2024 has been a great year for cinema and especially for Josh O’Connor…
For every actor who finds themselves becoming a highly sought-after commodity, their rise can often be traced back to a particular film. Josh O’Connor looks set to be the next big thing in Hollywood and as seems to be highly commonplace, is yet another stellar British export who has fled the downtrodden British film industry to pastures Hollywood.
O’Connor will be no stranger to fans of The Crown, of course, having played the future King of the United Kingdom, Prince Charles in the show back in 2019 to 2020. He’s worked solidly since but 2024 has been the year that movie fans have sat up and taken notice. O’Connor has starred in four films this year, including Bonus Track, a coming-of-age story he co-wrote as well as appearing in a supporting role in the Kate Winslet starrer, Lee.
However, it’s been two other films that have really caught the gaze of fans and studio executives. The first is Challengers, the latest film from Luca Guadagnino. Tennis as the backdrop for a film is often a death knell, but Guadagnino’s energetic opus injects the sporting side of his picture with enough pizzaz that even non-Tennis fans (like me) are engaged during those set pieces. The main focus of the film is the threeway dynamic between Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya), a kind of next big thing in women’s tennis who holds an alluring power over two friends, Patrick (O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist) who are rising through the men’s competition.
Tashi realises just how magnetic she is to these gents, toying with them and aside from an intense sexual encounter (much talked about over cineaste watercoolers but not really all that shocking) between the three, her influence causes the once friends to split apart in their 20s. Patrick is the more talented player who doesn’t put the work in, whilst Art is less naturally gifted but puts the yards in. Step forward a few years and Art is the best in the business suffering a decline, as coached by his now partner, Tashi. Patrick’s fallen on hard times, living in his car. The rivals then meet in a tournament and faceoff but what (or who) is at stake?
Whilst Zendaya is good and Faist is great in Challengers, O’Connor steals the movie at a canter. His performance has layers and complexity, whilst he portrays his inherently flawed character with plenty of charisma countered by deep-seated insecurity and wilful self-destruction. O’Connor just has that rare ability to be acting a scene and delivering his dialogue whilst exuding so much subtext. He’s a really interesting performer and the kind that the industry hasn’t been pushing quite so much, in favour of predominantly surface-level performers. Challengers visually dazzles and it’s largely style over substance powered by excellent performances and technical brilliance in every department, but O’Connor just adds a pinch of acting MSG that provides this dish with a wonderful umami. For a film that wasn’t filled with blockbuster spectacle and comic book IP, it also did solid business at the box office thanks to stellar word of mouth and if you’ve starred in a hit it definitely adds credit in the bank.
Yet, Challengers isn’t even the pièce de résistance of O’Connor’s excellent year on screen. If Challengers replete with visual flair grabbed attention and entertained with sizzling chemistry and sexuality throughout, La Chimera provides a more serene storytelling pace that carefully excavates the hidden depths of Arthur (O’Connor) a British grave robber who leads an eclectic band of looters around Italy to pilfer trinkets and statues from unearthed tombs.
La Chimera is an incredible layered and complex film by Alice Rohrwacher. The film evokes great European cinema of the 50s and 60s and in particular the work of Italian icons like Fellini and Rossellini. The film is often languid but always compelling and interesting. Arthur is a character of questionable moral standing who displaces his feelings of loss with a slightly macabre sense of purpose when searching for buried treasures.
In O’Connor, Rohrwacher has a perfect muse, the kind of actor who would have been at home with the likes of Fellini, Bergman or Tarkovsky to name a few. He conveys so much without even needing to speak. He gives you so much and yet retains an air of mystique that has you desperate to unearth more facets. In many ways, he shares similarities with the equally gifted Paul Mescal whose breakout in Aftersun was another victory for cinema.
Whether O’Connor gets sidelined in tentpole films which might inevitably waste his full gamut remains to be seen, but in the immediate future, he’s got a lot of promising projects on the horizon, including a film alongside Mescal, another Guadagnino picture (alongside Lea Seydoux) and roles in the upcoming Knives Out threequal and Spielberg’s next film. To say he’s covering an eclectic range of projects would be an understatement and hopefully, he’s given plenty of interesting material to sink his teeth into.
Back to La Chimera, it’s a film that lingers after the credits thanks to the combination of Rohrwacher, O’Connor and co-star Carol Duarte. The film isn’t the immediate trending magnet that Challengers was. It doesn’t have an overhyped love scene. It’s one slowly being discovered by cinephiles having gained some festival buzz. The synergy between a story of archaeological digging and the fact this invites further excavation in repeat viewings is quite something. It feels like there’s a lot to unearth in La Chimera and in particular from O’Connor’s character. It’s a beautiful piece of work that needs to be seen by more people. As a centrepiece for a platform like Mubi, it’ll undoubtedly get plenty of views and hopefully, word of mouth will help the film pull in more viewers from further reaches.
Just a week ago I had no idea who O’Connor was. After watching Challengers and La Chimera in that time, I’ll be first in line for what comes next.
What do you think of Josh O’Connor? Will he be one of the next big things in Hollywood? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe
