Dear Toni Collette,
All I wanted was a good old fashioned murder mystery, but then you arrived.
I instantly flashed back to your performance as the distinctly-not-pageant-Mom pageant Mom in Little Miss Sunshine. Sheryl Hoover cared for her voluntarily mute son, her suicidal brother, her heroin dabbling father-in-law, her loser husband trying desperately to convince everyone (including and especially himself) that he was a winner and, mercifully, the titular precocious daughter. She worked late and brought home KFC for dinner. She struggled with her resignation, but not at the expense of loving those who wrought it. She was beautiful and I wish she danced to Superfreak.
I was wrenched from my wistfulness when I was suddenly confronted by what I was actually watching - there you were, cheerfully and yet dripping with disdain, as Knives Out’s Joni Thrombey. Epitomizing that abhorrent epithet “libtard,” she was all strong opinions loosely held, performative wokeness and hollow altruism. It later crystalized when I beheld the sound and fury of one of her insignificant arguments with Don Johnson (yes, he was worse and no, his character’s name doesn’t matter). And yet, while I couldn’t help but succumb to loathing most of that family, I only felt pity for her. Was that Joni’s doing, or Toni’s?
Now my head’s spinning, and I’m left wondering: did you move the needle on Unbelievable’s Grace for me, too? Transporting us through one of the most necessary (TRUE!) stories told in that past five years, Grace Rasmussen was dedicated to a fault, abrasive, cocksure, whip-smart, all those things we ascribe to fiction’s great detectives. You conveyed the fact of her womanhood being not just immaterial to but somehow also totally imperative in the telling of the tale. Would she have been grating in the hands of some lesser actress?
Even within this limited subset, you’ve been victim, witness and detective, but let it not get twisted: you’re the real killer.
With Love,
A Fan
A version of this letter appeared in the May 2020 edition of ROOST, a Hong Kong based online newsletter
Honorable Mention
Imperium: Great plane movie wherein she convinces FBI Agent Harry Potter to go undercover with neo-nazis.
About a Boy: In what would otherwise be standard navel-gazing Nick Hornby fare, she brings heart, humor and gravitas to a role as a mid-noughties hippy-ish London single mom.
United States of Tara: Her show (ran three seasons, 36 episodes, got her a golden globe, a solid haul all things considered) about a woman with Dissociative Identity disorder and the travails she and her family go through with her family when she decides to stop taking her meds.
In Her Shoes: a free-wheeling Cameron Diaz’s put-upon sister in another very-mid-noughties film (literally so, 2005), this one a Curtis Hanson family drama.
Muriel’s Wedding: Muriel’s Wedding > Mamma Mia. Potent quotables: “Now my life’s as good as an Abba song. It’s as good as Dancing Queen,” & “You’re terrible, Muriel.”