An actress race that may just be too close to call

No nominee for supporting trophy is a clear favorite

In a normal Oscar season, you’d be able to pretty much guess the winning actors by now. Think of last year, when the same foursome of Joaquin Phoenix, Renee Zellweger, Brad Pitt and Laura Dern steamrolled their way through every awards show: The only suspense was whether they could sell us on their surprise as their names were called again and again.

There are some acting races this year I already feel confident in calling — a posthumous best-actor Oscar for the “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” star Chadwick Boseman is pretty much a done deal. I’m keeping an eye on Carey Mulligan in best actress, and Daniel Kaluuya is coming on strong in the supporting-actor race for his work in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” But there’s still one acting category I can’t make heads or tails of. This year’s supporting-actress race is an eclectic free-forall where just about anybody could win.

Those wacky Golden Globes didn’t help narrow the field at all, since voters there gave the supportingactress award to Jodie Foster for “The Mauritanian,” a performance the Oscars didn’t even bother to nominate. I’m not mad, though: It’s fun to not know what will happen, and I’m impressed that the category’s up-forgrabs chaos has lasted this long. The Screen Actors Guild Awards may clarify matters when they’re presented April 4, but until that big clue comes, let’s parse the contenders and keep scratching our heads.

Maria Bakalova, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”

Look, let’s get real about this: Not a single one of this year’s nominated performances generated more headlines than Bakalova’s. Her hotel-room encounter with Rudy Giuliani gave the “Borat” sequel its you-gotta-see-it comedic climax, but the fearless Bakalova proved indispensable throughout, picking up on every prankish cue from Sacha Baron Cohen like she was born to play his daughter. You can feel the movie reconfiguring itself around her performance as it continues, and ultimately, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” has a spine and a soul because of what this formerly unknown Bulgarian actress brought to it.

Glenn Close, “Hillbilly Elegy”

Close is one of the five most-nominated actresses in Oscar history, and the only one of those five who has never won. Isn’t it time to just give her the trophy?

Well, that was pretty much the argument when Close was nominated two years ago for “The Wife,” and it didn’t work then, either. (She lost to Olivia Colman, who is once again nominated against her this year — that’s some real Bening-swank energy, folks.) Although Close was excellent in “The Wife,” the movie couldn’t stir up enough passion to put her over the top, and critical support is even more lacking for the povertyporn drama “Hillbilly Elegy,” which is currently sitting at 26 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

Olivia Colman, “The Father”

The supporting-actress category is usually where you go to win your first Oscar, not your second: Only four women who were already Oscar-minted have ever won another in the supporting-actress category, and the last one was Dianne Wiest in 1995 (for “Bullets Over Broadway”). Colman is the sole contender in this year’s race with an Academy Award at home, so if voters are looking to spread the wealth a little, she won’t be their first pick.

But that recent win does give Colman at least one advantage: Her part in “The Father” couldn’t possibly be more different than the capricious queen she played in “The Favourite,” and to think of those films in concert is to better appreciate Colman’s breathtaking range.

Amanda Seyfried, “Mank”

With her role as Marion Davies in “Mank,” Seyfried checks off a lot of Oscar’s favorite boxes: She’s an ingenue (check) playing another ingenue (doublecheck) in the field-leading best-picture nominee (ch-check). And while Seyfried is best known for comedies, musicals and romances, “Mank” proves that she can seriously shine in a prestige drama, the sort of maybe-you-underestimated-me career arc that Oscar voters gobble up.

Still, it’s a little weird that Seyfried missed out on a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild, which added the young “News of the World” star Helena Zengel in Seyfried’s presumed place. The Oscar winner in this category almost always wins at SAG first, and there’s rarely a path for a non-nominee to prevail: Regina King managed it two years ago for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” but at least she picked up a highprofile, televised Golden Globe along the way. A win for Seyfried would still be fully within the Oscars’ wheelhouse, but that SAG snub is going to keep it suspenseful until the very last minute.

Yuh-jung Youn, “Minari”

Actors make up the academy’s biggest branch, and their guild went for “Minari” in a big way: Not only did Youn and Steven Yeun earn nominations there, too, but “Minari” was the only best-picture nominee aside from “The Trial of the Chicago 7” to have also earned a commensurate SAG nomination for best cast. And although “Mank” received more Oscar nominations, “Minari” is arguably the stronger movie with a representative in the supporting-actress category, since it also earned a key screenplay Oscar nomination that eluded David Fincher’s film.

Youn’s role as the grandmother in “Minari” is riotously funny and more than a little heartbreaking — if you love the movie, you’ve got to love her, too — and the 73year-old performer has collected supportingactress trophies all season from critics’ groups, including the high-profile Los Angeles Film Critics Association.