Alternate Best Actor 1998: Vinícius de Oliveira in Central Station

Vinícius de Oliveira did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Josué in Central Station.

Central Station tells the unlikely pairing of Dora (Fernando Montenegro), an older somewhat curmudgeonly former school teacher who writes letters for illiterate people, and a recently orphaned boy she's trying to help find his father.

Vinícius de Oliveira's Josué is the boy that we first see as his mother "buys" a letter from Dora, and what he immediately sees are the sides of his performance which I think one could use as a great illustration between screen presence and acting, so to speak. de Oliveira definitely has presence from this opening scene, he "pops" for the lack of a better word, by having an ease on screen and it is easy to see why he was chosen for the part. He comes through the screen effectively and gets over the first hurdle of cinematic child acting by not being a non-entity. What you also get is really the two bits of "acting" that de Oliveira typically delivers, in which there are some limitations. Part of his performance is as the blunt kid of the streets, where de Oliveira I wouldn't say has a flat delivery, but his delivery is always pretty similar regardless of the line. This largely works with the character who likes to speak his mind in a very straightforward way, and de Oliveira conveys that in that specific way, albeit I wouldn't say there is all that much nuance from one delivery to the next. It works, but it also suggests certain limitations with his performance, a limitation however that director Walter Salles seems rather aware of and how to make use of de Oliveira.   

The other side of de Oliveira is portraying the emotional distress that the character is going through from the loss of his mother, and going through the trauma of trying to move on from that. And again not to be overly cynical, but this is a case where the emotion seems fundamentally attached to editing, to explain. de Oliveira has emotional moments, however these are always attached to specific cuts to his face often with some tears, starting to tear up or even the occasional single dramatic tear. We never really see the build up to the emotion, or the progression to it, something we do see consistently brilliantly from Montenegro in contrast. I'm not saying Salles put an onion in front of de Oliveira before each take, but the way it is presented within his performance, is a very limited emotion that doesn't draw one in as the best performance can and should show the progression of it. I think the ending is very telling especially because of the direct contrast between Montenegro, where the camera sits on her for extended periods as we see different things going through her mind, for de Oliveira there' s a jump each cut, and each time it is a separate state of sadness without a natural progression within the single shots. Performances are often said to be created in editing, however this is a particularly extreme example, and because it is so obviously noticeable it did limit the power of the work.

What supports my critique is that throughout the film de Oliveira is kind of either his basic sort of cocky comical version of the orphan or he has his sad moments. There is very little in-between in his performance. He's either one or the other, usually the former and because of that we don't really ever sense any internalization of him thinking about his mom's death, covering it up with his bluster, or any sort of combination of the qualities. Salles however does seem very aware of this fact, not just because of the editing around the emotional moments of his performance, but also that Salles very much puts the weight of almost every scene of Montenegro, who is amazing and easily keeps the every scene going either by finding so much emotional nuance in this journey, or just being charismatic and entertaining in such a natural way. She very much knows how to work around de Oliveira, who does have presence, with Montenegro playing off that presence beautifully. The journey and the connection though are brought to life by Montenegro's brilliance, de Oliveira doesn't slow it down or get in the way, but he doesn't carry it. de Oliveira keeps largely just that presence which is of a boy who wants to impress, perhaps as character and actor, regardless of the specifics it does work, though even in these scenes he rarely does anything new in presenting the character's bluntness, just the consistent thing he does manages to work. de Oliveira is endearing enough, he never gets in the way of a moment of a scene, but never does he carry one. He gets by in the emotional scenes, he has fun in the entertaining ones, but never did I sense a nuanced emotional journey within his own work. Thanks to Montenegro and Salles the performance is more or less successful, and yes every performance is a combination of an actor and director, however this is a case where that is lopsided, but more importantly it is obvious within what is onscreen itself that it is lopsided.