One of the nominees from this Thursday's Supporting Actress Smackdown likely got her nomination due to thee Oscar buzz she had earned from a previous performance. While it was Gaby: A True Story that made Norma Aleandro an Academy Award nominee in 1987, it was her performance in 1985's The Official Story that put her name on Hollywood's lips. That Best Foreign Language Film winnere remains the crown jewel in the Argentinian actress' hallowed career...
Released only two years after the election of Raúl Alfonsín put an end to the dictatorial regime of the military junta in Argentina, The Official Story finds a country reckoning with the atrocities of its recent history. The film, written by Aida Bortnik and Luis Puenzo, explores these matters through the story of a privileged family living the final months of the dictatorship in a state of emotional turmoil. As it happens, even those lucky enough to exist in blissful ignorance must someday reckon with the fact that their comfort is built on the ruined lives of others.
It all starts in school, a breeding ground of ideas where Alicia, a history teacher, warns the students of her discipline and rectitude. Despite her field of study, she's a rather sheltered person whose lack of awareness is both stark and alarming. In her own words, Alicia teaches the political past in order to help understand the present. In contradictory contrast she seems willfully unconscious of many truths of the world she inhabits.
In the realm of bourgeois society, good manners prevail over ethics, over knowledge of harsh realities, and ugly revelations. Politics must be left out of the social bubble for they spoil fine dining and cocktail parties. It's not so much that these people are deliberately evil, but that their privileges depend on the status quo. So much so, that they end up looking away from whatever might make them uncomfortable. Alicia is never presented as someone worthy of our hatred and Norma Aleandro plays her with heartfelt empathy.
However, the actress also invites our critical eye towards the teacher. The way she treats her maid stinks of noblesse oblige, barbed politeness. Furthermore, her stern nature towards the students doesn't always read as benign severity. Sometimes, the pedagogue's attitude's tainted by the despair of someone who so wants to be apolitical, they'll accidentally throw others under the bus. Only Alicia's love for her adopted daughter is observed with no silent caveats from the camera, the screenplay, or the performer.
That makes what's to follow so much more heartbreaking.
One night, a group of old mates from Alicia's schooldays get together for a lively dinner and, among them, is Ana. She's been exiled in Europe for the past few years after some unknown perils drove her away from Argentina. Aleandro's friendly chemistry with Chunchuna Villafañe as Ana is beautiful to behold. It's as if she rejuvenates before our eyes, the talkative schoolgirl of yore showing its face, overtaking the space occupied by the middle-aged teacher. As the two women laugh and trade stories, we're lulled into restorative warmth --a perfect time for a bucket of cold water to crash over our heads.
Hearing of her friend's horrifying abuse at the hands of the military authorities, Alicia's face is a masterpiece of mutable expression. At first, drunk with booze and euphoria, she laughs until the reality of the words starts to penetrate her inebriated mind. Then comes shock, mortification at her previous glee, bug-eyed panic before settling into a reactive husk, paralyzed by horror. Only when Ana cries does Aleandro's Alicia do something, hugging the other woman, trying to console someone whose suffering feels completely alien to her.
And then, Ana talks about babies stolen from their mothers and sold to rich people. Alicia freezes. The big question the script posits about the protagonist is how much her ignorance was deliberate. Did she know how her husband got their daughter and choose to look away? In the end, what's worse, honest guilelessness or purposeful aloofness? When Aleandro's pity morphs into a panicked fury, in that flash, that horrible instant, the actress seems to answer the first question.
From there, other interrogations unravel from the text and Aleandro's delicate construction. Alicia loves her daughter, there's no doubt about that and she seems like a good mother from what we see. Still, is that enough reason to not ask questions, to ignore the potential vileness of the truth, and deny another woman the right to be a mother? If her happiness is built on the pain of others, is it moral to enjoy it? Alicia's understandably terrified of acknowledging the bloody price others paid for her joy.
When a student says history has been written by murderers, Aleandro plays the moment like a final girl in front of a horror picture monstrosity. It's all in her scared gaze and the nervous movement of her idle hands. Another time, when dropping her husband at the airport, Alicia fiddles with her hair in a gesture loaded with conflicting meaning. Maybe she's cleaning away her husband's caress or treasuring the ghost of his touch. Is she angered at him, frightened, or looking for his comfort? Aleandro holds all those possibilities in her performance and makes them coexist in complicated communion.
Aleandro also illuminates Alicia's insecurities about her infertility, about not being a "real" mother. The scene when she handles her little girl's newborn clothes is a tour de force by the master tragedienne. With no words, she sings an aria of motherly angst, the teacher wondering with every gentle brush if those garments were put on the baby by a young mother who then had her beloved daughter taken away, stolen. When Alicia tremulously holds an old safety pin, one can almost feel the adoptive mother communicating with the specter of the biological one.
This is a mightily internal performance, one whose greatness lies in the details, in the small gestures. One could write entire books about Aleandro's precise work. Look how she plays a subway monologue like a confession as if the teacher is exorcising her worst fears, filling the silence that's otherwise suffocating her. Regard her last big sequence with her husband played by Héctor Alterio. Both actors give themselves to the bruising emotions of the couple's torment. Her horror crashes against his contempt and it's explosive, especially as violence erupts.
The Official Story was universally acclaimed and it went on to win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, scoring another nomination for Best Original Screenplay. As you can see, the picture was clearly on the Academy's radar and Aleandro did win many accolades. At Cannes, she tied with Cher in Mask for Best Actress and went on to conquer similar honors from other festivals, the New York Film Critics Circle as well as a nomination from the National Society of Film Critics.
In many ways, she got more precursors and golden accolades than some of the Academy's chosen nominees for Best Actress of 1985. Jessica Lange, nominated for Sweet Dreams, certainly didn't have such a mountain of honors and, apart from a Globe nod, neither did Anne Bancroft in Agnes of God. The other nominees, Whoopi Goldberg in The Color Purple, Geraldine Page in Trip to Bountiful, Meryl Streep in Out of Africa, were locks. It's not inconceivable to assume Aleandro came close to the nod and she'd have been a stellar Oscar nominee.
You can find The Official Story streaming on HBO Max, the Criterion Channel, and Kanopy.