Almost There: Jennifer Lopez in "Hustlers"
Friday, January 17, 2020 at 6:15PM "Almost There" is a new series about actors who were obviously close to an Oscar nomination but somehow missed. Here's Cláudio Alves...
Regarding this year's Oscar nominations, no snub hurt quite as much as Jennifer Lopez's absence in the Best Supporting Actress line-up. The long-time actress turned pop diva earned herself a small mountain of critic's honor for her performance in Hustlers, including the LAFCA trophy, as well as crucial precursor nominations like the Critics Choice Award, the Golden Globes, and the SAG. Still, when it was all said and done, the Academy preferred five other actresses over Lopez. If we consider Dern, Pugh, and Robbie as near locks, then her spot was either taken by Scarlett Johansson or Kathy Bates. While neither work is meritless, they've got nothing on JLo's sterling achievement.
Still, we're not here to lambast the Oscar's chosen nominees, but to celebrate one hell of an awards-worthy performance. So, join us as we explore the wonders and sing the praises of Jennifer Lopez's Ramona…
Even if Constance Wu's Dorothy is Hustlers' true protagonist, the movie's real star enters the story six minutes in, to the sound of Fionna Apple's Criminal while wearing the world's most revealing G-string. Jennifer Lopez couldn't have asked for a more bombastic entrance and, for what it's worth, the actress makes the most of it, dancing with gusto and the hard-earned effortlessness of a consummate professional of the pole. Her Ramona is a magnetic presence and even the film's cutting seems transfigured by her energy, abandoning long takes for fragmented blasts of erotic reverie. As she exits the stage, we hear her first of many memorable lines, delivered with perfection by Lopez: "Doesn't money make you horny?".
It's a formidable entrance and it would have been easy to keep Ramona as a force of nature, bigger than the world around her like the luminous movie stars of yore. However, neither the actress nor the filmmakers take the easy route and quickly switch modes with the characterization. Once she's up on the roof of the strip joint inviting Dorothy into her furs, Ramona is no longer a distant icon. Lopez injects matronly affection in her performance, modulating the sense of preternatural confidence and movie star magnetism without losing them or letting the audience see the seams of her acting choices. In two scenes, Ramona becomes one of 2019's most compelling characters.
As the two women find success, Lorene Scafaria peppers Hustlers with a panoply of beguiling montages, showing us their rise to wealth and security and making it fun for us to watch. Within these sequences, Lopez delineates the paradigms of Ramona's regular hustle, how she lets herself be goofy, open and friendly with her coworkers but puts on a mask of half-lidded seduction whenever a client's watching. They might dance on poles rather than deliver monologues on stage, but these women are actresses and Lopez knows how to illustrate this Matryoshka of performance within performance. Even better, when a poolside party brings Dorothy a new lover, there's a flash of ugliness in Ramona's frowned face. That little hint of petulance is a prelude to the reckless aggression she'll be willing to do on her criminal schemes.
This is a performance stock full of such moments. Lopez weaves a tapestry of sensual glamour and self-assurance that's stranded with hints of voracious hunger, possessiveness and, above all, unconditional love. To see those facets coalesce is to watch a spectacle like few others. Think of a tearful hug after years of separation, an impassionate pitch that spews venom at the monsters of Wall Street, the peaceful comfort of feuding friends during a funeral or the electric blend of fury and rueful adoration of an argument outside the police station. JLo does it all and makes it look easy.
Perhaps that's one of the troubles of this performance, awards-wise – it looks effortless. It's not the only factor contributing to its egregious snubbing, of course, but Oscar culture is obsessed with achievements that signal their difficulty. To win an Academy Award, an actor has to show how tremendous their efforts were to create the prize-winning performance, be it losing weight until your body looks like a fleshy skeleton or learning how to sing in the style of a dead celebrity. Jennifer Lopez does none of that, modulating her star persona and creating a character so believable she doesn't feel like a transformation. It's a full-bodied performance full of unexpected tenderness and moments of utmost genius, a singular achievement of movie-star acting that not only deserved a nomination but should have won.
Shame on the Academy for ignoring JLo!
Reader Comments (49)
Oscar likes their ladies as bland supportive wives/moms in this categorizing not scheming, confident, sexualized anti heroes. Sad.
I just realized the same thing happened to Matthew McConaughey in MAGIC MIKE. Amazing performance using pre sex appeal to sell it... Oscar is such a prude!!
Everyone refers to Florence Pugh as a lock, but was she? She missed noms from both the SAG and Golden Globes. Scarlet, on the other hand, was everywhere.
Two moments I loved from this, very smart, performance from J.Lo: when one of the older men pushes her off for someone younger, and she realizes her own financial stability is uncertain, and when turns around from the ATM.
And a third moment (throughout the film): the way she looks at other women when times are good and before she starts to turn. J. Lo plays those moments of being a mother and looking out for others beautifully.
"they've got nothing on JLo's sterling achievement"
Oh geez. Look, J Lo was good in the film, but to say that this was some sort of undeniable performance is just a pure exaggeration. She was not that much better, if at all, than any of the other nominees and potential nominees this year. She just happened to get a lot of the acclaim needed to make this look like a major snub. The pole dancing scene seems to be what got her ahead in the acclaim race to begin with.
I really never thought JLo's performance was anything but adequate. I feel the same about Dern. Her performance will be forgotten in short time. So many more performances deserved the spot. A weak field to choose from.
I love the fact that you've decided to pour salt into my wounds with every single article.
I appreciate your hard work the this site, Claudio, and especially your passion for film and the gracious way you field criticism. Please keep it up!
However, I still fail to get what's impressive about Jennifer Lopez's performance in HUSTLERS; I found her character work extremely subpar and the movie itself to be terrible.
I will be upset by this snub for the rest of my life. It’s such a shame. J Lo’s Ramona is a triumph.
I always enjoy J Lo in movies and I feel bad she missed the nomination. Based on critical acclaim and precursor run, she would be a deserving nominee.
That being said, I feel this performance is way overhyped. She always has presence in her movies and that's the case here. She is very entertaining and watchable and for once she is in a decent movie. I think she is very good but also a bit on surface level. For most of the movie, I think she is a bit one note although she is really really good in the last fifteen minutes or so.
The fact that this performance had its own analysis just baffles me. It's very good but not undeniable. There are many performances that missed this year nomination that deserve analysis than this. Hopefully there will be more articles on TFE on other missed performances beside this popular pick.
I don't think is the crowning acting achievement of the year but after so much nonsense music and film this is certainly hers and it was a shame she will probably never get a role like this again,She's my winner.
Bates took her spot but i'd give Scarlett the boot.
Personally, nothing hurt me more than at least two of the nominated actresses taking spots that should have gone to Lupita, Alfre or Mary Kay.
I admit to not being a fan of J-Lo as a person or in her film choices but not having her nominated really sucks. I think it would've at least validated her as an actress and would've made the Oscars far more interesting. The fact that she won a prize from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (which often makes great choices) at least is a major consolation. Let's just hope she gets the chance to do more roles like this and be more an actress and less of a movie star as she proved that in the mid-90s with films like Blood & Wine, Selena, U-Turn, and Out of Sight.
Glad JLo did not get a nomination. Would have been a waste of a valuable spot.
Thanks for helping me understand what it is about this performance that got people so excited.
I felt like it didn't really have the depth to make sense of some Ramona's leaps of trust later in the film, but maybe I'll find those layers in a rewatch.
The performance was great but The Academy was never gonna nominate it anyway. It is freaking JLo. She will never be respected enough as an actress or singer lol
Still think she's a lead.
As evidenced by a lot of these comments, there are probably just too many people who refused to watch this performance with an open mind due to who she is. If she manages to get another good role maybe she can get an IOU nom, then again she is following up with another romcom with Owen Wilson...
Oh, God, it burns. Still, J.Lo's reward is in heaven, which is where Ramona, Dallas et al will find their purchase, apparently.
Lol @ these hating comments. JLo is 10x better than all of the Best Supporting Actress nominees.
I hope she's an Oscar presenter and wears and over the top outfit like Cher. That way the next decent role she gets not only will be nominated but WIN.
The thing about her snub is that the Academy really had to go out of its way to do so. I hate the word "snub". but this feels like one through and through. They specifically decided this wasn't what they wanted in the face of all the evidence (reviews, box office, awards precursors, campaign) and chose Kathy Bates in a flop and Scarlett Johansson's second best performance of the year.. It's just silly. In however many years time (one year or twenty) we'll be talking about that performance. We definitely won't be talking about RICHARD JEWELL, please.
Great write up, Claudio.
Dern, Lopez, Robbie and Bates and Bening at some point... no one of these deliver a remarkable Oscar-nominated performance in this Best Supporting Actress race.
I was glad both Pugh and Johansson got nominated: they couldn't match Zhao Shuzhen's brilliance in THE FAREWELL or Taylor Russell's magnetic turn in WAVES but they are more deserving nominees than the (former) actual frontrunners.
JLo's performance in HUSTLERS will age well with Oscar folks mostly because she ended up snubed. If she got nominated it will be a "that's it". Now, people will recall her performance as Ramona as one of the most shocking Oscar snubs of the decade.
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For the "almost there series", I must suggest Andie MacDowell, Emily Blunt, Scarlett Johansson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey and Michael Fassbender
A great piece on this dazzling performance and why she deserved a nomination regardless about what you think of her celebrity.
And they just don’t love scheming strippers like they do goldhearted hookers. Natalie Portman, Amy Adams, Catherine Zeta-Jones are the only three I can think of in recent memory that struck their fancy. Portman and Adams were already respected talents and Zeta-Jones had Traffic goodwill plus she was in the Best Pic frontrunner. Hustlers needed heat in other categories for her to have really made this happen.
She was good, not great. Not sorry to see her left off the list tbh
I'm with the naysayers, somewhat. I thought JLo was good but not super-exceptional in Hustlers (and thought the movie itself was only just above-average). I would have been fine with her getting a nom (and would have been happier had she gotten in instead of Kathy Bates in Richard Jewell, mostly b/c I can't stand Clint Eastwood and his dreary films). For me it was much more painful that Lupita Nyongo was shut out of BA, as that was a truly riveting performance.
This is a very good but way too overhyped performance. JLo got what she deserved for trying to commit one of the worst case of category fraud.
Her screetime is over 53 mins (only 10 mins less than Wu), which is about 48% of the film (even when she's not on screen, all everyone talks about in the film is her!). According to Matthew Stewart's data, that's more than 9 of best actress winners in the last 20 years:
Colman: 49:48 / 41.72%
McDormand: 53:19 / 46.27%
Lawrence: 50:14 / 41.18%
Bullock: 55:54 / 43.55%
Winslet: 41:55 / 33.85%
Mirren: 47:15 / 45.74%
Witherspoon: 46:23 / 34.17%
Kidman: 23:30 / 20.49%
Berry: 49:13 / 44.05%
So sad for Jennifer!
A great perfomance, ignored by the members of the Academy.
I really admire Bates and Dern , but this year I say NO to them.
I was never a big fan of Johansson, so...
I say YES to Robbie, for Bombshell and OUATIH
I LOVED her performance. The achievement for me is that I totally believed Lopez as Ramona even though she is a superstar and is in every magazine. She just disappeared into the role. AMEN
Dern is jo amateurish in Marriage Story. Almost make my cry how rewarded she has been this award season. Are people really that blind??
I think that Dern is going to win and willl never ever be nominated again. Hopefully
I hope that Lopez is focusing on the positive things: she got rave reviews, showcasing her acting skills, 100 million dollar movie at the box office and rewarded. Mi latinia, please look head and keep working hard!
this performance wasn't top five for me, but i understand the importance of recognizing it at the oscars, and i think it's a shame it wasn't. for me, the contest would be between zhao shuzhen and cho yeo-jeong for the prize, but of course, the academy feels that only white people have emotions that matter...
"Regarding this year's Oscar nominations, no snub hurt quite as much as Jennifer Lopez's absence in the Best Supporting Actress line-up."
Nope. You need see some of the astonishing directorial efforts by women such as Lulu Wang's The Farewell, Greta Gerwig's Little Women, Marielle Heller's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Olivia Wilde's Booksmart, Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency and, yes, Lorene Scafaria's Hustlers to see how an AMPAS snub that fails to celebrate the artistic achievement of women behind the camera hurts the growth of a diverse vision in film.
i remain mystified by the love for this performance. no doubt she brings star wattage to the movie, but the performance to me feels like a lot of empty posturing...always playing AT a character. perhaps because she comes off so much more confident than constance wu (who is full-on terrible in the movie), she seems so strong in comparison? i felt lopez's performance, like the film itself, was awfully undercooked. but then none of the consensus choices this year are worth getting too excited about.
Peggy Sue -- I'm sorry. This piece was more about celebrating the performance than rubbing salt on the wound but I'm sorry if it upsets anyone, nonetheless.
Ryan Crowe -- Thank you for the compliments and for the feedback.
James -- I watched all of those films, except Clemency (no Portugueses distributor yet). I agree that many of those wonderful directors deserved nominations. I even wrote a piece about the merits of Lulu Wang's work in The Farewell. Still, I never really expected AMPAS to recognize them while I felt pretty safe about JLo. The absence of female directors was a hurtful and expected horror, but this snub was a shocking surprise. I'm sorry if you think I'm slighting those other achievements by spotlighting JLo's performance. It wasn't my intention, at all.
I love this performance, and it infuriates me that she didn't get nominated. "Shame on the Academy for ignoring JLo" - agreed. That said, Ms. Lopez is playing halftime at the SuperBowl and just announced that she's the spokesperson for the new Versace campaign. She'll be fine.
It's the other actors of color who got ignored that sting even more for me: Lupita, Awkwafina, Shuzhen, and the women of PARASITE in particular.
A worthy performance that was thankfully recognized by the Golden Globes. Good writeup, Cláudio!
James, a latina has not been nominated since Rosie Perez for FEARLESS. In the strange, convoluted, evolving history of diversity at the Oscars, women directors have a higher strike rate than latin women.
@Manuel: Your overbearing love for an average actress like Lopez and utter disdain for one of the greats like Dern is truly disgusting to witness.
The closest analog to this miss is Albert Brooks in DRIVE, which should be the next entry in the series.
I feel like every Oscar season, there's one performance/actress that I cling to and am thrilled as I watch their names called out. Sometimes, I'm lucky and there's more than one. Some years I'm not excited about any of them.
This year, JLo was that for me. Hustlers was one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the year - saw it twice in the theater. And I was so excited that she'd finally be validated in that way because she is an underrated actress, I think. She really wanted it. And she made this role look way easier than it actually is. This is a complex performance.
It feels so wrong that she was snubbed, for so many reasons. It feels so blatantly pretentious and snobby, but if they were actually pretentious and snobby, they would KNOW that this is the best supporting actress performance of the year, and her campaigning alone mixed with her star power should've been enough to get her in.
Anyway... it is what it is - I'm really glad she won the Los Angeles critics award, and I hope this noise over her snub propels another juicy part her way in the next couple of years, even if it's a damn biopic and she gets her nomination.
"this performance wasn't top five for me, but i understand the importance of recognizing it at the oscars, and i think it's a shame it wasn't."
That's what I'm saying. Even if it wasn't your cup of tea, it feels objectively fucked that they ignored it for so many reasons. Once you're that much of a frontrunner with precursors, you're that big of a star, and the campaign is that on point... it does feel a bit personal that she was snubbed. A big "fuck you."
That campaign was like... A+. It couldn't have been better strategized.
Whatever. The performance speaks for itself.
J.Lo's exclusion (along with Awkwafina, Lupita, Greta, Lulu, and Zhao) really took the excitement out of this season. I can either predict who will win or don't really care who does. This is a year where if I'm still awake, I will tune in at the end to see if Parasite won. I'll be happy with YouTube highlights the next day.
@Whunk - Dern is the better actress generally, but I thought Lopez was the better performance this time around in this particular competition. If this were a lifetime acting achievement award, I would agree that Lopez would not belong and that Dern would deserve all the plaudits, but then, her competition would be Kathy Bates in which case I would make the argument that Bates has an equal chance. But since it's about the performance for the past year in movies, Claudio praising Lopez's work isn't disgusting at all, it's merited. There are so many "average" actresses out there who peak at the right time for an Oscar nomination -- I don't see why Lopez and her defenders deserve your bile.
The closest comparison I can think of in terms of an Oscar near-miss, is Courtney Love in 'The People Vs. Larry Flynt'. Ace campaign, the right critics association groups and an amazing revelatory narrative that doesn't hurt, though Lopez was obviously an established talent well before 2019. It's a shame that Oscar never goes for these types of sexually uninhibited, adventoruous types-though the NYFCC tend to choose amaxzing winners (Maria Bello, Linda Fiorentino, Tiffany Haddish).
I think it's fair to say that the performance and the film are extremely overhyped. Maybe AMPAS voters didn't jive to a story about a group of narcissistic and entitled women committing crimes against people while disguising their actions as as desperate attempt at empowerment? Just a thought
It’s not my fav perf of the year but still I prefer it to almost all the five nominees and I agree that Jlo’s exclusion concurred to make these nominations less interesting or exciting
So the Roma actresses aren't Latina? Or Salma Hayek?
Or Fernanda Montenegro in Central do Brasil?
Puerto Ricans aren't the only Latinas.
Still undecided by Jennifer Lopez' performance. Just saw the film yesterday. It always takes me a couple of days to sort it out in my mind. Aside from Jennifer's performance, I thought the movie was quite uneven. The whole central part seemed like it was the same thing over and over, the strippers ripping off the Wall Streeters. I had to make myself finish the movie. And I never understood what Julia Stiles was doing in there.
Thank you on Julia Stiles!
Nice write-up. I really liked Hustlers, and I thought Lopez was absolutely fantastic.Going in, I was neutral on her--not a fan, not a hater. She knocked it out of the park. I respectfully disagree with those who felt this the performance lacked depth--I thought it was nuanced AND that she retained her star charisma. It's spectacularly lame that she was skipped over. Dern will be one of my least-favorite wins in this category in quite some time.
J-Lo will always be the supporting actress Oscar winner of 2019 in my eyes. The biased opinions of that shitty, racist, sexist, and homophobic Academy won't change that. YAY J-LO!!!
C’mon, Sex sells, I thought that the film was horrible, a disgusting show of objectivity in women. It had some points, but if women want respect that’s not the way to get it. Also the Super Bowl was disgusting and crass. What kind of parent let’s their daughter participate in such a vulgar show. And what about children at the game. That is a horrible example for young people. I don’t understand you people who think this is ok. It’s adult entertainment let’s keep it where it belongs.
Look, she was robbed. What an electrifying movie star performance. And as much as I love Dern, that win is going to age horribly.