Jessie Buckley, and the Oscar for a wild and intense actress

BarcelonaIt's not so common for the best performances to win an Oscar. Often, many other elements come into play, one of which is the star power of the nominee, her suitability for what, supposedly, a star should be—an indefinable category that, according to Jeanine Basinger, is characterized by "an exceptional physique, excellent talent, a series of personal gestures, a sex appeal "Palminable glamour… and the luck of being in the right place at the right time." Irish actress Jessie Buckley (Killarney, 1989) embodies some of these characteristics, but her meteoric career seems to exhibit an absolute disdain for the others.

Her Oscar for HamnetA wild and intense performance, leaving no corner of the character unexplored, is reminiscent of what her friend won. Olivia Colman for her grotesque, and hilarious, portrayal of Queen Anne Stuart in The favoriteWhile the two characters are antithetical, what seems to unite these two tremendous European actresses (Colman is British) is their desire to portray women who transcend the boundaries of what is traditionally considered "feminine," without the slightest concern for the consequences.

A The Dark Daughter (2021), for which Buckley received her first Oscar nomination, she and Colman embodied, respectively, the younger and older versions of the abandoning mother who is the film's protagonist. Analyzed in retrospect, director Maggie Gyllenhaal's unusual choice to cast both actresses in the same role takes on a deeper meaning: the connection between them was not caused by physical resemblance, but by an identical will to embody, with untamed ferocity and insolence, unconventional femininities.

It's curious that the two characters for which Buckley has been nominated for Oscars are women who, in very different ways, have been affected by the "chaos of motherhood," as she herself (also a young mother) defined it in her acceptance speech. Or perhaps it's not a coincidence, but the result of a professional and personal choice on the part of the actress, who has been collaborating with female filmmakers for years: with Sarah Polley in They speak (2022), with Gyllenhaal twice (also in the recent The bride!) and, finally, with Chloé Zhao in HamnetBased on Maggie O'Farrell's devastating novel, her performance as William Shakespeare's wife, who loses one of her three children to the plague, is unforgettable. Not only is it stark and brutal, but it is also utterly unpredictable, as demonstrated by a scene in which Buckley, distraught with grief, lets out a piercing scream that abruptly transforms into an implacable silence, before finally whispering completely unintelligible sounds.

Before Zhao and Gyllenhaal, Charlie Kaufman, a filmmaker known for exploring the darkest aspects of the human soul, had already recognized Buckley's potential as the ideal vehicle for a pitch-black tale of pain, loneliness, and depression. I'm thinking of quitting (2020)The actress offered the one that, with HamnetPerhaps it's her greatest performance to date. Buckley and Jesse Plemons (the current actor closest to her in the radicalism with which they delve into the most abject aspects of their characters) spent half of the film's extensive runtime inside a car, surrounded by a landscape as frozen as their own romantic relationship. Buckley was, by turns, charming and hostile, brilliant and cruel, capable of reciting a depressing poem while staring directly into the camera or of reading aloud, in a memorable passage, Pauline Kael's devastating critique of... A woman under the influenceThe journey proposed by Kaufman in the film, a nocturnal and unpredictable road trip that took unexpected detours to unknown places, can be seen as the perfect metaphor for the path, scarcely traveled and sometimes poorly lit, that this actress, who seems to be indifferent to being a star, has decided to travel.