Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Oscar buzz: Great roles for women this year

Oscar season is heating up, so in the coming weeks we’ll be inundated with award-worthy fare.

Actually, we’re already smack in the middle of it. Look no further than Sally Hawkins in “Happy-Go-Lucky” and Anne Hathaway in “Rachel Getting Married” for proof. The films, the roles and the performances are almost polar opposites. What unites them is their excellence. Both actresses should get Oscar nominations; we’ll see. But their performances are two of the most riveting displays of acting out there.

Hawkins plays Poppy, a teacher who combats life’s challenges with a smile, a laugh, a pint. Poppy is not oblivious or simple. Her happiness is by choice and effort; she won’t let life get her down, despite several opportunities for it to do so.

Hathaway, meanwhile, plays Kym, an addict who is granted a weekend out of rehab to attend her sister’s wedding. Where Poppy sees life as a never-ending rainbow, Kym sees only the rain. She is self-absorbed in the extreme, consumed by guilt for her part in a family tragedy, unable to get beyond her place in the universe, which, from her perspective, would not exist without her.

And yet both actresses inhabit their roles so completely that, combined with the randomness of movie-release dates (both films opened recently), it’s as if there’s a link between them.

Poppy will be how most Americans are introduced to Hawkins, and it’s a tricky role. In lesser hands, Poppy would seem silly, frivolous. But Hawkins lets us see the occasional crack in Poppy’s demeanor. When she is finally forced to confront a situation where a giggle or a chuckle won’t solve things, we see how complex her outlook really is, how much work she puts into it. Before, Poppy made us smile. Here she earns our respect, as well.

Kym is a far different kind of role. While one sympathizes with her to some extent, Kym is the kind of person most people can’t stand to be around. The effort is exhausting.

There is an extended scene of a rehearsal dinner, in which family and friends around the table toast the soon-to-be bride and groom. Director Jonathan Demme holds the scene longer than is comfortable, even more so because we await — dread — Kym’s toast. It comes and is indeed excruciating. But not because Kym takes the dinner down in flames. Hathaway is more subtle than that. Instead, she ratchets up the tension by turning the attention to herself, her problems, her life.

Yet you can’t look away. That’s the beauty of Hathaway’s performance. Thanks to Hathaway’s desperate magnetism, despite being such an off-putting character, you actually want her around.

Some attention must be paid to the directors, as well. Mike Leigh is known for an unusually collaborative process, creating characters with his actors, improvising before shooting the film. It makes the characters uniquely genuine, and makes a character like Poppy seem all the more real.

Demme, meanwhile, has long been known for making his sets comfortable for his actors, eliciting good performances. He’s also been making documentaries, and brought some of that style to “Rachel,” rendering it more realistic — and often, more uncomfortable.

Hathaway’s and Hawkins’ aren’t the only good performances out there, certainly. Alicia Keys has been good in other roles (we hear she plays the piano a bit, too), but her work in “The Secret Life of Bees” as a stern, seemingly angry woman tired of racial injustice is a revelation. And it’s not even the best performance in the film. Sophie Okonedo’s is. An Oscar nominee for “Hotel Rwanda,” in “Bees” she plays a mentally challenged woman for whom the weight of the world’s sadness is often too difficult to bear. She nails it.

Yet “Bees” is an ensemble piece. “Happy-Go-Lucky” and “Rachel Getting Married” are built around their stars, and Hawkins and Hathaway are more than up to the task of carrying that burden. They elevate the films.

In the end, the credit belongs to the actresses, who have crafted remarkable work.

Are there good roles for women in film? Evidently. Maybe not as many as there should be, but there aren’t many roles better than these.