Why Stephanie Hsu should win the Oscar for Best Sup­port­ing Actress

In a new series, we’re cel­e­brat­ing the films we loved that aren’t like­ly to dom­i­nate the awards race. Over the new few weeks, our writ­ers make pas­sion­ate argu­ments for the per­for­mances and craft that stood out to them, from block­busters to art­house and every­thing in between.

To be the child of immi­grants is to be famous­ly in between. In between cul­tures, in between lan­guages, in between his­to­ries; a wary tourist in your own home, none of which tru­ly belong to you or – more pre­cise­ly – you to them. Words turn clum­sy in your mouth, oth­er people’s fam­i­lies seem incom­pre­hen­si­ble in their ease, and your whole life can feel uncan­ny – a world that is too close and unknown all at once. It is a state of dis­com­fort­ing lim­i­nal­i­ty; a seat on the hard chair of the wait­ing room, always, but not quite, prepar­ing to depart.

In Every­thing Every­where All At Once, Stephanie Hsu’s Joy is every­where, which is to say nowhere. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s glee­ful­ly man­ic, tan­gled take on the Amer­i­can Dream, about a Chi­nese immi­grant fam­i­ly caught in the rav­ages of the mul­ti­verse and their own failed hopes, sees the rel­a­tive new­com­er take on two roles – or the same role shat­tered and warped through space and time beyond recog­ni­tion. She is Joy, the sar­cas­tic, defen­sive, and deeply hurt daugh­ter of Eve­lyn and Way­mond, and she is Jobu Topa­ki, a ver­sion of Joy who was once pushed too far by her mother’s expec­ta­tions sev­er­al uni­vers­es away, and whose irre­sistibly flam­boy­ant brand of nihilism is tak­ing over the multiverse.

Snared in the ever-widen­ing space between her Chi­nese par­ents Eve­lyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Way­mond (Ke Huy Quan), and her Amer­i­can girl­friend Becky, Joy inhab­its that quin­tes­sen­tial in-between that defines the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion: in between cul­tures, gen­er­a­tions, nar­ra­tives – both damsel-in-dis­tress and vil­lain. Shed­ding iden­ti­ties and uni­vers­es like a snake­skin, Jobu Topa­ki morphs from Joy’s dis­il­lu­sioned grunge to bub­blegum Tik­Tok looks – lip­stick hearts on her cheeks, glit­ter around her angry eyes – des­per­ate to leave her pain behind.

How can an actor play a char­ac­ter that is every­thing and noth­ing? Hsu under­stands that the key is pre­ci­sion even amidst chaos. Trans­fig­ur­ing the emo­tion­al gap that exists between Joy and her par­ents into tech­ni­colour car­nage, Hsu makes Joy and her dark­est time­line coun­ter­part Jobu Topa­ki a study on the cor­ro­sive nature of dis­ap­point­ment, and the ways in which such gut­ting loss – like its showier emo­tion­al peers – can play out wide and big. It is a near impos­si­ble feat, to per­form the very idea of per­for­mance as eli­sion, as a mask for a deeply frac­tured core.

“She has no real motives or desires,” the Alphaverse’s Way­mond warns a bewil­dered Eve­lyn of the crea­ture she is about to encounter, but Hsu’s embod­i­ment of the char­ac­ters she tan­gles togeth­er is so mes­meris­ing pre­cise­ly because it under­stands the untruth of this state­ment, illu­mi­nat­ing the unquenched desire for accep­tance that lies beneath Jobu Topaki’s incar­nate cynicism.

It is a desire leg­i­ble in the slow down­turn of her mouth as she watch­es the real­i­sa­tion of the chaos she has sown as Eve­lyn final­ly breaks down at the fam­i­ly laun­dro­mat, in the hoarse sob in her voice as she strug­gles out of Evelyn’s arms, bent on her own self-destruc­tion. There is a plas­tic­i­ty to Hsu’s face that can so adept­ly rearrange itself from rel­ish to grief, that con­tains so much: all the anger, frus­tra­tion and des­per­a­tion that has crys­tallised into Jobu Topa­ki, every­thing that might fit on a bagel before it col­laps­es from the sheer weight of such unmet desires.

Jobu Topa­ki looms large, both for Eve­lyn and for the audi­ence, but at her cen­tre, and at the cen­tre of Hsu’s per­for­mance, is Joy, her mouth strained as she sits in the mini­van with her moth­er, her face crum­pled as Eve­lyn, over and over, denies the com­plex­i­ty of her daughter’s per­son­hood – her queer­ness and stub­born­ness and right to medi­oc­rity. These flash­es of Joy sting in their rareness; through­out the film, Joy is the key to the inter­di­men­sion­al puz­zle that remains elu­sive, buried under too many lay­ers of dis­af­fec­tion and dis­tance to keep her­self safe.

Take the very first time we see her on screen, cel­e­brat­ing with her fam­i­ly in anoth­er, small­er screen reflect­ed in Evelyn’s office. She is not entire­ly real – a fig­ment of an imag­i­na­tion, or of anoth­er world. Much like fel­low awards con­tender After­sun, Every­thing Every­where All At Once is a film that fre­quent­ly takes place in sur­faces and mir­rors, in dreamed of and often star­tling alter­na­tive real­i­ties. Yet in almost every ludi­crous per­mu­ta­tion of the uni­verse, the real Joy, the third mem­ber of the Wang fam­i­ly, is nowhere to be found. Jobu Topa­ki is vivid, unflinch­ing­ly present, but she is not Joy. There is an aston­ish­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty that Hsu extends to both the gap and col­lapse that exists between the two dop­pel­gangers, to the ways in which she peels back Jobu Topaki’s rain­bow tulle and pop art face paint to reveal Joy, shel­ter­ing in place amidst the chaos until she can final­ly find where she might belong.

In a film sat­u­rat­ed with career-defin­ing per­for­mances, Hsu’s abil­i­ty to stand out is noth­ing short of aston­ish­ing, and it’s heart­en­ing to see her break through into the Acad­e­my Awards’ Best Sup­port­ing Actress cat­e­go­ry (Hsu is only the third actor of Chi­nese descent to be nom­i­nat­ed in the Academy’s his­to­ry). Only a mad per­son, so the say­ing goes, would repeat the same action over and over again expect­ing dif­fer­ent results and by the same stroke, per­haps only a fool looks to the awards indus­try after its lengthy his­to­ry of Being Wrong expect­ing any real reflec­tion of mer­it. But hers is one of the great sup­port­ing per­for­mances of recent times, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly out­ra­geous and restrained – a care­ful­ly craft­ed por­trait of the detri­tus left behind by the dis­lo­cat­ing machi­na­tions of fam­i­ly and the Amer­i­can Dream.