Also announcing her entrance into the race via trailer today is Annette Bening. She leads the female-centric cast of the dramedy 20th Century Women playing a free-spirited mom trying to raise her son in 1970s California. It’s a role right in Bening’s wheelhouse. Her four previous nominations all come from films with darkly comic undertones.
Greta Gerwig and current W magazine cover girl Elle Fanning round out the cast as a photographer and a friend of Bening’s character’s son respectively, and both could prove to catch a buzz in the supporting category, but it seems to be Bening’s film to carry towards gold statue glory.
Women is director Mike Mill’s first film since Beginners. That film won Christopher Plummer the Best Supporting Actor statue in 2011. Women will debut for critics next month at the New York Film Festival, and will receive a limited release on Christmas day.
When both films do find their way before critics, the Best Actress should become a lot clearer.
Also in the midst of the race are actresses like Natalie Portman (Jackie), Ruth Negga (Loving), Emma Stone (La La Land), Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) and Amy Adams (Arrival), but most of those films have at least already premiered somewhere on the intercontinental festival circuit.
Watch Viola Davis take Lynn Hirschberg’s Screen Test:
Article Appeared @http://www.wmagazine.com/story/viola-davis-and-annette-bening-kick-off-oscar-hype-in-dueling-trailers