With The Whale in theaters and The Menu currently streaming on HBO Max, it's a good time to be a Hong Chau fan. For many of us, she's the best part of both productions, finding the humanity within the former's misery, acing the stylized line readings and deliberate oddness of the gastronomic-inclined latter. Thanks to those achievements, the Asian-American actress is back in the Oscar discussion, working through her second bid for a Best Supporting Actress nomination. The first time this happened was in 2017, when Chau also proved herself the standout element of a movie with mixed reviews. Even those who hated Alexander Payne's Downsizing generally concede that her performance rises above the movie, shining brightly from within its failings.
Indeed, as Ngoc Lan Tran, Hong Chau is the best reason to watch the sci-fi satirical misadventure cum environmentalist existentialist crisis…
Written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Downsizing imagines a future where technology allows people to be shrunk down to around five inches tall. Originally, the procedure was devised to lessen humankind's burden on the Earth, circumventing the increased need for resources that comes with overpopulation. However, in practice, most people we see happily downsizing are moderately wealthy individuals doing so because they want to maximize their money. Though they speak of wanting to help the planet, greed allied with consumerist wantonness dictates this next step in human development.
In any case, after a brief prologue detailing how the invention first came to be and how it was introduced to the general public, Payne and company focus their attention on Paul Safranek, a Nebraskan man who's gradually convinced to take part in the downsizing program. It takes over half an hour of overexplanatory exposition to get us from the first scene to our protagonist's shrunken entrance into Leisureland, New Mexico. By this time, his wife has abandoned him, leaving halfway through their supposed transformation. One year later, a full 45 minutes in, Downsizing's primary narrative finally gets going as we observe Paul's glum existence as a newly-divorced man of diminutive proportions.
But of course, the focus of this piece is neither Matt Damon's Paul nor his party animal neighbor Dušan, played by Christoph Waltz. Instead, it's Hong Chau's Ngoc Lan Tran, a Vietnamese political dissident who was downsized against her will. One first becomes aware of her during one of Paul's first days as a tiny man, spent drinking alone in front of the TV. One glimpses the activist as part of a news story detailing her controversial fate. That said, the character's introduction only happens much later, after Paul has broken up with his girlfriend and found himself part of one of his neighbor's sudsy bacchanals. On the cold night of morning, he finds Ngoc Lan Tran cleaning up Dušan's mess – an activist turned house cleaner.
She was brought to America, shipped while hiding within a Target TV box, and barely survived the journey. Her sorry state led Ngoc Lan Tran to Leisureland, where her leg was amputated, and she eventually found a new life as a service worker. Following her, Paul finds a new purpose, helping the woman with her prosthetic limb while discovering the horrible conditions of the downsized underclasses. As a former occupational therapist, the first thing Paul notices about the woman is her stilted walk resulting from an ill-fitting artificial leg. So it's logical that their first interaction should be had over pill bottles, discussing their pain-killing effects as one understands her character as one defined by resilience while in constant ache.
Beyond the actress' physicality, the spectator's attention is quickly drawn to her speech patterns and heavy accent. Upon the film's release and subsequent awards run, one recurring topic of discussion was precisely that accent work, its potential readings as an offensive caricature. In her defense, Hong Chau claimed to base the character's voice on what she grew up hearing as the daughter of two Vietnamese immigrants. I see no reason to question this particular choice, especially as her performance is rich with other specificities that help transcend the potential for parody or stereotype.
As written, Ngoc Lan Tran can be interpreted as a miserabilist cartoon, but the performer does everything she can to push back against that. First and foremost, her success depends on a complete surrender to earnestness. She wades through the film's satire, and its willful subversions, like an explorer cutting a path through jungle weeds with a blade made of sincerity. Watch her reminisce about hometown butterflies or the tragedy of a dead sister, the tears prayer brings to her eyes, or the overwhelming emotion of remembered kindness. Steadfast sentiment functions as a backbone to the characterization, leaving the door open to hope, even in times of imminent apocalypse.
On another level, Hong Chau negotiates variations of gentility and harshness in a way that denudes the humor of glibness, making it manifest as character detail. Consider the nonchalant, almost brusque manner in which she informs Paul of her housemate's death. What could have been a punchline is presented as reasonable pragmatism from a woman that has suffered more than most will ever endure. An additional element to Ngoc Lan Tran's complexity emerges early, when furtive looks and an evaluating gaze betray a calculating intelligence woven between humanitarian values. In other words, being good does not preclude one from being smart. It doesn't need to signify flat saintliness, either.
This final performance facet becomes evident as Downsizing's last act rises on the horizon and the future of Humanity as philtered through Paul's arc becomes the narrative's driving force. On the sidelines of Damon's story, Hong Chau finds beats of skepticism laced with disillusionment, the character's practical nature morphing into a staunch refusal to give up as all things come to an end. Subtle reactions add dimension, twisting the convoluted tale until it almost works whenever Ngoc Lan Tran's on-screen. Does this plethora of actorly choices sustain all of the film's twists? Not necessarily. For example, a bend towards a romantic connection with the leading man never quite gels. However, there's enough deepening of what could have been superficial in another thespian's hands to justify the accolades.
Hong Chau is one of our most straightforward cases of a performance ending up in the dreaded sixth place for Oscar voting. At least, that's what her precursor success indicates. The actress was nominated for the SAG, Golden Globe, and Critics Choice Awards, scoring some critics' honors along the way. Having only missed BAFTA, her bounty is significantly bigger than some of AMPAS' eventual nominees. They were Mary J. Blige in Mudbound, Allison Janney in I, Tonya, Lesley Manville in Phantom Thread, Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird, and Octavia Spencer in The Shape of Water. Janney would win, though Metcalf was the critics' clear favorite. Regarding Hong Chau, she's still waiting for her first Academy Award nomination.
Downsizing is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. You can also rent it on most of the major platforms.