The Best Forgotten Movie Performances Of 2013

Yes, many people are already writing their Top 10 movie lists for
2013. We're saving ours for the last week of the year. While we wait
for this terrific movie year to wind down, we're going to start
looking back at some highlights. Today, it's our favorite forgotten performances: These won't be rewarded come Oscar time, but they stuck with us nevertheless. Leitch: Julie Delpy, Before
Midnight. The brilliant, wrenching last half hour of Before Midnight has torn me apart the
three times I've seen it. It's
shocking and painful and full of the truth and nastiness that only two people
who have known and loved each other a very long time can muster. It also
establishes the secret of the whole Before
Sunrise franchise: These movies have been about Celine all along. In the first film, Ethan Hawke's Jesse seemed to be living
out every callow American pseudo-intellectual boy's dream: Traveling through
Europe, he spends a perfect evening wandering around Vienna with a beautiful
French girl who understands him, man, in a way that no one back home ever
could. It was moving and funny and real, but it also never pretended this was an
actual relationship that could last outside this one evening. In Before Sunset, the sequel, Jesse is a
successful author who still sort of thinks it's all about him, that all the
problems that adult life brings can be solved in one grand, dramatic gesture.
Celine is always present for these moments, simply being herself, calling Jesse
out for his bullshit but secretly dreaming herself, wondering if that vague
sense of dissatisfaction could possibly be extinguished by this coarse,
full-of-himself American. In Before Midnight, we
see the ramifications of the last two films, in the real world. Jesse and
Celine still love each other—the movie never wavers from that central fact—but we see clearly how so much of this relationship has been on Jesse's terms.
Jesse got his big dramatic gesture but lost his family for it, something he
secretly resents Celine for, which he'll never admit. (Jesse thinks that giving
up everything means that he should automatically win every argument after
that.) So he plunges forward in his life with self-regard, assuming that his
genuine love for Celine will allow him to keep getting away with everything. The fight at the end is Celine finally calling him out on it in the way that only someone who loves
him—and is exhausted by him—can. Celine,
a brilliant, ambitious woman who has put aside much of her life for Jesse and
their twins, notes that Jesse just gets what he wants all the time, without
paying for it. He doesn't know the name of the family pediatrician; he begs out
of the more strenuous parts of parenting; he falls into routines that benefit
him far more than Celine. She, basically, picks the relationship apart. As with
all fights, she's right about some things and wrong about others, but Julie
Delpy never makes us feel like Celine is just complaining, or is just trying to
pick a fight. This has always been her life too, and in the real world, the
fantasies of the last two films can crumble… and she's the one always having
to sweep them up. And yet: She still loves him, they still love each other,
and they'll keep moving forward. Both Hawke and Delpy have aged, obviously, but
Delpy still feels connected to the world; you can almost see Hawke (and Jesse)
receding into gruff older gentleman mode. Celine is still trying, still
believing, still fighting… and Delpy makes us feel every second of it. It's an
incredible performance. I can't wait to see what she comes up with seven years
from now, because she keeps getting better. And we keep loving her more. Grierson: Denis O'Hare, C.O.G. Denis O'Hare is
one of those great "that guy" character actors: You may not recognize his name,
but you know his face and love his work. A Tony-winner (for Take Me Out) and Emmy nominee (for American Horror Story), O'Hare has been featured
on television shows such as True Blood,
The Good Wife and Brothers & Sisters, and in movies
like 21 Grams and The Proposal. (He plays the doctor who
keeps Angelina Jolie locked up in Changeling
and the doctor who stands in the way of Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club.) But he's rarely
gotten the chance to shine on-screen like he did in C.O.G., one of the year's real buried treasures. Written and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez (Easier With Practice), C.O.G.
is adapted from a David Sedaris story and stars Jonathan Groff as David, a
young East Coast snob who travels to Oregon to take a summer job at an apple
orchard, convinced he needs some real-world, regular-folks experience. David is
grappling with his homosexuality, but he finds himself becoming friends with
Jon (O'Hare), an older born-again Christian and Gulf War vet who wants to
spread the Gospel, unaware that David, his would-be new protégé, is gay. C.O.G. is a lovely
balance between comedy and drama—it's a slender film enlivened by its
collection of precise, multi-dimensional characters—and Jon is the person who
lingers longest in the memory. As played by O'Hare, he's a mess of
contradictions: He's a genuinely funny and thoughtful man, but he's also a
bigot with an incredibly short fuse, as if the sinner he once was and the saved
man he thinks he now is are fighting for supremacy. Jon is the kind of character that's easy to mock—a clueless,
hypocritical fool who clings to religion because he can't cope otherwise. But
O'Hare won't let us see him so simply. Instead, Jon is revealed to be an
empathetic man in real spiritual crisis, a well-intentioned soul trying to
convert David to Christianity who can't even control his own worst impulses. In
the process, O'Hare delivers something uncommon: a compassionate, nonjudgmental
portrayal of how flawed everyday people wrestle with faith, trying to aspire to
something greater than themselves even though they're cursed to be the screwed-up
individuals that they are. In real life, you probably would want to steer clear
of someone as angry and exhausting as Jon. But the beauty of O'Hare's
performance is how he draws us in, giving Jon the grace he'll never find
himself. Grierson & Leitch is a regular column about the movies. Follow us on Twitter, @griersonleitch.