Performance Review: Melissa Leo in The Fighter (2010)

It's been awhile for sure, but I'm back with this past year's Supporting Actress winner in spotlight (just how she LOOOOVVVESSS it!); one who stirred up a little bit of weird (i.e. desperate) PR in the form of an ad which kind of backfired and presenting herself to the media and the world as more than a bit shallow and a lot less than humble. But, nonetheless, it didn't stop her from swiping this year's prize, and it's actually a bit surprising that Oscar (and most every other critics group) had such an adoring affection for...

...Melissa Leo in The Fighter (2010)

Melissa Leo plays Alice Ward, the loud and crazy, but loving manager mother of "Irish" Micky Ward (the immaculate Mark Wahlberg), a boxer who has yet to soar partially due to Alice's ways.
Alice is a woman who has led a crew of nine children in the tough, gritty city of Lowell, Mass, and who's used to getting what she wants without making it seem like she's even trying.

She has her loyal daughters on her sleeve, following her every move, a devoted husband, and two sons which whom are wiggling out of her grip as all of their lives are becoming shifted every which way; something she isn't used to, and something she refuses to get used to. She may be Micky's manager, but it's no secret that she favors her elder son Dicky, especially when she thinks that a camera crew following them around is for his big comeback, when it's really about his crack addiction.

And it's with Dicky she sides with when Micky begins to seriously consider heading in another direction, a direction where the domineering Alice will no longer be in control. The real life story isn't particularly known for the maternal setbacks Micky faced during this strive for the top, but the film explores these relationships with depth and makes clear one of the most important themes: family. It's family that ties mostly everyone in the film together, and anyone outside the family is considered risky and untrustable, and it's something Alice openly believes.

Though inside the family haunting truths begin to arise when Alice (who's been in some serious denial for years) is beginning to realize that her pride and joy Dicky is a loser, crack-head that has gone completely off the tracks partially due to Alice's loose and unsuspecting hold she tries to have on him. This revelation comes when Alice (in her furry slippers) makes her way to the crack house to find Dicky desperately jumping out of a high window. They both make their way to the car where a heartbroken Alice at first silently refuses to accept it before she quickly falls under Dicky's weirdly charismatic spell. It's Leo's best scene in the film and it grips us to see a complex character at her peak. 

And yes, like the other characters, Alice is by design a simple yet complex character who's caught in a tangled web of moral and emotional complexities, but much of this doesn't actually derive from Leo's actual portrayal in the role. It's written as truth, and the actual Alice Ward gives Leo a lot of actorly bits to chew on both physically and verbally; big hair, gaudy wardrobe, chain smoking, lots of words to shout, and a heavy Bohston accent. And that's the problem, when Leo's performance is a flashy, showy externalized walking caricature. 

That might be an easy way out, to call it "over the top" and "showy", but it's true and Leo does what I least like in supporting performances; trying so hard to own the film, blow everyone else off-screen, and to have no interest in elevating the proceedings and the other actors. It's a problem that critics, voters, and film loves have embraced as a positive quality that puzzles me, to be honest. 

With such a complex part, Leo copps out with having fun with the expressions and accents rather than constructing a human character who's just as lost as the others around her. Leo doesn't illuminate much about Alice; her internal integrity, her motivation, her reasoning, her inner turmoil for herself and her family. It cheapens the character that we don't really get a glimpse behind her facade, and it prevents any character development. The rest of the main cast and their characters grow and change in their own ways from all of this, but Leo's Alice is the only person who doesn't seem to budge or grow, and it's because of the actress playing her. In every scene, she's always present and engaged (even in the ensemble action), but never that focused, and always much more "in the moment" than "in the character" -- and it's clearly felt. 

Though this category has seen bigger disappointments with its winners, I remain stumped as to why this occasionally funny ("that Salanada-banana-fuckin'-thing!") but nearly completely unsatisfying performance amazed so many and swiped all of the attention away from her much more deserving co-stars (aka the unnominated Wahlberg, and the defeated Adams). I mean, I get why she won (loud, brash, unsubtle, pure fun with little substance, and scene-stealing) but c'mon, it gave a vain actress and character the attention she simply didn't deserve. But The Fighter is a great enough film that her cotton-candy, lightweight work doesn't bring anything down. And Thank God for it.