Two rising stars could land their first Oscar nominations this award season for heart-rending performances. Simon Stone’s “Elsinore” (Focus) starring Andrew Scott and Guy Nattiv’s “The Liberation” (Bleecker) starring Carrie Coon are both based on true stories.
Set in 1989 during the AIDs crisis in London, “Elsinore” stars Scott as actor Ian Charleson of “Chariots of Fire,” who has tested positive for HIV just as he is offered to star as Shakespeare’s Hamlet at The National. With support from his director (Johnny Flynn), loyal friends, and medical boosts from his reluctant doctor (Olivia Coleman), Charleson struggles to manage his illness through hospital stays and relative health in order to deliver his ultimate performance.
Scott is charming, funny, dogged, and moving as we follow his ups and downs, fears and losses, as several of his friends are also sick. Of course, Charleson’s tumultuous journey informs his performance as the tragic Dane, which we follow through bits and pieces both backstage and onstage. After all, Hamlet is about grief and death. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the Palm.
Scott’s performance should be catnip to Oscar voters. It runs the gamut of emotions and reminds us of the cathartic power of art. Actors eat this stuff up. And they respect Scott, who has earned raves in television (“Fleabag,” “Sherlock,” “Ripley”) and theater (“Vanya”) as well as Andrew Haigh’s love story “All of Us Strangers.”
On the other hand, the Best Actor race is stacked this year, and it helps to star in a movie that everyone has seen and that might make it to the Best Picture race. Scott would likely mark a single nomination for the film.
The same is true for “The Liberation,” which is all about Carrie Coon as Rita Cooper, a wound-up Holocaust survivor who can’t talk about her trauma. While she’s bored at her bank job, her family life seems happy enough with husband (played by real-life spouse Tracy Letts) and two daughters (Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young) but she is not fulfilled. She’s based on the filmmaker’s grandmother, who left the family in the 1980s to join an all-women cult, lured by the seductive leader, well-played in the film by Lily James. Coon is torn apart when she feels compelled to leave her family behind, and again when her daughters try to intervene and retrieve her. “The Liberation” is another tragic story that leaves audiences in tears.
The actress is best known for her Emmy-nominated television work in “The Gilded Age” and “The White Lotus.” And few saw her strong film turns in “The Nest” or “His Three Daughters.” The Best Actress race is less intense than Best Actor, so there’s wriggle room. But again, Coon is all she wrote for “The Liberation,” and Bleecker will need to wrangle some box office for a desperately sad movie. The distributor will platform a qualifying run and broaden in January.
Saturday at Telluride brings Jesse Eisenberg’s third feature “The Debut” which stars Julianne Moore, (who attended “Elsinore” Friday night) and Paul Giamatti, as fledgling actress and demanding director.
