You know when critics start talking about how a certain actor will be in the running for an Oscar nomination this year for a recent performance and you just roll your eyes and picture some over-the-top performance where someone plays a character with some debilitating speech impediment, or a missing leg, or something? And you think to yourself, “I never want to see that performance” because all the Oscar cronies are already predetermining that it is “landmark performance” or has to be “seen to be believed”?
Well, forgot all of that. Because I want to tell you that Michelle Williams’ portrayal of an unfulfilled half of a dysfunctional, passive-aggressive relationship in Take This Waltz is, ahem, Oscar-worthy.
A lot of us have seen Williams onscreen before. Some remember her way back from her Dawson’s Creek days, on ye olde small screen. Others recall her turns in blockbusters like Brokeback Mountain and Shutter Island. Maybe even her work in Blue Valentine (another emotionally crushing film where she played a malcontent wife; man, she’s good at this stuff). Oh, and, yes, she was the latest screen version of Marilyn Monroe herself, let’s not forget. Heck, some of us may have even lurked through the celebrity gossip sites and found out all about Ms. Williams’ personal life mishaps.
None of this is here or there. Because her character in Take This Waltz, the latest film from Canadian director and hopefully-still-actor Sarah Polley, is Williams’ career godsend. Williams’ Margot is such a ball of nerves, so concerned with how each completely innocent act could be a big rejection trap, that she alone is a romantic car crash just waiting to happen. Pair her with Lou (Seth Rogen), an emotionally unavailable (I’m sorry) doofus who’s life is wrapped up in a cookbook entirely consisting of chicken recipes (not to mention his loud, overbearing, and not-quite-stable family) and it’s an emotional tsunami. And when the decidedly hot and interesting (and confident, and…) rickshaw operator Daniel (Luke Kirby) comes along, and Margot starts to see that maybe her problems lie in the fact that Mr. Perfect has never presented himself naked on her doorstep before, without giving away too much (SPOILER ALERT), she’s still fucked.
Williams’ facial expressions alone will crush you. Her stilted and self-defecating mannerisms might make you want to sloop against the oven yourself and just stare through glassy eyes at the muffins baking for 45 minutes (see the film, you’ll understand). The decisions she makes and the mistakes she sleepwalks through will make you question your life choices perhaps way more than you’d like to with a bucket of popcorn between your legs on cheap night.
Safe to say this ain’t no ordinary date night rom-com. Also safe to say that Williams should be hoisting a gold guy with an odd looking lump of genitalia come Oscar night. [Cancel that obligatory eye roll.]