Gotham Awards Revue: The Breakthrough Performer Category

by Nick Taylor

Sebiye Behtiyar in Bing Liu's PREPARATIONS FOR THE NEXT LIFE | © Amazon MGM Studios

First, I’m bummed I wasn’t able to see Preparation for the Next Life before this article was published. Hopefully the film and Sebiye Behtiyar’s performance will raise my baseline appreciation of the Gotham Awards’ choices even further. I also have no idea if anyone notably missed out, what with the Gotham’s broad eligibility requirements and my lack of awareness about this year’s major debuts. Miles Caton in Sinners, Cary Christopher in Weapons, and... I don’t know! With these caveats in mind, I still say they’ve kicked off the year with a solid Breakthrough Actor category.

All four of these performers help to serve and strengthen their films, and I look forward to seeing them again on the silver screen...

HIGHEST 2 LOWEST, Spike Lee | © A24

A$AP Rocky, Highest 2 Lowest

The lone supporting performance nominated in this category, A$AP Rocky has a lot of narrative buildup before we meet his clandestine kidnapper. So many questions hang over King’s scenes with Yung Felon. Should he annihilate his foe, and if so, how? What would justice actually look like to either of these men, before we even consider the friends, family, and business partners in their orbit? Is David grateful to this man for awakening his long-dormant capacities as a power player across multiple avenues of his life? Does he see Yung Felon as a missed opportunity he can make right, a younger version of himself, or an antithesis to his own ambitions? A$AP undoubtedly benefits from Spike Lee and Denzel Washington approaching Yung Felon with their most layered work across all of Highest 2 Lowest, though this sort of force could easily bulldoze a less capable performer. 

So thank goodness he thrives under so much pressure. A$AP Rocky responds to the narrative weight of his role by distilling an impenetrable, bullish arrogance, entirely opposite to Tsutomu Yamazaki’s piercing breakdown as the kidnapper in High and Low. The actor, carrying as much cultural caché in his version of Black stardom to his field and his era as Spike Lee and Denzel do as film stars, is prismatic and engrossing in his two scenes opposite Washington. He seductively posits himself as the future of the music industry choosing to offer David the chance to join in his upcoming rise while bluntly reframing his crimes as stepping stones soon to be outweighed by his success. A$AP acts as if he holds all the cards in his negotiations, daring the audience to wonder if he’s right and giving the question of David’s ultimate choice more weight than a lesser actor could have provided. It’s a great, controlled performance, one Highest 2 Lowest needed to nail to stick the landing as well as it does.

Also, lovely to see him in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You as the closest thing to a friend Rose Byrne’s spiraling mother can handle. Great one-two punch for A$AP’s charisma in very different roles. Hopefully he’ll get a leading vehicle soon. 

Highest 2 Lowest is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, Paul Thomas Anderson | © Warner Bros.

Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another

Hands down the most seismically received acting breakthrough of the year. The high profile of One Battle After Another’s huge money-making release, its sheer cultural proliferation, her own radiance doing interviews and red carpet events, and her insanely cool name have given her a tremendously high profile. She’s got a lot playing in her favor already, which makes the steely, watchful naturalism of her turn all the more impressive to behold. Infiniti is every bit as resourceful and commanding as the A-list cast she’s sharing the screen with, giving perhaps the most naturalistic performance of OBAA’s main cast. The meta-narrative of Infiniti having to prove herself against so many big Hollywood names is a great spine to Willa’s own self-actualization and tests of strength. It’s no mean feat to face down Sean Penn’s purposefully mannered psychopath, tasked with projecting such ire, resistance, and gear-turning craftiness while being physically restrained, and still emerge as every bit his equal in a diametrically opposed style of screen acting.

I’ve seen plenty of folks critical of Warner Bros. campaigning her for Best Actress at the Oscars, akin to Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon as a tough, observant, imperiled woman fighting for her life opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. Although I walked out of the theater both times wondering how One Battle After Another might’ve accommodated more of Willa in the first two hours (I’d have loved to spend more time with her and Deandra in the van hashing out Perfidia’s legacy), I think it’s a fair categorization justified in spades by the performance itself. Infiniti is such a sparkling screen presence, having to register for the audience as a normal teen girl and a trained activist suddenly plunged into a world she hasn’t taken seriously of late. She’s so utterly plausible at every step of Willa’s journey. I will let other writers be even more hyped about her performance, which does everything PTA needs from her, but I look forward to seeing her take center stage in a film very, very soon.

One Battle After Another is currently available to buy or rent on most major streaming platforms, and can probably be watched in its entirety via clips circulating social media.

SOULEYMANE'S STORY, Boris Lojkine | © Kino Lorber

Abou Sangare, Souleymane’s Story

If Infiniti was every bit the expected nominee, I was absolutely stunned to see anyone remember Abou Sangaré, giving one of the year’s very best performances in Souleymane’s Story. The film follows a Guinean immigrant trying to prepare for his asylum application interview while biking across Paris to deliver meals. Every day he races across the city, pushing his body to meet a demanding schedule of deliveries and meetings, trying to stay afloat of the different agencies and individuals who demand he report to them. Souleymane’s fate is especially intertwined with the actions of two other African immigrants who have made it in Paris. One, Emmanuel (Emmanuel Yovine), runs the profile Souleymane is using for meal delivery work and therefore receives all the money he earns, only sharing half. The other is Barry (Alpha Oumar Sow), an educator who is holding Souleymane’s papers until he gets paid for coaching him through a rote backstory he claims is much more sympathetic to your average OFPRA employee than Souleymane’s real lived experience. 

It’s not really hyperbolic to assert Souleymane’s Story lives and dies on the strength of Sangaré’s performance. Frankly, it might be underselling his contributions. Sangaré was selected by writer/director Boris Lojkine and casting director Aline Dalbis from an open casting call, conducted as part of their research on the struggles of Guinean immigrants. Lojkine worked with Sangaré to incorporate his personal history into the final script, most notably making the real story Souleymane reveals in the climactic final sequence very close to the actor’s own reasons for moving to France. Sangaré’s willingness to pour so much of himself into the film is very brave, and Lojkine’s skill at utilizing his star’s personal history without becoming clinical, exploitative, or sentimental rewards that bravery completely.

Sangaré contributes a feat of moment-to-moment physical legibility and psychological transparency which singlehandedly justifies Boris Lojkine’s Dardennes-esque style of street realism. He has to blend in with dozens of other delivery men in crowd shots while still communicating gears turning in Souleymane’s head, often planning for his next assignment or worrying about one of the many obstacles waiting in his immediate future. There’s little time for retrospection, only the urgency to make enough money, pay off this alleged ally, rehearse “his” story in his head over and over. The way his entire body locks down when confronted by cops trying to extort a free meal is just as poignant as a scene of him video chatting with his sister, his face only lit only by his phone. Everything Sangaré contributes in his asylum interview (with great support from Nina Meurisse) is among the year's very best acting, as he releases all of the personal turmoil and fraught history he's been taught to surpress. It's an emotionally walloping culmination of a performance heretofore defined by carefully gauged expressiveness, and I really hope he wins this award.

The fact that this film helped Sangaré finally secure French citizenship is absolutely the more important achievement, but this kind of industry love and future opportunities to further his art should he wish to pursue acting further would be so richly deserving. 

Souleymane’s Story is currently available to buy or rent on Apple TV and Amazon.

KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, Bill Condon | © Lionsgate

Tonatiuh, Kiss of the Spider Woman 

Everything that makes Kiss of the Spider Woman an ambitious but uneven experience is reflected in Tonatiuh’s central performance. I don’t necessarily see a lot of subtext in how they negotiate the duplicities and fantasies Luis Molina is wielding, but I also don’t get the impression of Condon providing real support for his three central performers to embroider their tricky characters. Maybe Tonatiuh’s greenness in front of a movie camera gives Molina’s own uncertain steps as a double agent some intriguing tension, maybe I’m grasping at anything to make me excited across the first hour. Tonatiuh’s a solid screen presence, and their rapport with Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez is quite nice, but not a lot lands as uniquely triumphant even as things improve.

What Tonatiuh has in spades is a total allegiance to Molina’s romanticism, their slow but tangible political awakening, and with the explicitly genderqueer re-imagining of a character whose identity has often been underexplored. Miraculously, and in concert with Condon’s script, Molina and Tonatiuh convincingly accrue an emotional resonance as Kiss of the Spider Woman hurtles towards romantic tragedy in the second hour. As Molina embraces revolution, and the film gives her the room to really embrace her identity as a woman, Tonatiuh makes the character’s final choices resonate far more than I had expected. “Her name is Molina” is a deeply moving send-off for the character, and even more so for the performer. 

Kiss of the Spider Woman is currently available to buy or rent on most major streaming platforms, hopefully for longer than it was screened in theaters.

The Gotham Awards will be held on December 1. Stay tuned for more coverage of the various nominees, reviews galore.