What Cannes 2019 Tells Us About the Oscar Race

[+ WilliamM]

What Cannes 2019 Tells Us About the Oscar Race

 

 

 

BY RICHARD LAWSON Vanity Fair

MAY 24, 2019

 

 

As this year’s Cannes Film Festival comes to a close, it’s time to stop and consider that most urgent of cinematic questions: is any of this stuff gonna win an Oscar? The answer is, as ever, who knows! But we can at least suss out a few awards narratives that have emerged here on the Croisette—starting with a crowd-pleaser hoping to replicate another music biopic’s success.

A Biopic Repeat?

 

One of the buzziest films screening at Cannes this year was the out-of-competition entry Rocketman, Dexter Fletcher’s musical biopic about the trials and tribulations of Elton John. The iconic singer-songwriter is played by Taron Egerton, who cries, yells, and maybe most important, performs his own vocals. That gives him a slight leg up on last year’s Oscar best-actor winner, Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury in the runaway smash Bohemian Rhapsody even though he was mostly dubbed over in the music sequences. Rocketman comes out in the U.S. next week, months before the traditional awards season begins. Which could be a hindrance—unless Rocketman is a box-office smash and locks Egerton in early. Either way, Egerton will be considered in a new light after the movie is released. So, if he doesn’t get awards attention for this strong performance, he ought to have more opportunities soon.

Antonio’s Turn

 

Though he’s been in the business for decades doing stuff people like (and looking good while doing it), Antonio Banderas has never been nominated for an Oscar. That could change when Academy voters see Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, in which Banderas plays a version of the famed Spanish director as he faces something of a later-life crisis. It’s not a terribly flashy performance, but our sources on the ground here in Cannes tell us that distributor Sony Pictures Classics is going to launch a real campaign for Banderas. As any of the dozens of well-wishers who approached Banderas at this year’s Vanity Fair party in Cannes could tell you, he’s great in a room, which can often be the X factor that pushes a contender to victory. (See Redmayne, Eddie.) There’s also the narrative that both Banderas and Almodóvar are due for recognition, which works in Pain and Glory’s favor—though of course, the fact that it’s a Spanish-language film could be a hindrance. Still, the Academy saw fit to nominate Penélope Cruz for Almodóvar’s Volver, so the same could easily be true for Banderas.

 

The Hollywood Hagiography

 

There was no bigger film at Cannes this year than Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, the lauded writer-director’s love letter to a bygone age of showbiz and Angeleno life. The Academy loves movies about those two things, and they love Tarantino, so O.U.A.T.I.H. should ride its wave of praise here to some serious Oscar consideration—if it can survive the inevitable (and not undeserved) onslaught of think pieces criticizing its approach to gender, race, and violence. Leading the awards charge will be the film’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who both give true grade-A movie star performances. My mostly baseless hunch is that Pitt will be run in supporting in the interest of spreading the wealth, as the Academy grows increasingly inured to the practice of category fraud. (He might face some competition there from another Cannes player, Willem Dafoe, whose bonkers, blustery turn in The Lighthousemay catch voter attention.) O.U.A.T.I.H.’s biggest hurdle at this point is that it’s being released in July instead of in the fall. But that matters a lot less than it used to in the old days.

Where Are the Women?

 

This has been an awfully male-centric Cannes for awards-predicting purposes, because we sadly don’t live in a world where Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel are likely to be nominated for their stunning work in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire.That exquisite masterwork will at least be in the running for best international feature (the category formerly known as best foreign film), if France picks it as their candidate. Beyond that, we had high hopes for Isabelle Huppert in Ira Sachs’s Frankie—but while she’s wonderful as ever in that film, it’s probably too small to get real awards traction.

 

Though we sincerely hope South Korea gets its first-ever international film nomination for Bong Joon Ho’s terrific class struggled tragicomedy Parasite, we don’t think that film’s standout actress, Cho Yeo Jeong, has a chance in the hunt. Nor does O.U.A.T.I.H.’s Margot Robbie, mostly because she doesn’t speak much in the film—a fact that has caused some consternation here, which has, in turn, frustrated Tarantino. Maybe all that controversy could lead to support for Robbie making the best of what she’s given, but that seems like a long shot.

 

 

 

 

Of course, all of these could be long shots, but with a Sundance lineup this year that didn’t produce a ton of Oscar hopefuls, maybe Cannes has been the real starting point for the race. Stay tuned to VF.com and our awards podcast Little Gold Men for all the latest on this year’s path to glory—and to pain.

 

 

[+ E.T.Bass]

What Cannes 2019 Tells Us About the Oscar Race

 

 

 

BY RICHARD LAWSON Vanity Fair

MAY 24, 2019

 

 

As this year’s Cannes Film Festival comes to a close, it’s time to stop and consider that most urgent of cinematic questions: is any of this stuff gonna win an Oscar? The answer is, as ever, who knows! But we can at least suss out a few awards narratives that have emerged here on the Croisette—starting with a crowd-pleaser hoping to replicate another music biopic’s success.

A Biopic Repeat?

 

One of the buzziest films screening at Cannes this year was the out-of-competition entry Rocketman, Dexter Fletcher’s musical biopic about the trials and tribulations of Elton John. The iconic singer-songwriter is played by Taron Egerton, who cries, yells, and maybe most important, performs his own vocals. That gives him a slight leg up on last year’s Oscar best-actor winner, Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury in the runaway smash Bohemian Rhapsody even though he was mostly dubbed over in the music sequences. Rocketman comes out in the U.S. next week, months before the traditional awards season begins. Which could be a hindrance—unless Rocketman is a box-office smash and locks Egerton in early. Either way, Egerton will be considered in a new light after the movie is released. So, if he doesn’t get awards attention for this strong performance, he ought to have more opportunities soon.

Antonio’s Turn

 

Though he’s been in the business for decades doing stuff people like (and looking good while doing it), Antonio Banderas has never been nominated for an Oscar. That could change when Academy voters see Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, in which Banderas plays a version of the famed Spanish director as he faces something of a later-life crisis. It’s not a terribly flashy performance, but our sources on the ground here in Cannes tell us that distributor Sony Pictures Classics is going to launch a real campaign for Banderas. As any of the dozens of well-wishers who approached Banderas at this year’s Vanity Fair party in Cannes could tell you, he’s great in a room, which can often be the X factor that pushes a contender to victory. (See Redmayne, Eddie.) There’s also the narrative that both Banderas and Almodóvar are due for recognition, which works in Pain and Glory’s favor—though of course, the fact that it’s a Spanish-language film could be a hindrance. Still, the Academy saw fit to nominate Penélope Cruz for Almodóvar’s Volver, so the same could easily be true for Banderas.

 

The Hollywood Hagiography

 

There was no bigger film at Cannes this year than Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, the lauded writer-director’s love letter to a bygone age of showbiz and Angeleno life. The Academy loves movies about those two things, and they love Tarantino, so O.U.A.T.I.H. should ride its wave of praise here to some serious Oscar consideration—if it can survive the inevitable (and not undeserved) onslaught of think pieces criticizing its approach to gender, race, and violence. Leading the awards charge will be the film’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, who both give true grade-A movie star performances. My mostly baseless hunch is that Pitt will be run in supporting in the interest of spreading the wealth, as the Academy grows increasingly inured to the practice of category fraud. (He might face some competition there from another Cannes player, Willem Dafoe, whose bonkers, blustery turn in The Lighthousemay catch voter attention.) O.U.A.T.I.H.’s biggest hurdle at this point is that it’s being released in July instead of in the fall. But that matters a lot less than it used to in the old days.

Where Are the Women?

 

This has been an awfully male-centric Cannes for awards-predicting purposes, because we sadly don’t live in a world where Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel are likely to be nominated for their stunning work in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire.That exquisite masterwork will at least be in the running for best international feature (the category formerly known as best foreign film), if France picks it as their candidate. Beyond that, we had high hopes for Isabelle Huppert in Ira Sachs’s Frankie—but while she’s wonderful as ever in that film, it’s probably too small to get real awards traction.

 

Though we sincerely hope South Korea gets its first-ever international film nomination for Bong Joon Ho’s terrific class struggled tragicomedy Parasite, we don’t think that film’s standout actress, Cho Yeo Jeong, has a chance in the hunt. Nor does O.U.A.T.I.H.’s Margot Robbie, mostly because she doesn’t speak much in the film—a fact that has caused some consternation here, which has, in turn, frustrated Tarantino. Maybe all that controversy could lead to support for Robbie making the best of what she’s given, but that seems like a long shot.

 

 

 

 

Of course, all of these could be long shots, but with a Sundance lineup this year that didn’t produce a ton of Oscar hopefuls, maybe Cannes has been the real starting point for the race. Stay tuned to VF.com and our awards podcast Little Gold Men for all the latest on this year’s path to glory—and to pain.

 

 

 

I was surprised reading the critics lukewarm response to Rocketman, especially after the crowd at Cannes loved it. But then, it is getting better reviews than Bohemian Rhapsody which I enjoyed a lot. So, I expect I will be happy with the movie and with T.E. as Elton John. Anxious to see it.

 

 

I hope Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is good. The Oscars may love it since it is about actors.

The cast looks amazing. Critics give it a B+. IMO Tarantino has a blind spot about portraying gay men (not very woke, is what they say now right?). Hope this one doesn't require to hold my nose again.