Barbiegate? It should not be carried away

Greta Gerwig is a wonderful actress, writer and director. His first three feature films – Lady Bird, Little Women And barbie – were all finalists for the Academy Award for Best Picture. A feat. She herself has been a finalist for the Oscars four times, for the screenplays (original or adapted) of all her films, and for the direction of Little Women.

I have been an early admirer of this artist who can be described as a pioneer, despite her 40 years. She is one of only eight women selected in the prestigious Best Director category in the 95-year history of the Academy Awards.

She was unforgettable in the title role of Frances Haa charming film directed by her companion Noah Baumbach that she co-wrote with him (like barbie). She worships the masterful Good work by Claire Denis and will become the 12th in May^e woman in 77 editions of the Cannes Film Festival to chair the official competition jury.

Thanks to Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, an exceptional actress who is also a producer, barbie has revived post-pandemic interest in theatrical cinema among a very large audience.

This delightful acid comedy has grossed some US$1.4 billion at the global box office. Which makes it the most popular film of last year… but not one of the five best films of 2023.

barbie was cited eight times in anticipation of the 74^e Oscar evening, notably for the screenplay by Gerwig and Baumbach (bizarrely considered an adaptation) and in the best film category. It’s not nothing. However, since the announcement of the finalists, many – including the former candidate for the presidency of the United States Hilary Clinton – have publicly deplored that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie were not respectively selected among the candidates. won the Oscar for Best Director and Best Actress. A little more and we would talk about Barbiegate…

If in another era, we could interpret as a snub the fact that a filmmaker whose film was among the five finalists for the Oscar for best film was not a finalist in the category of best director, it is not no longer the case since the category was expanded to ten films 15 years ago. You don’t need to have done postdoctoral studies in advanced mathematics to understand that at least one in two filmmakers find themselves in this situation every year.

This time it is, yes, Greta Gerwig, but also Cord Jefferson (for American Fiction), by Alexander Payne (for The Holdovers), by Bradley Cooper (for Maestro) and Celine Song (for Past Lives). Is there one of the five filmmakers selected in the best director category who deserves to be there less than Greta Gerwig? Martin Scorsese? Christopher Nolan? Yorgos Lanthimos? Jonathan Glazer? Justine Triet?

The approximately 600 members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) who chose the finalists don’t believe so. And anyone who has seen all the films nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture (I am) would have a hard time contradicting them. Moreover, if the DGA was allergic to comedy, as some claim, it would not have chosen Yórgos Lánthimos for Poor Thingsanother feminist satire set in a colorful spooky setting…

Why have so many people stepped up to denounce the so-called “injustice” suffered by Greta Gerwig? Partly because she is a woman and they are historically rare to compete for the Best Director Oscar.

There have only been three winners in almost a century: Kathryn Bigelow (for The Hurt Locker in 2010), Chloé Zhao (for Nomadland in 2021) and Jane Campion (for The Power of the Dog in 2022).

If there has been such a backlash since Tuesday, it is mainly because some people seem to confuse popular success and cinematic masterpiece. barbie, an irreverent and relevant comedy, shook the cage of patriarchy. But in all this pseudocontroversy, patriarchy has a good back. I’m not pretending that sexism or unconscious bias toward films directed by men doesn’t exist in Hollywood. It would be ridiculous to deny the facts. Three quarters of the members of the DGA are men. But is it possible that sexism alone does not explain Greta Gerwig’s non-selection in the best director category?

If there’s another woman who could have found herself in this category, it’s Celine Song. And I’m not saying that because she grew up in Toronto. My Canadian chauvinism is as non-existent as Ken’s perineum. Past Lives, Celine Song’s very first film, is remarkable for its subtlety and elegance. But as it has been little seen, it does not arouse passions like the global cultural phenomenon that is barbie.

Sexism certainly does not explain the exclusion of Margot Robbie, already nominated twice in the acting categories at the Oscars (for I, Tonya And Bombshell), among the finalists for best actress. The Oscar will obviously go to Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) or Emma Stone (Poor Things), both remarkable. Who should Margot Robbie have been preferred to? Certainly not to Carey Mulligan, exceptional in Maestronor to Sandra Hüller, who carries the best film of the year on her shoulders, Anatomy of a fall. Perhaps to Annette Bening in Nyad ? We would have cried ageism…

Perhaps, in fact, “there is no Ken without Barbie” nor “a movie barbie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie”, as Ryan Gosling lamented on social networks, lamenting that his colleagues had been excluded from the directing and best actress categories. It remains that THE acting performance of barbie is Gosling’s. Which doesn’t mean he deserves the Oscar for best supporting actor, any more than barbie does not deserve the Oscar for best picture. We shouldn’t carry around. The Oscars, fortunately, are not a popularity contest.