"Often, the acting that is most heralded goes to those who go all out playing anti-heroes or villains, searching their soul to show us turmoil inside their characters. But what about playing genuine human kindness and decency? How does one create a compelling character out of that? Like many, I was skeptical of This Is Martin Bonner’s premise on paper (“A rehabilitation counselor and a former convict strike an unlikely friendship-“ zzzz) and then blown away by how writer-director Chad Hartigan brought a patient observance to his narrative, examining what it means for a person to show real good will toward another. But none of this could exist without Paul Eenhoorn’s central performance as the title character, a quiet man who doesn’t necessarily leave his shell but creates a tension between what he thinks and what he says. His voice changes little and his gestures are never particularly expressive, but they are never monotonous; instead of grand movements, Eenhorn creates a cheery disposition using his face, the kind of face that looks like he’s been working in movies for four decades without you ever noticing him. To bolster this tension, Eenhoorn uses something else: the pause. We learn less from what he is doing than how he reacts - witness the slight changes in his eyes as his friend explains his predicament or the spaces and careful choices of when to speak while on the phone with his daughter. His is a quiet confidence he uses to stay level during any moment where things could go south. After being thrown around by circumstance, Bonner now wishes for control, and slowly and surely he finally achieves it; his return in the climatic scene represents both a gesture of good will and his own small, poignant redemption. Eenhoorn’s performance is neither showy nor unaffected in the Bresson school of “models;” it’s simply genuine. This is expressed no better than in the moment he finally lets loose, jamming along to an 8-track by his former band Kopyright (for both the character and the actor). There is finally no surface — only joy." -- Peter Labuza
"Xavier Dolan’s films only occasionally rise above the level of pastiche. To watch I Killed My Mother, Heartbeats or Laurence Anyways (I haven’t yet seen Tom at the Farm) is to spend an hour or two sampling from the still-only-24-year-old’s favorite movies, music, and photographs. That’s a harsh critique, I know, but not an all-together damning one. Dolan is beginning to develop a voice, and already there are hints in his work that it will become something more than just a middlebrow, big-screen instantiation of mashup aesthetics. (Remember when we used to just explain this away as “postmodernism”?) Laurence Anyways is an impressive film and a marked improvement over his earlier work, both in terms of scale and execution. The two main characters, Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clément), exist outside of the self-contained, semi-autobiographical universe of I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats, and Dolan’s move into grand melodrama is both logical (he’s inserted himself, whether we like it or not, into the Sirk-Fassbinder line of queer cinema) and ambitious (I wasn’t expecting a three-hour film so soon).
The challenge when assessing a performance like Clément’s is that Dolan tends to use actors as cogs in the haphazard machinery of his images. As he swings from influence to influence — from Godard to Almodóvar to Alan Ball to MTV-era David Fincher and so on - his characters tend to get lost in the shuffle. Too often they’re forced to adopt new personae for each new visual context and, as a result, it all becomes a bit schizophrenic. Of all of Dolan’s lead performers, Poupaud suffers the most for this, I think. Even after several viewings of Laurence Anyways, I still don’t have a deep sense of Laurence’s psychology. I think I know what Dolan intended, I think I understand the character as he exists on the page, but Poupaud, a fine actor, wanders a bit. I put the blame for this squarely on Dolan, who loses control of the material at key moments. In the frenetic, all-secrets-revealed confrontation between Laurence and Fred, for example, Poupaud simply stares at Clément and then walks away. It’s a screenwriter’s cheat. Dolan settles for ambiguity instead of writing that necessary, difficult, and revealing next line. It reads as a failure of imagination — as if Dolan couldn’t fully understand Laurence in that moment and wanted to get out of the scene as quickly as possible. Problem is, it leaves Poupaud dangling on the hook.
All of which makes Clément’s accomplishment even more impressive. Fred is also an underwritten character with by-the-book motivations, and yet Clément’s performance is so charged, she throws the entire film out of balance. Most viewers, I assume, would describe Laurence Anyways as a film about a man whose decision to come out as a transvestite affects every area of his professional and personal life, most importantly his relationship with Fred. In fact, it’s a film about a woman who has the tragic misfortune of loving the wrong man. Dolan captures this beautifully in one of the film’s publicity stills. It’s a closeup of Fred’s and Laurence’s first embrace when they reunite after being separated for several years. Clément is at the center of the frame, her face buried in Poupaud’s neck. His head is turned away from the camera, so all of our attention is drawn to Clément’s red hair and to her eyes, which are closed. That image is melodrama reduced to its essence. Even Sirk would have approved.
Whether that shift — from this being a film about Laurence to a film about Fred — was intentional or not, I don’t know, but it happens pretty quickly. The first glimpse we get of conflict in their relationship is a scene in a car, when Laurence becomes annoyed by Fred’s spontaneous decision to change their dinner plans and accuses her of driving drunk. Clément powers through with the same silly excitement she had before but there’s a new tension in her jaw. It’s a subtle gesture that communicates palpably the sense that this was not the first time his words had cut her. Later, after a showy scene in which Fred screams at a waitress for patronizing Laurence (this is the clip we would have seen on the Oscars had Clément been nominated), she returns to her apartment, runs a bath, and then suddenly, willfully shuts off the pain. Clément is arresting and heartbreaking in that moment. She turns Fred’s stoicism into a practiced effort, as if she has done this a hundred times before. In the process, Clément embodies Fred’s emotional life and gives her a past.
This ability to express simultaneous and contradictory emotions is what sets Clément apart from other performers in Dolan’s films. She actively resists being just a bauble in his designs, in the same way — and I know this is a strange analogy — Timothy Carey brings a kinetic spontaneity to Kubrick’s otherwise meticulous Paths of Glory. (2013 Muriel winner Matthew McConaughey has a wonderful knack for this as well.) I especially like a moment when Fred drags (no pun intended) her sister into a wig shop, with the intention of surprising Laurence with a gift. The sister character exists in order to express out loud every frustration, doubt, and objection that Fred feels herself but is working so hard to suppress. “Our generation can take this!” Fred says, trying to convince herself it’s true. Clément is so charged by the competing emotions, she begins to bounce on her toes. For a brief second, she even slips out of the tight frame. It’s one of the rare moments in Laurence Anyways that expresses what should always be at the heart of this story: love, recklessness, and potential." -- Darren Hughes
"On a checklist for any new actor trying to make it big in The Business, I doubt "Scare the shit out of Tom Hanks" is on there. With his piercing stare, twitchy demeanor and too-gaunt-to-be-healthy visage, Barkhad Abdi does a meticulous job terrorizing not only Captain Richard Phillips (played by Tom Hanks) of the Maersk Alabama but also his crew and, honestly, the audience itself. When Abdi's character - the leader of the Somali hijackers that take over Hanks' vessel - says in fractured English nobody is going to be hurt as long as he gets his ransom, well ... you get the nagging feeling someone is going to be hurt.
Abdi - born in Mogadishu but presently living in the United States - was plucked out of Eric Henderson Land™ from his day job as a limo driver and placed opposite one of America's greatest actors: talk about a wild real-life turn-of-events. Abdi's character manages to be both human and hopelessly evil almost simultaneously, which is to be expected of someone born in one of the most godforsaken countries in the world and surrounded by corruption and poverty, trapped in a life where hijacking boats and robbing the rich is the best job available. To say he holds his own opposite the eminently professional Hanks is an understatement: hell, he steals the movie (and the cargo ship ... and the lifeboat) right from under him.
Abdi's ferocious portrayal of a hijacker has justifiably earned him nominations, attention and seats next to drunken actresses at prestigious award shows (Emma Thompson ... two is enough, my lady). The real-life pirate he played, Abduwali Muse, is not so fortunate, currently serving his 33-year sentence in federal prison in Indiana and expected to be released in 2038. The only thing Muse is the captain of is a tiny cell ... and maybe a sink. Abdi, on the other hand, should ride this wave as far as it takes him." -- Matthew Lotti
"A lot of stale hay has been made about Jennifer Lawrence being too young for the role of Rosalyn Rosenfeld in American Hustle, the suburban housewife who embodies perhaps the only clean through-line of conscience in a movie full of false identities, misdirected motivations and other moral curlicues. And perhaps if writer-director David O. Russell had positioned his knockabout comic-tragic take on Abscam entirely in the world of docudrama reality (“Some of this actually happened”) the detractors might (might) have a stronger point. But if much of Hustle’s emotional effect emanates from the period details that look stitch-perfect but also register a degree exaggerated for that extra frisson of verisimilitude, then I’d say the same leeway can be given to Lawrence, whose comic chops and brassy, no-holds-barred personality are either perfect for Russell’s conception of the film and the role or provided the template around which the role itself was conceived.
No doubt we are charmed by Rosalyn’s spunky, slightly trashy sexuality, her ability to cut through the layers of illusion and delusion around which her life, and certainly that of her husband’s, spins. Even her desperation to cling on to the world she knows gets us on her side. (“I don’t like change. It’s really hard for me.”) But Lawrence brings a fascinating mixture of pathos and unbridled fire to Rosalyn’s turbulent personality, her wobbly/confident sense of self that in turn fires Russell’s movie, whose energy falters and wanes in her absence. There’s probably no better scene in American Hustle, or maybe even in Jennifer Lawrence’s career so far, that exemplifies just how far she can run with her own wild impulses, combined with an awareness of just how infatuated audiences seem to be with her, than the grand kiss-off she delivers to Amy Adams, a moment quivering with rage and sex and comic audacity.
So she’s a little young for the role, age-wise. But in every other “wise” - talent, assurance, charm, nerve, timing - she’s exactly right. She embodies the spirit of Rosalyn perfectly, giving anyone inclined to obsess over her actual years plenty of rocket fuel to soar over reservations based on that knowledge. And when the performance is this good, who should even care? Jesse Royce Landis was only seven years older than Cary Grant when she played his mother in North by Northwest, and being only six years older than Dustin Hoffman was no impediment to Anne Bancroft’s convincing portrayal of Mrs. Robinson, a woman of entitlement and immense dissatisfaction who was an entire generation and world removed from Hoffman’s college-aged Benjamin Braddock. To this grand tradition of playing older, if not necessarily wiser, Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn is certainly a worthy addition. I have no doubt that somewhere, on some astral plane where movies old and new are running on an endless cosmic loop, Barbara Stanwyck is watching her work, standing up, raising her arms and shouting, “You go, girl!”" -- Dennis Cozzalio
"I never thought I’d be praising the performance of “The Diceman” - that is, Andrew Dice Clay - in a motion picture, but then I never thought the former ‘80s shock comedian would be included in the cast of a Woody Allen film. But Allen’s films haven’t just been a haven for A-list stars over the years. I mean, sleazy ‘90s tabloid sensation Joey Buttafuoco had a cameo in Celebrity for Christ's sake! However, Clay’s appearance in last year’s Blue Jasmine was no fleeting cameo. Clay’s Auggie, the handyman ex-husband of Sally Hawkins, was a crucial character to the narrative, one that could be called the conscience of the film.
Cate Blanchett just won a well deserved Best Actress Oscar for her work in the title role, a deluded woman desperately trying to begin life anew. As it’s relayed in flashbacks, Blanchett’s corrupt investment banker hubby Alec Baldwin cheated on her and swindled countless people out of their money, among them Clay and Blanchett’s half-sister Hawkins who unwisely gave him their lottery winnings to invest. In the film’s present, Blanchett moves in with Hawkins in San Francisco, who has split from Clay. Clay’s has a key line, tailor made for the trailer, about the situation: “When your sister had all that money, she wanted nothing to do with you. Now that she’s broke, all of a sudden she’s movin’ in.”
Hawkins is now dating a mechanic (Bobby Cannavale), who Blanchett dismisses thinking he’s another version of Augie. She has a point - with his slick backed hair and arrogant swagger, Cannavale does indeed have the air of a younger model of “The Diceman.” (The Guardian’s John Patterson may have also had a point when he asked why is “Allen's San Francisco is so densely populated by goombah Noo Yawkers?”) Still, it’s a pungent contrast as Clay, with his gray-tinged receding hairline, has hardened from the eager and easily-impressed schlub that we see in flashbacks from a glitzy trip to Manhattan (Baldwin’s snake-eyed disdain for Clay in these scenes is delicious) into the blunt resentful guy that has aged way beyond tolerating Blanchett’s or his ex-wife’s bullshit any longer.
After a long chunk of the film that has to do with Blanchett taking up with Peter Sarsgaard's aspiring politician, Clay runs into our anti-heroine (?) on the streets of San Francisco as she shops for wedding rings with her new beau. Here, he has his character’s pivotal moment, in which he exposes her real background to Sarsgaard and even calls her out for her fake name: “Jeanette, Jasmine, whatever it is you call yourself these days.” He then goes on: “Some people, don’t put some things behind so easily,” then drags on his cigarette in what used to be a signature move but now means something quite different. Clay’s impact in this scene is significant enough to have Sarsgaard re-think his entire relationship with Blanchett.
Sure, Blanchett’s Jasmine (or Jeanette) can be seen as a total Blanche DuBois re-write, but when it comes to that final climatic confrontation, The Diceman’s streetwise laying it on the line transcends such Tennessee Williams-ish themes. That this kind of meaty might strengthening one of Allen's most substantial late films is coming from the guy whose most notable starring role was in the highly forgettable 1990 Renny Harlin action comedy The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is incredibly noteworthy indeed." -- Daniel Cook Johnson
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