Is the Oscar award afraid of sex?

Several underperforming films at the Academy Awards had one thing in common: a blunt willingness to deal with sex.

To know, “Babygirl” star Nicole Kidman, who plays a woman who comes closer to understanding her carnal side after an affair with her trainee, led harder campaigns than she has ever had before; So did the “Queer” head actor Daniel Craig, as a fell in love with gay man who, through physically, expresses what he cannot in words. None of the actors got a nomination. “Challengers”, a spring sensation led by Zendaya, who appeared to compete for his vibrant score and cross -border manuscript, came no way, while “nosferatu”, a riveting gothic portrayal of desires at the brink of death, did not reach the best picture nic Some speculated in.

None of these come as true shock, exactly; Kidmans and Craig’s campaigns seemed to lose steam as precursor nominations avoided their grip, while “Challengers” may have just disappeared from memory – and “Nosferatu” can take its craft nominations (and its ticket sales) as a reward. And the film’s respective advantages can be discussed – from my perspective is the most unlucky missed by this particular set of nominated “Challengers”, in which its music and authorship evoked the heartbreaking sense of sexual gamemanship.

Elsewhere, among the morning’s biggest surprises was the absence of both Pamela Anderson and (especially) the heavily stressful advocate Jamie Lee Curtis for “The Last Showgirl”, a movie about Las Vegas Burlesque, which went the way for his East Coast Agency in 2019, “Hustlers” , another well-liked film that the Oscar award did not make room for.

“Hustlers” gives an exciting comparison. In the Oscar race in 2019, Jennifer Lopez had been tipped as a possible winner for his support performance as a stripper who gets one against his customers – it was a raw and honest job from a superstar we were unfamiliar to see in such a . a light. And Lopez losing on a nomination suggests that this particular iteration of the Academy does not appreciate the special tone. In his subject, “Hustlers” is similar to “The Last Showgirl”, with his working dancer out in the cold; In his treatment of desires as the source of painful comedy, it is more akin to “Challengers”.

Among the films that were nominated, “The Substance,” carries an overparenting best image candidate, in its astonishing openness of the extremity to which the human body can be pushed an old, well -known argument: violence may always be more acceptable in Hollywood than sex. And “Anora”, a nominee to best image this year, seems to give the counter -argument to the idea that the academy is looking down on film about sexual relationships: it acts like “hustlers” about a stripper whose bodily is taking her places, she Maybe never imagined. But the film’s road-movie middle third, where it becomes a crazy hunt through the Brooklyn-Night, takes sex off the table, at least for a while. “Anora” is about the delicate network of relationships between its characters. Sex, in “Anora” (as in last year’s multi-oscar-winning “Poor Things”) is ultimately a device that allows the real story to begin.

Whereas in “Queer”, in “Babygirl”, and especially in “Challengers”, sex is The story – to a degree that one must sit with, maybe unpleasant. (While “Challengers” is a work with superb control, pushing both “queer” and “babygirl” their starring role in Baroque and revealing expressions of desires, those who evoke unpleasant laughter in their directness.) It is Craig’s desire for Drew Starkey , Kidman’s desire for Harris Dickinson, and Zendaya’s desire to place the two men pursuing her on either side of a tennis network that starts not just every single story, but it drives them to new and strange places. This year’s Oscar nominations are commendable widespread – surprisingly political (from “I’m Still Here” in the best picture to “The Apprentice” twice for Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong in the acting races) and ranging from Blockbusters like “Wicked” and “Dune : Part Two “To Lidet Sete Movies like” Nickel Boys “, which now gets a boost. But there may still be places that Oscar at the moment doesn’t really want to go.