Natalie Portman is terrific in Jackie, managing both to float and to lend this elegant biopic great emotional weight. She’s a Hollywood insider, so nothing can stop her, surely, from being crowned best actress everywhere?
“And the Golden Globe goes to... Emma Stone!”
“And the Golden Globe goes to... Isabelle Huppert!”
This isn’t right. What use is perfecting a peculiar accent (as Portman does for Jackie) if you’re snubbed by the Globe voters in a category that has foreshadowed the Oscar winner in five of the past six years?
Ignore Stone’s win, as it was for the comedy/musical slot, and Portman was in the drama division. Yet losing to Huppert must have hurt. The French actress is in Paul Verhoeven’s rape thriller Elle, so un-Hollywood it had to be made in Paris, as every American star turned it down.
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After last Sunday’s Golden Globes, the odds of Portman winning a second Oscar are not worth betting on. She will be head to head with La La Land and Stone, as the Oscars (February 26) don’t split categories the way the Globes do. Damien Chazelle’s musical promises to match the record set by Ben-Hur, Titanic and the third Lord of the Rings; its real challenger for best film, writing and editing prizes will be the black gay indie Moonlight.
The actress contest is the most interesting. Stone will probably win, but Huppert is certain to get a nomination now, after her Globes best actress (drama) win. If you consider the recent soothsaying success of Globe voters at picking Oscar winners, she should consider writing her speech today.
Portman’s attention, though, will first shift to the Baftas, where she is up for best actress against, yes, Stone. Last week, La La Land picked up 11 nods, and it will no doubt win 12. But what daft awards ours are — an international humiliation where Stephen Fry blows a kiss to an A-lister flown over for a bash given by an organisation with no idea what its B stands for.
It can’t be “British”. If so, it would have found space for American Honey and its Brit director, Andrea Arnold, in more than the fob-off British film shortlist. (What about best film, director, actress, actor, screenplay, editing, music?)
Bafta supports I, Daniel Blake — by the face of the future Ken Loach — but has never found room for mavericks like Joanna Hogg or Ben Wheatley, both loved by Martin Scorsese. And Tom Holland is the sole British finalist among five on the rising-star list: as the new Spider-Man, his career doesn’t really need a lift.
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The Baftas go for glitz. Why else pick Tom Ford for best director, rather than Barry Jenkins, when Ford’s Nocturnal Animals isn’t up for best film, but the latter’s Moonlight is? Huppert isn’t even nominated for best actress, meaning this is Portman’s final chance to pip Stone ahead of the Oscars. Also in her way? Meryl Streep. Chosen, I suspect, because she makes headlines.