Last winter, Oscar campaigns may well have rolled through a city near you: visiting stars, catered snacks, diligent handlers, lots of hopes and dreams. Occasionally, a film or actor so exceeds the transactional nature of these events that mundanity is set aside for a moment and the event becomes special beyond its PR function. So it was when Michelle Yeoh appeared at a Paris screening of Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022), on the night of US Thanksgiving no less, and hung out past midnight, chatting with a crowd that might just have included some Academy voters.1

By the time this column appears, Yeoh either will or won’t have been rewarded by the Academy (though she was already awarded by the revised Golden Globes) for her remarkable comeback story as one of the most quintessential action heroines ever rendered on-screen, capping a long career...

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