Carol, the Manhattan-set romance between Cate Blanchett’s divorcing mother and Rooney Mara’s aspirant photographer, has triumphed in key categories at the New York Film Critics awards. The film won best picture, best director for Todd Haynes, best cinematography and best screenplay for Phyllis Nagy’s adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt.
The film’s victories came as small surprise, despite a late flurry of contenders including Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, David O Russell’s Joy and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant.
But there were more unexpected wins in other categories: Michael Keaton, who narrowly missed out on last year’s Oscar to Eddie Redmayne, now looks firmly back in the race after taking best actor in New York.
Keaton won for his role in Spotlight, which tells the story of the Boston Globe’s exposé of a ring of paedophile priests in 2002. The actor plays Robby Robinson, who headed up the Globe’s investigative journalism team – until now, the film had been perceived as an ensemble piece rather than especially showcasing one star’s talents.
The best actress award went to Saoirse Ronan for Brooklyn, in which she plays a young woman who moves from smalltown Ireland to the New York borough. This gives Ronan a boost in a close race against rivals including Room’s Brie Larson.
Mark Rylance cemented his place as Oscar frontrunner in the best supporting actor category with a win for his role as Soviet agent Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies, while Kristen Stewart took best supporting actress for playing Juliette Binoche’s assistant Clouds of Sils Maria. Olivier Assayas’s film, which also won Stewart a César award, premiered at Cannes in 2014.
Inside Out took the best animated film award, suggesting that it is likely to progress to Academy glory. If even Big Apple critics let Pixar pip Charlie Kaufman’s stop-motion Anomalisa to the post it seems unlikely Academy voters will fail to follow suit.
Son of Saul, the debut feature by 38-year-old Hungarian László Nemes, took best first film; the immersive drama set in Auschwitz is tipped for best foreign language film glory at the Oscars. But the film was blocked from picking up the same prize in New York by Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu, about the influence of fundamentalists in a small African village.
Frederick Wiseman’s documentary In Jackson Heights chronicling life in Queens was a winner predictable only in its parochialism, while Ennio Morricone won the special award. The 87-year-old composer, most famous for his work on Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, most recently scored The Hateful Eight.
The circle was founded in 1935 and the awards themselves will be distributed at a ceremony in January.
