The Contenders: Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard
If you believe the critics groups, the Best Actress Oscar is going to either Julie Christie for her role as a woman with Alzheimer’s in Away From Her or Marion Cotillard as the French chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. My money is on the latter.
I finally caught both films on DVD this weekend. While Away From Her is a deeply moving, somber story of a couple married for 44 years who are separated when Christie’s character is forced into an assisted living facility because of Alzheimer’s, it’s a director’s movie. Canadian actress Sarah Polley makes her directorial debut under the watchful arm of producer Atom Egoyan, bringing to her film the grace and intelligence we’ve seen from another young female director – Sophia Coppola.
Christie’s performance is delicately subdued and achingly emotional. It’s a performance any screen actress would die to give, especially at the age of 66-years-old. It’s also a performance critics love, while the Academy doesn’t.
The difference between Christie in Away From Her and Marion Cotillard is that Cotillard owns her movie. As Edith Piaf, Cotillard makes a transformation the Academy loves. She ages with the character, taking on the look of a sickly, 40-something singer, though she is only in her thirties. She seizes on the drama of her character’s tragedies in a way the film never does. Most of all, she plays a performer. Though the film is in French, it has more in common with Oscar-winning music biographies like Ray (Best Actor Jamie Foxx) or Walk the Line (Best Actress Reese Witherspoon), than any international production.
Most of all, she’s a beautiful, young woman, like Witherspoon or Gwyneth Paltrow or Charlize Theron. When is the last time the Oscar went to the actress who aged gracefully (and didn’t play the Queen)? Julie Christie’s performance is guaranteed a nomination, but short of an upset, the Oscar is Cotillard’s.
TheFilmChair.com 2007-2008 Oscar Charts
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