Surprise! Conclave wins best film
Everyone expected Edward Berger’s classy thriller to win outstanding British film; in a slightly mediocre year for that prize, it was the clear frontrunner. But few tipped it for the best picture award. The Brutalist seemed to have too much chewy critical adoration; A Complete Unknown is well-loved, especially amongst the boomer demographic which still makes up a considerable portion of the Bafta votership; Anora (see below) was the dark horse emerging into the limelight. But Conclave? Isn’t it a bit … middlebrow? A bit too … enjoyable? And wasn’t that mic-drop ending slightly polarising?
Apparently not. What might have propelled it over the finish line other than home advantage? Might the late whiff of controversy have benefited it, with Vatican bigwigs – and US evangelists – suggesting it was the work of Satan? In a year when films need a few hot headlines to be really successful (see The Brutalist) but not too many (see Emilia Pérez) that smattering might have given it much-needed edge. Does it have a real shot at the Oscar? Perhaps one needs to look to the Baftas two years ago, when Berger’s previous film, All Quiet on the Western Front, won seven awards (picture, director, foreign language, cinematography, adapted screenplay, score and sound). At the Oscars, that went down to – a still very respectable – four (international, cinematography, production design and score).
Snub! Ralph Fiennes loses best actor
If Conclave can win best picture and outstanding British film – what’s wrong with the man who is in nearly every scene? Ralph Fiennes’s troubled Cardinal Lawrence is the beating heart of Conclave, its moral centre and the one whose troubled puffing also provided much of the soundtrack. Yet it’s also a performance light on heavy emoting and big stricken speechifying. Might that have cost Fiennes his gong? (It’s worth noting, perhaps, that Timothée Chalamet’s much-admired turn as Bob Dylan has a striking scarcity of Big Acting clips ripe for ceremony airing.) But you do have to feel slightly sorry for Fiennes – it’s been nearly 30 years since his last and only Bafta win, a supporting nod for Schindler’s List, and this marks his sixth defeat.
Surprise! Mikey Madison wins best actress
She might not have managed to secure the rising star award, which is voted for by the public, but Mikey Madison scored a huge coup by taking the best actress prize. Demi Moore’s comeback narrative for The Substance had been assumed to be powerful enough to woo even Bafta voters – and those unmoved might well be expected to go for Marianne Jean-Baptiste, cruelly overlooked at even the Oscar nominations stage but toweringly brilliant in Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. To celebrate either of those actors would have made a lot of sense, but the 8,000-odd voters instead went for a 25-year-old who plays a sex worker – quite an eyebrow raiser, given that even after their massive voters’ overhaul, Bafta membership still skews fairly old and conservative.
Yet Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner has accrued considerable momentum over the past week or so, with best picture wins at both the directors and producers’ guild awards in the US – both of which have many active Academy Award voters. Anecdotal reports increasingly suggest that while many people in the industry deeply admire The Brutalist, lots of them really love Anora. Might that push it over the edge on 2 March? Expect a flurry of fresh bets.
Surprise! Christopher Reeve triumphs over No Man’s Land
For the past two years, the Baftas have established an impeccable track record when it comes to celebrating excellent documentaries that engage with chewy issues ripped from the headlines. Last year they chose the devastating Ukrainian war film 20 Days in Mariupol; the previous year it was a study of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. This year No Other Land was right there: a critically adored look at West Bank devastation by a Palestinian-Israeli collective. And Bafta went for a mediocre film about the children of Christopher Reeve. Honorable in itself, of course, and not a film without considerable heft and upset, but a slight change of direction none the less.
Surprise! Emilia Pérez actually wins some awards
Jacques Audiard’s stitched-together mob musical drama has had the awards season from hell, one that its team wouldn’t like to just forget but to have the faintest memory of surgically removed from their skulls. Right when all hope seemed utterly lost, salvation came in the form of the surprisingly munificent Bafta voters.
Emilia Pérez may have only won two awards from 11 nominations, but many would have expected fewer: its win for best film not in the English language, ahead of a strong field including the much admired Kneecap and Oscar best picture nominee I’m Still Here felt genuinely unlikely.
And Zoe Saldaña’s victory for supporting actress suggests that she might be untainted by the general toxicity around her film. But will Oscar voters be quite so generous?
Snub! The BBC trims the hottest speeches
A risk-averse BBC tried to head off any issues by dropping potentially tricky quotes – though it’s all relative, as none would have hardly torn the roof off. David Tennant got in a few fairly tame jabs at Donald Trump, including a line about summoning him by saying his name three times – but in the edit only one of his gags survived: “Talking of villains …” And the BBC also deleted a significant news story: Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard’s peacemaking “kiss” to his errant star Karla Sofía Gascón, who as the world knows blew up most of the film’s award chances after some loathsome past social media activity was discovered. It might be a bit much to cry censorship, but definitely adds to the impression that all the BBC want is a bland, drama-free two hours of Sunday night TV.
Highlight! Three doses of Jesse Eisenberg
In so far as the Baftas act as an advert for a movie as much as an audition for the Oscars, A Real Pain must surely be seeing a bit of an uptick – thanks to Jesse Eisenberg’s three brilliantly winning appearances. He manages to be somehow funny and also sincere in all of them – as well as vastly faster than most of the people on the podium. In the first (winning original screenplay) he calls himself a loser and fanboys his wife. In the second (picking up Kieran Culkin’s prize) he is sweet about a person and cutting about the industry all at once. And in the third – presenting animated film – he and co-star Will Sharpe manage to find a category-appropriate riff to joke on that is, remarkably, both funny and plugs their film. For fans of those performances, A Real Pain won’t disappoint.
Snub! A Complete Unknown goes home empty-handed
In a field that for much of awards season has lacked a true frontrunner, some have wondered if A Complete Unknown might do a Coda, and triumph through sheer crowdpleasing charm. That theory had a major hole blown in it at the Baftas, where none of its six nominations resulted in awards wins. If the likes of best film always looked a stretch, there was genuine hopefulness about Chalamet’s best actor chances, particularly given the minor controversy around the use of AI in his awards season rival Adrien Brody’s Brutalist performance. But that clearly wasn’t enough to dissuade Bafta voters from coronating Brody. Instead all A Complete Unknown’s star received were a handful of tired jokes from host David Tennant about Timothée Chalamet lookalike contests.
Surprise! Wallace & Gromit beats Inside Out 2
Of all this year’s contenders, the one likely to have been seen by the most people who watched the ceremony on BBC One was the one also on BBC One a month and a half ago: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. It scooping both best animation (a competitive field, with Pixar’s box office behemoth Inside Out 2, plus critical favourites Flow and The Wild Robot) and the inaugural family film prize was none the less a big win not just for Aardman but also the Beeb, and Netflix, with whom it shares producing and broadcast rights. Nick Park’s bumbling acceptance speeches, despite having done this for almost 40 years now, adds to the on-brand appeal.
