand of sarcasm, while Gaby Hoffman’s gloriously fleshed-out gal pal is a reliable support system and a believable human being with her own clear-cut opinions and personal wealth of knowledge. There’s the father (Richard Kind) who’s a dependable source of comfort and the mother (Polly Draper, crisply fusing coolness and compassion) who’s more a dependable source of critique, but who is still able to surprise with her own unexpected encouragement and experience. And then there’s Jake Lacy’s Max, the poignantly Plain Jim love interest who doesn’t come valiantly riding in on a white horse, but who instead waits cautiously across the street, bashfully holding a pre-abortion bouquet.
Yes, Obvious Child is inextricable from the topic of abortion, and thankfully so. But the real greatness of the film lies in the way that Robespierre has so skillfully and sensitively managed to both deepen and extend the underlying narrative event of her film into a hysterically heartfelt meditation on the beauty of choice, which manages to carry over even further into the tender, thoughtful filmmaking of the entire endeavor.
In a year full of virtuosic stylizations, the straightforward seasonal photography and low-key living spaces of Robespierre’s clearly tight-budgeted filmmaking feel fitting in their winsomely modest presentation of a modern-day Brooklyn without the usual hipster-skewing (or skewering) bullshit. It’s a film as committed and courageous in its resonant political leanings as it is comfy in look and feel. Its characters convincingly live, work, and stumble here, without once becoming caricatures of spoiled, unwitting adulthood, although it of course helps to have such a graciously selfless ensemble batting around wisecracks that are uproarious because of their character-specific precision ("You're dizzy because you played Russian roulette with your vagina!"). Jenny Slate’s offbeat magnificence has surely guaranteed this small-scale film a longer-than-expected shelf-life, but this Obvious Child is a gleaming and well-rounded gem all its own.
It exists. Beautifully, subversively, and hilariously so.
Reader Comments (8)
YES. 100% YES.
I don't know about BEST PICTURE, but I fully, fully support Jenny Slate for Best Actress.
Thank you for this series. I hope there are others taking note of it as so many really good films/performances miss the attention they deserve because they don't end up on a ballot.
Nice call. It may well be in my top 5 of the year - it's certainly in my top 9. And how I dearly wish Slate could get a Best Actress nomination.
I know Jenny has no chance but I've started praying anyway.
I could easily see this getting into Best Original Screenplay... IF there was a huge groundswell of support from critics' groups (which there hasn't been) or the Globes (unlikely). And given how thin the category is, I don't understand why more people aren't talking up Gaby Hoffman in Best Supporting Actress - she's a breath of fresh air and creates a fully realized character out of what could oh so easily be a stock "best friend" role.
I'm still confused regarding what category this film's screenplay is being campaigned for, A24's FYC page for this lists it as Original despite the fact that it was based on a short film which would place it under Adapted (just like Sling Blade and District 9, 2 films previously nominated in that category that were also based on short films). At least Whiplash, which is being campaigned for Original, has an excuse with the feature script having been already written (and even placing in the Black List) before the short film was made (which was based on a small chunk of the script itself). And with the Original Screenplay category as crowded as it is, I think it would make a bigger and better impact in Adapted.
Obvious Child is one of my favorites of the years. I know it's a long shot, but I would absolutely LOVE it if Jenny Slate got a nomination.