by Nathaniel R
It’s strange to be entering an Oscar season where the Best Actor competition *might* be more thrilling than the Best Actress race. This never happens. At least not to us here at TFE where actresses are sacred and actors are, um, glorified seat-fillers...
Back in our April Fools predictions early in the year we predicted that this would be the first year where we ever have a majority minority Best Actress lineup but some time on now, the tide has shifted away from our history-making hunch of (Cynthia/Alfre/Jodie) enough to prompt an interesting article from Mark Harris in Vanity Fair last week about the “default” punditry surrounding the Best Actress category.
Just as that article was happening, though, we began to have faith in Lupita Nyong’o’s hardworking Oscar campaign for her very deserving performance in Us enough to predict it, showing Saoirse Ronan the door. But then, as if to mock our wishful Lupita thinking, a day or two later the reviews for Little Women suggest that Saoirse might have an easy in.
On the other hand (Oscar nomination guesswork is such a rollercoaster) the best thing we can say about the new Little Women, though this won’t help Saoirse, is that it’s radical enough to be less obsessed with Jo than previous versions. Yes, Jo is still “the lead” but Greta Gerwig’s version comes at the story from enough new vantage points that Jo is suddenly a part of a community rather than the whole show. Aunt March, Amy, Laurie, and even Friedrich all get richer characterizations than usual. So we shall see.
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