Almost There: Nicole Kidman in "The Paperboy"
Wednesday, April 27, 2022 at 11:33AM The Almost There series is back after a brief hiatus. It's about performances that came close to an Oscar nomination but ultimately failed to secure the honor.
Robert Eggers's The Northman has many elements worthy of applause, from its sense of narrative anti-modernity to Claes Bang's hunky presence. However, for us, actressexuals, the main attraction is Nicole Kidman. Playing Prince Amleth's mother, the Australian actress delivers a powerhouse monologue late in the film, devouring the scenery whole as she drives her son and the audience into stupefied shock. It's one of those delightfully weird tour de forces Kidman's known for among her fans. Such inspired work is often rooted in an auteur's bold vision and represents a facet of the thespian's career that's seldom recognized by awards.
If one were to judge her based only on the actress's five Academy Award nominations, her filmography would look much less adventurous than the truth. One of the only times Kidman came close to Oscar glory for a go-for-broke gonzo performance happened in 2012 when she starred in Lee Daniel's The Paperboy…
Reeking of sweat and urine, cum mixed with blood, The Paperboy is a piece of Southern Gothic that wears its trashiness as a badge of honor. Adapted from Peter Dexter's novel, the film follows a Miami Times reporter as he returns to his Floridian hometown in the summer of 1969. There, Ward Jansen and an English colleague investigate a murder that happened four years ago and resulted in the conviction of Hillary Van Wetter, now awaiting his execution on death row. As they work to expose the system's supposed injustices, the journalists dive into a twisted story bound to end in bloodshed.
The two principal characters are Ward's younger brother, Jack, and Charlotte Bless, a beautician who fell in love with the man behind bars and dreams of marrying him once he's out. According to interviews, Nicole Kidman stayed in character as Charlotte all through filming, a first in her storied career. Furthermore, since the film's budget was so low, Daniels had the star working as her makeup artist. That was another first for the actress, and she did a remarkable job. Floating into the story through a cloud of cigarette smoke, Kidman's like a cheap Brigitte Bardot knockoff with greasy cosmetics and fried blonde tresses.
Charlotte's first seen re-reading her imprisoned beau's love letters, her airy voice speaking of rosy futures. Kidman has never been exceptionally proficient at replicating accents, but she makes up for it with how she delivers every florid line Daniels throws her way. There's a strange vacant quality to Charlotte's dialogue in these first passages, almost as if she's a sleepy woman trying to retell some half-remembered dream. She suggests contradicting naiveté, but not infantilism. If anything, the beautician's attitude seems to stem from a daze of desire.
In other words, Charlotte gets turned on by danger and dangerous men. Moreover, she's reckless enough to let herself become drunk with erotic euphoria, narcotized by what some might call love and others may describe as an obsession with prison cock. That's her favorite drug, and, like a veteran addict, she lives every moment in a hazy buzz. Perpetually intoxicated, her presence is magnetic but also feverish, which, in turn, leads to sloppiness. Not that Kidman herself is sloppy. She might be playing a mess, but she does it with calculated intent. Every choice, no matter how ludicrous, feels deliberate.
One can even say that the wilder her approach, the more willful it reads - the more pleasurable too. It's as if the performer gets high on the performance risk in the same way Charlotte gets off on danger. The dynamic works up to an orgasmic crescendo, exploding in some of the movie's best and most memorable scenes. The first of these happens when the bride meets her lover for the first time, face to face. Unable to touch but electrified by pent-up want, they soon take part in a lurid spectacle of pantomimed sex.
At the peak of her movie star bravery, Nicole Kidman performs a ghostly blowjob with all the pornographic moaning you can imagine. Her glossy lips wrapped around an immaterial member, she's a sex doll made flesh. That being said, there's an undercurrent of self-consciousness that betrays Charlotte's willingness to please Van Wetter, dignity be damned. Her eyes never glaze over in ecstasy as his do. Instead, the actress's gaze is pointed and accessing, making Miss Bless into a professional coquette intent on getting an orgasm out of her man, never losing control as she does it.
Later, while fighting with a trio of bikini-clad girls for the right to piss on Jack's jellyfish-stung body, another type of self-awareness shines through. It's the wisdom of an actress who knows just the right tone of absurdity to strike. For those who might regard The Paperboy as accidentally tasteless, Kidman's work proves the contrary. Her delivery is self-knowingly comedic, calibrated for a Tennessee Williams-aping circus rather than any form of straightforward thriller. This controlled chaos represents the best that The Paperboy has to offer, an orgiastic exercise in excess that reaches its apotheosis in Kidman's work.
None of this means Charlotte is an intellectual's caricature of redneck sluttery. Instead, Nicole Kidman constructs a three-dimensional person, full of humanity despite her garish exterior. Notice flashes of insecurity when she's berated for wearing pants or the tenderness that blossoms between Charlotte and Jack, the terror that emerges once the inmate groom comes home. Only then does the beautician lose herself in pure feeling, humiliation, disappointment. For as much as the character's part of an exploitation fantasia, Kidman keeps her grounded and shapes her arc into the stuff of tragic melodrama.
Upon its Cannes premiere, The Paperboy received fifteen minutes of applause. However, such rapture reception didn't translate to unanimously positive reviews, quite the opposite. Nevertheless, even the movie's most ardent detractors showed admiration towards Kidman, if nothing else for her gutsiness. As the awards season dawned, that dynamic continued, with the picture getting ignored beyond its Australian star. Indeed, Nicole Kidman won The Paperboy its only major nominations at SAG and the Golden Globes.
Unfortunately, the Academy looked elsewhere to fill out their Best Supporting Actress lineup. The nominees were Amy Adams in The Master, Sally Field in Lincoln, Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables, Helen Hunt in The Sessions, and Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook. Hathaway won for her Fantine, while Weaver was something of a surprise nominee, riding the coattails of her Best Picture nominee. Since 2012, the Academy bestowed Nicole Kidman two more nominations for real-life roles in Lion and Being the Ricardos.
The Paperboy's streaming on various platforms. You can also rent it on Google Play, Youtube, and Cineplex.
Reader Comments (12)
Way to kind for her acting abilities.
Looking back, it's not all that surprising that Weaver got nominated. She still had residual love from her first nomination a year ago and was in a movie that everyone was watching. The other choices that year either were canceled out by each other (Dench and Smith) or by a costar (Samantha Barks) or appeared in movies that were not widely circulated or films that a lot of people didn't want to sit through (Dowd and especially Kidman)- when your film was pretty much trashed and only one element was praised, that isn't enough to get viewers to watch. Other recent examples include Hong Chou from Downsizing and Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers.
I really love this Kidman performance. I think you point out so well how grounded and three-dimensional she makes Charlotte, while also embracing the wild aspects of her character and the melodrama she's in. Kidman is great at gettng the genre here just right.
It seems like it keeps getting harder and harder for supporting actresses to be the lone nominee from their film. While there are a few things that help (e.g., previous nominee/winner, legend back in the game, overwhelming critical support, having other acting contenders in the 6-10 slot, etc.), it seems like it has become nearly impossible for this to happen anymore. I think it's a little sad.
I do think it's both the genre of the film and the fact that it never caught on that kept Kidman out. The fact that it had extremely low box office hurt it. I do wonder if more eyes would have been on it if McConaughey's NYFCC and NSFC award wins would have at included this performance?
Fantastic write up,this is how I like my Nicole.
Claudio who would your Top 5 be.
My ballot
Field Lincoln
Hunt The Sessions
Kidman The Paperboy
Sarandon Arbitrage
Dowd Compliance.
Mr Ripley79__ Going strictly by Oscar eligibility, my Top 5 would be:
Dern, THE MASTER
Ehle, ZERO DARK THIRTY
Kidman, THE PAPERBOY
Kruger, FAREWELL, MY QUEEN (winner)
Toussaint, MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
I should mention that I consider both Hunt and Dowd leads, so they'd never be in my Supporting Actress lineup. Also, there are a lot of wonderful performances that, unfortunately, weren't eligible for the Oscars. Some of my favorites include Maribel Verdú in BLANCANIEVES, Irit Sheleg in FILL THE VOID, and all the women of COSMOPOLIS.
So surprising none of the nominees inc in your list,I have always wanted to see Middle of Nowhere,thanks Claudio.
It was a bold performance, but given the nature of it/the genre it always seemed a bit unlikely, even with the precursor support. This wasn't a year in which a lot of the supporting actress turns wowed me, although I did quite like Sally Field. It's too bad Maribel Verdu wasn't in the mix. Absolutely loved her. And I still think about Samantha Morton in Cosmopolis. My fanciful wish from that year - Mae Whitman was both hilarious and touching in The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I have really mixed feelings about the film as a whole. It wanted to be this lurid and dirty story but it sometime tries too hard to be shocking and it didn't click with me. Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey, and Nicole Kidman were great as was David Oyelowo but I still had issues with the film.
Great write up! She should’ve won
One of my favourite kidman’s performances. Yes tour de force it is!
Great write up! Lee Daniels strikes again! He of questionable taste, but one who is no doubt an absolute magician with the Actresses. I feel like they all get on set with him and his only note is, "Go for it!" and they do. Is there any other way to direct a scene like that ghost bj? I was pleasantly surprised that this performance had a bit of steam for an Oscar nod, but alas. Perhaps Moulin Rouge! aside, I think it would've been the nomination most reflective of Kidman's career as a whole.
people has forgotten, this was aimed to be Almodóvar's first english language film. One can't halp but wonder...