by Camila Henriques
One thing I love to do each award season is to scan through the connections between the films and nominees. That sighting of Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix at the Golden Globes transported me immediately back to 2005's Walk the Line. Amongst this year’s Oscar nominees, though, the connection that has me most nostalgic is one between two category mates: Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce, competing with each other in Best Actor, are finally Academy Award nominees.
They have a past together in Argentina, the same country that gave us Pope Francis, played so delightfully by Pryce. More than two decades ago, Pryce played another famous Argentinian, former president Juan Peron in the Alan Parker/Andrew Lloyd Webber/Madonna extravaganza that was Evita. That movie also featured Spanish heartthrob Banderas, fresh off a successful transition from being the quintessential Almodóvar man to Hollywood player, with talked about turns in Philadelphia and Desperado. He'd become an even bigger international star with Evita...
Antonio, Madonna, Jonathan
In Evita, Pryce and Banderas don't get any true scenes together. Antonio’s character, Che, is a narrator that floats from scene to scene. They do appear in the same frame, but there’s no interaction. The British Pryce does a fairly competent job as Peron, but Evita is truly the Madonna and (to a lesser extent) Antonio show. The Spaniard has the charisma and the voice to lead the story and one can only wonder what he could have done in the film versions of The Phantom of The Opera and Nine, as he would have been a much more appropriate casting option for both films.
Antonio congratulating Madonna during her Globe winBanderas scored a Globe nomination for Evita. The HFPA, as we all remember, awarded Madonna for her performance (I personally loved her work as Eva Perón). Pryce didn’t get any traction for the movie - in fact, his film work has been generally overlooked by awards bodies, with the exception of the Cannes Film Festival, for the previous year's Carrington. He was also nominated at the BAFTAs for that Christopher Hampton film that paired him with Emma Thompson.
This is all a long way of saying it's so great and fitting to see both actors finally get their Oscar due: Pryce by going back to Argentina; And Antonio with a career-best turn in a film guided by the man that discovered him and gave him a big chunk of his most memorable roles.
Now for the most important question: who will Madonna vote for? We here at TFE think she still has that soft spot for Antonio.