Only 3 days until the Academy Awards are announced here in LA on Sunday, March 5. Here's my take on two nominated films, TRANSAMERICA (Best Actress, Felicity Huffman) and MATCH POINT (Best Original Screenplay, Woody Allen). That leaves only MUNICH to be seen, which is on my last-minute agenda for tomorrow.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that MATCH POINT didn't receive more notice from the Academy. It's a deftly acted drama that entertains and raises interesting questions during post-theater drinks. The basic plot starts off when Chris, an Irish almost-pro tennis player (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), takes on a wealthy tutoring client, Tom (the very Britishly handsome Matthew Goode), who befriends his tutor and, in the way wealthy people sometimes do...
...adopts him as a new friend. Back at Tom's family's massive country house, Chris meets Chloe (Emily Mortimer), Tom's plain-but-pretty sister, and they find themselves attracted to one another. Trouble appears on the horizon in the form of voluptuous Nola (Scarlett Johansson), a young American actress of dubious morals who happens currently to be Tom's fiance.
Are you keeping up? Whether because she exudes sex, or confidence, or just plain no-goodness, Chris finds himself wildy infatuated with Nola even as he falls in love with Chloe. Nola and Tom break up, she leaves town, Chris and Chloe marry and he joins the ranks of the truly wealthy, and then one day at the Tate Modern, what the...? Well, there's Nola, and she's at the top of a slippery slope that both she and Chris can't help sliding down to their eventual undoings. Here are some of the questions: does Chris really love Chloe, or her lifestyle? Does Nola really love Chris, or the chance to get that lifestyle back (she's been working as a shopgirl since the engagement with Tom was broken)? Is it a coincidence that the outsiders are Irish and American? Does that affect their behavior around these quintessentially privledged English folks? Could you ever not love a father (beautifully played by Brian Cox) who refers to Mother's having had "a few too many G&Ts?"
Just when you think you know where MATCH POINT is going, it throws you a curve, and you end up both satisfied and creeped out. It's really an intriguing film that I highly recommend.
TRANSAMERICA is carried by the performance of Felicity Huffman as Bre, nee Stanley, a man in transit in so many ways. He's in transit from manhood to womanhood, New York to LA, being alone to being part of a family... really, it's all about the transiting here. In the week before the sexual reassignment surgery that will complete her transformation, Bre gets a call from a heretofore unknown son (product of a college liason) who is in a NYC jail for prostitution or crack. Though Bre wants to ignore it, her counselor urges her (if by urges you mean withholds the recommendation for her surgery, and I do) to go to NY, take responsibility for the kid, close that loop in her life. In NY, Bre finds Toby (the really handsome young Kevin Zegers) dirty, a drug addict, a street hustler, on his own. Her maternal instincts (who'd of thunk it?) kick in, and Bre offers Toby a ride to LA, where he plans to get into the movie business (and hello to you Toby, and 50,000 other kids who probably arrived here today). Their cross-country journey is the heart of the movie, as Toby, unaware of Bre's real identity (he thinks she's some kind of church lady), finds what it's like to have someone care for him, and Bre finds she has family in her after all. It's not all roadside attractions and In N'Out Burgers for the two: this movie is too subtle to allow a big fat happy ending. But it is full of emotion and a deep understanding for the outsiders in society, of how they often find each other, and in doing so, help to heal their own pain.
Felicity Huffman keeps Bre so real, so painfully insecure and yet hopeful, so awkward and earnest, and so deserving of respect for the decency and respect she shows others that the character never veers into camp or melodrama. Kevin Zegers is a find. I don't recall ever seeing him before, but he brings such a degree of hard-earned wisdom and mistrust and need to Toby that you'd want to hug him even if he wasn't so darn good looking. I can't wait to see him in whatever his next role might be -- he's definitely one to watch.