Oscar 2024: Where to See It and How It’s the Only Best Film Nominee That Didn’t Premiere in Argentine Cinemas

She is the only candidate Oscars 2024 which, in Argentina, was not shown in cinemas. American fiction, which has been talked about for some time, has landed in streaming on the Amazon Prime Video platform. He has 5 nominations for the Hollywood Academy Award: we must add film, leading and supporting actor, music and adapted screenplay, the latter area in which he seems closer to winning than in the others.

And where does its success lie? A good percentage is that it is a film about stories that are not told every day, and it makes fun of academicism, of good morals (one can say Negro) and appearances.

Satire and romantic comedy, the film of which Cord Jefferson, until now screenwriter (the series Guardians) and the producer jumps from one genre to another, without taking sides for one to take the reins of the story.

The film tells the story of Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a professor like the character played by Paul Giamatti in another of the 2024 Oscar nominees, Those who remain and both also nominated for best leading actor, but he is different, not only because he is African American. As a teacher, he makes his students cry, forcing him to take “a break” from teaching and return to Boston, where his family lives, to focus on writing.

He is a failed author suffering from writer’s block. And the distance he has taken from his family is reflected in the way he avoids her, doesn’t call her and lives in the California sun. When he arrives at the house on the bay, he discovers that his mother (Leslie Uggams) is losing her memory and that his brothers, Lisa and Clifford (Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K. Brown, the latter nominated for best supporting actor), are divorced. . There’s also Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor), her cook and the one who helps her mother as much as she can.

And, next to her, Coraline (Erika Alexander), a lawyer who is one of the few admirers of the books of the past written by “Monk”, with whom there is a love story.

The Oscar for best screenplay is what the film is aiming for most

But the most mysterious or intriguing part happens when Monk, tired of failing, decides to write a book (he calls it Fuck you) in which he uses clichés against African Americans, finds it offensive and also poorly written. Well: it’s a success before it even goes to press, and what’s more there are those who offer him 4 million dollars to have the rights to make a film, and Monk not only gives himself a pseudonym, but says he’s an ex – detained…

What he ends up deciding to write Fuck you It’s the need to meet his mother’s expenses and the success of a young black author, Sintara (Issa Rae), who he says does everything you shouldn’t do, and with whom he will share the honor of being part of the jury for a literary prize. … In which his work can contribute, since it is not signed by him.

The criticism of Hollywood and the publishing world is there, at hand and with seductive dialogues or monologues, because in American fiction If there’s one thing they do, it’s talk and never stop talking.

Of course, the deception will reveal more layers and satirize media that commodifies the Black experience, reducing it to a consumable caricature… especially for white people.

Wright, who you may remember from some Wes Anderson films, such as French news AND City of asteroidsas well as the latest James Bond and Batman, that is, the series Westworld. Here she has her best character and gets perhaps his best composition. But it’s likely that another professor (Paul Giamatti) will end up winning an award that wouldn’t hurt Wright at all.

“American Fiction”

Dramatic comedy. United States, 2023. 117′, SAM 16. From: Jefferson Cable. With: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Erika Alexander, Issa Rae. Available in: Amazon Prime Video.