Sunday, January 6, 2008

Oscar Buzz: Jennifer Garner

Over the past few weeks, Juno has become the sleeper hit of the holiday season and is looking to be a front-runner for the Oscar nominations this season.  Both the film's star, Ellen Page, and screenwriter, Diablo Cody, are getting both the Oscar buzz and the praise, and deservedly so. But Jennifer Garner, one of the film's co-stars, is also worthy of praise and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

In the film, Garner plays Vanessa, a seemingly uptight yuppie married to Mark, played by Jason Bateman. When Page's character of Juno gets pregnant, she decides to give up her unborn baby up for adoption to Vanessa and Mark. Throughout the film, we see Vanessa's overwhelming desire to be a mother, a desire that warms both Juno and the audience's heart. The film's best scene is set in a mall, where the expecting (and showing) Juno and Vanessa unexpectedly run into each other, and share an unexpected bond. Garner is simply astonishing in this scene, conveying her character's emotion without uttering a single word. It's the film's emotional highlight. 

I'm afraid Garner's performance will get overlooked in favour of Page and Cody.  But hopefully the Oscar ballots will include Garner's name. 

1 comment:

Avenue Road said...

I really enjoyed this film. And it deserves all the buzz that it's getting.
I agree that Jennifer's performance will be overlooked. I've seen here in a few movies and think that she generally performance well. I believe her issues is that she doesn't always pick the right scripts..i.e Elktra. I would like to see her in a more lead actress role that have similar characteristics as the character she played in this movie. Anything other than the super hero junk she played in the pass.. unless it was a awesome script.