Amy Adams deserves an Oscar for this gritty drama about alcoholism ★★★★☆

The actress returns to acting in this tough film from Hungarian director Kornél Mundrócó, about a middle-aged woman facing addiction – and her traumatic childhood.

Amy Adams is an amazing screen actress, but she’s had a bad run of things lately: her last really successful project was a TV project, 2018’s Sharp Objects, while films like the bad food bowl The Woman in the Window and the satirical suburban comedy Nightbitch have come and gone without much fanfare. So it’s great to announce that she has had the opportunity to showcase her amazing talents once again in At Sea, the latest English-language film from Hungarian director Kornel Mundrócó, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival.

The role of a recovering alcoholic reevaluating her life is a perfect showcase for a special kind of courageous openness as a performer. In fact, having been nominated for an Oscar six times but never winning, Adams deserves to be in contention for a seventh nod with this performance.

The drama is the second in a loose trilogy of Mundruczó films dealing with women in crisis at different stages of life: the first, 2020’s Pieces of a Woman, starring Vanessa Kirby, dealt with a young woman coping with the loss of a child. Now turned into middle age, the focus here is on the painful psychological trade-off that seems particularly pertinent to middle age: when a person truly understands the damage of their upbringing, but also how they can affect others by doing so in turn.

Adams is Laura, the daughter of the famous choreographer who was once a dancer, and has now taken over his own dance company; We meet her as she finishes her stint at the rehab center. When her teenage daughter Josie (Chloe East) greets her at the airport, the role reversal is notable, the latter affecting the weariness of a hurried parent dealing with a wayward child. When they next return to their picturesque home on Cape Cod, her husband Martin (The White Lotus’ Murray Bartlett) and son Felix (Redding Maunsell) treat her with similar distrust.

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