The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off Thursday night and with it came the arrival of the festival’s first major Oscar player with The Inspection. Coming this November from A24, the film is a powerful true story of homophobia experienced at home and within the military. And as the roars from the crowd when she took her curtain call indicate, Gabrielle Union just landed at the center of the Best Supporting Actress conversation.
The film follows Ellis (played by Tony nominee Jeremy Pope), a young gay Black man who enters the U.S. Marines as the only alternative to being unhoused. Once there, he faces homophobic torment from both his fellow recruits and superiors, the worst of which comes from his training officer played by Bokeem Woodbine. Ellis’ journey towards reconciliation and affirmed identity is an emotional rollercoaster. Union stars as Ellis’ stoic, verbally bruising mother Inez, who had originally kicked him out of the house for being gay.
The story is an autobiographical one for maverick director Elegance Bratton (who also examined unhoused queer youth in his debut documentary Pier Kids, which you can and should watch now on the Criterion Channel). His own history with his mother provides the film’s emotional backbone.
A staple of teen comedies and television when she started in the industry, Union has built a long career in mainstream fare alongside the biggest names in the business. In recent years, she has been one of the most candid actresses in discussing the racism and misogyny she has faced within the industry, which makes an unqualified success like her performance in The Inspection (which she also executive produced) all the more triumphant. Hers is the kind of long, steady career that the Academy loves to reward once an actor finally has their moment, and we should all hope they see this as Union’s.
She’s never had a role quite like what she gets to do in The Inspection. Here Union is finally presented with an opportunity that not only allows her to show this level of dramatic chops, but also to engage with the current moment. In tackling the thorny material of a mother shunning her gay son at a time when queer youth are particularly targeted, Union aimed to “help other parents not see their children as disposable,” as she told the audience during the film’s post-film Q&A. “That was my goal.”
In only a few scenes, she achieves that with a humanity and complexity that is immediately disarming to watch. Opposite Pope’s emotionally raw performance, Union is at first terrifyingly impenetrable. But when Inez tells Ellis “I made peace with losing you,” Union’s delivery is anything but as simple as it sounds. (Though, to be fair, we’ve known since Bring It On that she could intimidate us to the core with a single line reading.)
Once out of Ellis’ sight, Union allows her to be anxious and conflicted, if still not budging from her convictions. In their final confrontation, Union heartbreakingly holds us in a tension between hope and defeat by her rigid beliefs. It’s a range of emotions that Union conveys with the slightest of gestures, all without asking for the audience’s sympathies. It gets to the truth of stories like Ellis’, like Bratton’s, and like many people who will find their stories reflected in his.
Union is at the core of why this film might resonate with audiences: At a moment when our closest relationships face deal-breaking divides in regards to queer identities and politics, Ellis and Inez embody the search for reconciliation. As Bratton introduced the film to the crowd and discussed his real life mother, he stated he “made this movie to reach people like her.” That wouldn’t be possible without Union’s commitment to portraying the harsh realities of Inez without pulling any punches. It’s the best work of her career.
Which means the actress could become a mainstay this coming awards season, perhaps as this year’s case of a hardworking performer finally getting their due. And she would already be primed for such attention just by the nature of the role: Should Union find herself an Oscar nominee in the next year, she would slip comfortably into the Academy’s love for challenging mother roles. From Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment to Mo’Nique in Precious to Allison Janney in I, Tonya, awards have long accompanied this kind of mother.
But don’t expect such livewire histrionics from this performance. A better comparison (if judging on Oscar’s rubric) for what she delivers might be not be a mother role at all, but the chilly, implacable resolve of Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—she’s magnetic, fascinating, and always offering a faint image of the human beneath her cold control. Union’s work here is one of painful subtlety, one that doesn’t make easy excuses for her cruelty nor turns her into a pure monster.
Though the season is just beginning and other supporting actress contenders are still to be seen, what remains exciting is that this performance is the convergence of a performer who hasn’t had this kind of opportunity, but who has always had it in them. And what is certain is that, along with the heat surrounding The Inspection (including the performances from Pope and Raúl Castillo), Union’s performance is going to be one that continues to impress and move people as it reaches wider audiences.
