Seventeen years later, she is not chasing a second statuette so much as choosing which vehicle to ride to the ceremony — because this season she has three.
The biggest of the three isn’t even her largest role.
In Olivia Wilde’s A24 dinner-party comedy “The Invite,” which opened over the summer, she has another scene-stealing part opposite Edward Norton, a second potential route into the supporting actress race.
Penelope Cruz in “La Bola Negra”
Cannes
But it can also set a trap. The same rule that makes a double nom possible makes vote splitting potentially fatal for a campaign. If Cruz’s support scatters across two films, neither performance may crack the top five and if concentrated on one, she could be deemed far safer. However, push too hard on both and she risks walking away with nothing, where a single campaign would have guaranteed her a seat.
The burden falls on three distributors, not one.
And then we have the question about the second Oscar itself.
But the most interesting story may be the simplest. Cruz has spent a career refusing to be any one thing in the movies. And now, she is refusing to be in any one category.
