The 2022 Academy Awards nominations are out, and—fingers crossed—this year’s ceremony might just turn into an unprecedented celebration of queerness.
Nominations for West Side Story’s Ariana DeBose and Spencer’s Kristen Stewart mark the first time two openly queer actresses were nominated at the same ceremony, while films featuring queer subject matter like The Power of the Dog and Flee dominated their respective categories.
Overall, 2021 was an okay year for queer stories, featuring everything from the sacchrine coming-of-age drag musical Everybody’s Talking about Jamie and the violent and erotic 17th century convent thriller Benedetta making a splash. Even at the multiplexes, Marvel’s first out superhero in Eternals, Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry), shared a tender and memorable farewell kiss with his husband in the film, while Disney’s Cruella featured the House of Mouse’s first major queer character. And towards the end of the year, queer audiences’ stockings were stuffed with a sleigh full of Xmas schmaltz-fests via streaming services, including Single All the Way and Under the Christmas Tree. What could 2022 possibly have to top that? Oh right, there’s Billy Eichner’s all-LGBTQ2S+ rom-com.
All this queer energy is slowly bubbling its way into the run-up for golden statuettes, a sharp contrast to last year’s very straight affair. To help you catch up in time for the ceremony on March 27, we scored some of this year’s nominees on a representational report card, which, in reverence to 2017’s pioneering Best Picture-winner Moonlight, is based on a lunar rating system (because also, as we all know, the moon is gay).
A score of 🌔 means it’s the less relevant for queer audiences (though you may still want to check it out) while 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔 marks a new queer cinematic staple.
The Power of the Dog
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Jane Campion), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), Best Supporting Actress (Kirsten Dunst), Best Supporting Actor (Jesse Plemons), Best Supporting Actor (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Best Sound, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔🌔
Jane Campion is one of only two female directors to ever win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and her camera wizardry is on full display while watching this brooding, sprawling western. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as a tyrannical rancher in the early 1920s who takes his brother’s timid new stepson, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), under his steed. Throughout the film, Cumberbatch’s character won’t stop talking about his admiration for his mentor and former lover Bronco Henry, and it’s a relationship he seems to emulate with Phil—until things take a turn for the sinister. Power of the Dog isn’t a straightforward, easy watch. It’s a film that benefits greatly from a second viewing, if not just for the plot, then for Kirsten Dunst’s glorious performance as Phil’s mother, who’s slowly descending into the depths of alcoholism. It’s a deeply human story about the things we do for the people we love and the layers of humanity within each of us. As Dunst would say, give it all the shrimps.
Spencer
Nominations: Best Actress (Kristen Stewart)
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔
Spencer is the latest entry into the Dianaissance—our collective unquenchable thirst for another look at Princess Diana’s psyche that has taken the form of podcasts, TV shows, films and documentaries. But Kristen Stewart’s triumphant portrayal of the troubled and suffocating British royal is nothing like the Dianas we’ve seen before. Plus, with this nomination, Stewart (who is bisexual and engaged to screenwriter Dylan Meyer), joins a rare cabal of openly queer actors nominated for an Oscar in a straight role (typically it’s the other way around). The film is a tight, specific look at just three days in Diana’s life, zeroing in on a mostly made-up stay at Sandringham with her in-laws over Christmas that thematically binds together the darkest moments of her life. “Overwrought and over the top, it’s a very queer movie about the heterosexual fairy-tale myth of happily ever after,” Rachel Giese wrote in her review for Xtra. Diana’s only reprieve from the constant torment of her eating disorder, being spied upon, being gaslit, night terrors and general anxiety in the stifling castle is Maggie (Sally Hawkins), her trusted dresser and only confidante—who also happens to bring a queer spin of her own to the film.
Tick, Tick…Boom!
Nominations: Best Actor (Andrew Garfield), Best Film Editing
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔
Long live la vie bohème! Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is a spirited love letter to the artistic struggle. The film is an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Rent creator Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) as he attempts to break into New York’s theatre scene in the early 1990s. Golden Globe-winner (!) Mj Rodriguez has a small role as Larson’s co-worker, but it’s Robin de Jesús who steals the show as Michael, Jonathan’s gay roommate and the yang to his yin. While Jonathan is struggling to find his voice and win Stephen Sondheim’s approval, Michael has given up his acting dreams and is living his best corporate life, complete with a glass-walled corner office. Set a decade after the onset of the AIDS crisis, Tick, Tick…Boom! is punctuated with references to the virus’ devastation on their group of friends. But there’s moments of joy, too, like the surprise roll call of Broadway’s legends, featuring among its many greats absolute queer icon Bernadette Peters.
West Side Story
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Steven Spielberg), Best Supporting Actress (Ariana DeBose), Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔
Steven Spielberg’s new and improved West Side Story makes a few key updates to the 1957 musical. There’s no brownface, thankfully, and Rita Moreno (who won a supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of Anita in the 1961 film adaptation) returns in a new role as a shopkeeper. But the most noteworthy change is the inclusion of Anybodys—a tomboy in previous versions—as a fully realized trans man. Played by non-binary actor iris menas, Anybodys is a minor character looking to be accepted by the Jets and follows them around while enduring their mocking—before finding acceptance on his own terms. Also keep an eye out for the openly bisexual Ariana DeBose, who succeeds Moreno in the supporting role of Anita. She’s likely poised to repeat Moreno’s Oscar win, too, and would be the first openly queer actress of colour to win an Oscar.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Nominations: Best Actress (Jessica Chastain), Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔
Tammy Faye Messner, played here by Jessica Chastain, was a complicated woman. As a televangelist, she benefitted from millions of dollars donated to her ministry and was endlessly mocked for her campy getups and opulent spending. Her ex-husband—who the film heavily suggests was queer—was later convicted of fraud and served five years in prison. In the spirit of revisiting the stories of women who were unfairly scrutinized in the public eye like Britney Spears and Monica Lewinsky, this biopic attempts to show the other sides of Messner, a savvy businesswoman and LGBTQ2S+ ally. “The film understands that televangelism relied on many of the same tricks as drag: wigs, spray tans and over-the-top emotion,” reads the film’s review in Xtra. It shows Tammy Faye out of step with her fellow evangelists when she advocates for equal rights, highlighting a 1985 interview Messner conducted on her Christian network with Steve Pieters, a gay pastor living wih HIV. After her husband’s conviction, Messner continued to be a queer ally until her death in 2005, and RuPaul even narrated the 2000 documentary on which this film is based.
Parallel Mothers
Nominations: Best Actress (Penélope Cruz), Best Original Score
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔
In one of his most serious movies to date, two-time Oscar winner Pedro Almodóvar looks at the marred legacy of Spain’s civil war. The film follows Janis (Penélope Cruz), a photographer and expecting mother who hopes to unearth her grandfather’s remains from an unmarked grave just outside her ancestral town. On the day she’s due to give birth, Janis befriends another mother, Ana (Milena Smit), and they later begin a sexual relationship. Almodóvar, who is gay, regularily features queer characters in his work, and Parallel Mothers is done up in quintessential Almodóvar fashion, with sleek jewel-toned sets and flashy wardrobes, fantastical narratives and over-the-top characters. But like much of his recent work, which includes the autobiographical Pain and Glory, this film is more self-reflective and grapples with the director’s sense of purpose.
House of Gucci
Nominations: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Xtra report card: 🌔
Gaga. Gucci. Murder. Need I say more? Ridley Scott’s faux accent-riddled campy murder drama looks at a juicy, deadly scandal in the Gucci family. Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga) a young middle-class woman, meets and falls for a Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver). When their marriage falls apart, she hires a hitman to take out her husband as part of a revenge plot. Outside of Gaga’s performance, the film wasn’t very well-received by critics. But Mother Monster on the awards press circuit is a gift that keeps on giving. According to a recent interview with Gaga, there was a steamy sex scene between Patrizia and Salma Hayek’s Pina who plays a psychic that ended up on the cutting room floor. It all seems a little like queer-baiting, so it might have been best that they left that out.
Flee
Nominations: Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best International Feature
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔
Danish documentary Flee tells the story of Amin Nawabi, a 36-year-old academic, who moved to Europe from Afghanistan with his family as a minor. As he’s getting ready to marry his partner, Nawabi reflects on his life-long journey to find a sense of security and belonging. The film is told in the style of a one-on-one interview, with Nawabi narrating over animated scenes that bring his words to life. The story follows Nawabi’s adolescence, starting with his idyllic youth growing up in Kabul before political violence forces his family to escape to Europe via Russia. As Nawabi and his family begin a life in Europe sans documents, he begins to grasp his sexuality and balance those self-realizations with the expectations of his family. It’s the first film in history to rack up nominations in International Film, Documentary and Animated Feature category, and could make even more history with wins on Oscars night.
BONUS: The snubs
But not everyone gets to be the darling of awards night. If you’ve burned through all of the Oscar contenders, dream about what could’ve been with these extra delights.
The Harder They Fall
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔
The Harder They Fall is an action-packed classic western that tells a fictional story of rival outlaw factions based on real-life Black cowboys and soldiers in the 19th-century Wild West. It features a bevy of stars, including Regina King, Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Delroy Lindo and Lakeith Stanfield, but Danielle Deadwyler absolutely shines as Cuffee, a quiet, unassuming and possibly trans-masculine member of the entourage. “While The Harder They Fall might not be explicit about Cuffee being a trans man or non-binary, the space is certainly left open for the LGBTQ+ community to see themselves represented on screen,” wrote Screen Rant’s senior features editor Faefyx Collington. Deadwyler, who is a straight woman and also plays Miranda in the resplendent post-apocalyptic miniseries Station Eleven, is having a knockout year. Her doe-eyed but fierce portrayal of Cuffee is heartwarming, although there’s no reason why a trans-identified actor couldn’t have played the role just as well. Especially since the Oscars have a long and checkered history of rewarding cis actors like Eddie Redmayne and Jared Leto for portraying trans characters, while trans performers in Hollywood struggle to find work. Cuffee is based on Cathay Williams, a woman who served in the U.S. army disguised as a man, and in the film, Cuffee refuses to be put into a box, avoiding any pronouns and disliking being deadnamed or asked to wear a dress during a caper. A spin-off with Cuffee blasting the heads off transphobic bad guys? I would like to see it.
Passing
Xtra report card: 🌔🌔🌔
Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson co-star in this black-and-white film, based on the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, about two light-skinned African-American women who are able to pass as white. When Irene (Thompson) runs into her childhood friend Clare (Negga), she’s surprised to learn that Clare is hiding her true identity from her racist, white husband. Irene tries to keep her distance, but the two are repeatedly drawn back together. First-time director Rebecca Hall amps up the implicit romantic attraction between Irene and Clare from the novel into full sparks. “Hall compensates for the novel’s restraint through stolen glances, flirtatious phrases, and lingering touches and kisses between Clare and Irene,” wrote critic Salamishah Tillet in her New York Times review. But while the full extent of their romance remains unexplored in the film, its acknowledgement adds another layer of depth to their relationship and tragedy to the ending.
Why you can trust Xtra
