The Golden Bin Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role

April 5, 2021 0 By Jeff Bulmer

Outstanding performances that eclipse the movies’ leads

In this series based on the Oscars Deathrace series of articles I wrote for The Phoenix News over the last few years, I spotlight my personal picks for this year’s Oscars, as well as some notable snubs.

Winner: Maria Bakalova – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Filmed in secret during the coronavirus pandemic and announced only weeks before premiering on Amazon Prime Video, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was one of 2020’s biggest surprises. A mostly unscripted, tightly written mockumentary, Borat follows in the footsteps of the original, provoking and exposing xenophobia and bigotry within the USA, this time with a more overtly political bent.

Essential to the success of Borat is the unrecognizability of its main stars, Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova. As Borat and Tutar Sagdiyev, the two needed to remain in character for the entirety of the shoot and had barely any script to rely on. For as crass a comedy as Borat is, it requires an extraordinary amount of method acting.

A complete unknown, Bakalova unsurprisingly has an easier time staying unrecognized than Cohen, but shockingly completely outshines him as well.
Bakalova’s performance is dynamic, transitioning regularly between authoritative anger, childlike glee, and the provocative questioning that made Cohen’s original character famous. Performing most of her dialogue in subtitled Bulgarian, Bakalova’s performance relies heavily on visuals and is more memorable for it. She elevates the presence of the non-actors around her, with babysitter Jeanise Jones experiencing brief internet stardom after the release of Borat.

Even in her scenes with Cohen, Bakalova regularly steals the show, to the point that the most highly talked about scenes in the movie barely involve Cohen at all. Finally, Bakalova fully establishes herself as Cohen’s equal as her arc culminates in the climactic interview with Rudy Giuliani. Though the content of the interview isn’t anything special, Bakalova proves herself a fantastic mockumentary interviewer and shows that if the series were to continue, Borat wouldn’t really need its titular character at all.

Runner-Up: Andrea Riseborough – Possessor

Possessor stars Andrea Riseborough as Tasya Vos, a corporate hitwoman who can inhabit the bodies of others to commit assassinations for the benefit of her employers. However, after years of possessing others, Vos is beginning to dissociate from her own life. When her boss orders her into the body of a man named Colin Tate (Christopher Abbott), she becomes trapped in his mind, locking her and Tate in a battle for control of his body.

Riseborough mostly appears as a sort of spectre, haunting Tate as he attempts to win back control of his mind and body. Throughout the movie, the two are characterised essentially simultaneously. Initially, this is mostly through Abbott, as he portrays Vos acting as Tate while Tate counter-acts as himself. When Riseborough does appear, it’s as if she’s been there the whole time. She looms over the movie in a way unseen villains rarely do. Unlike Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now or Chris Hemsworth in Bad Times at the El Royale, Vos is imposing because she’s actually in every scene. When Riseborough is as well, she uses the extra menace and Brandon Cronenberg’s shocking visuals to her advantage, resulting in her scenes being the most memorable in the film.

Opposite Abbott, Riseborough contributes to mesmerizingly gruesome dream-sequences that play to both actors’ strengths, elevated by Cronenberg’s striking directing. Riseborough is like the ideal movie monster: her character elevates Abbott’s, the two have excellent on-screen chemistry, and she’s legitimately frightening on-screen.