Post-TIFF, the Best Actress Oscar Race Is Scarlett Johansson v. Renée Zellweger

The Toronto International Film Festival gives, and takes away.

Toronto’s notoriously friendly audiences are not to be trusted entirely — with the exception of the People’s Choice Award, which has gone to such Best Picture winners as “Chariots of Fire,” “American Beauty,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The King’s Speech,” “12 Years a Slave,” and “Green Book.”So when TIFF audiences give a standing ovation, you have to figure out what it means.

They enthusiastically applauded Netflix’s “Marriage Story” with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson on hand, which continues to build momentum from Venice to Telluride and Toronto, followed by New York, where it will play like gangbusters on its home turf.

(It’s sitting at 96 on Metacritic.)Never-nominated Johansson is duking it out in the Best Actress race with thrice-nominated Oscar-winner Renée Zellweger (“Cold Mountain”), who channels emotional wreck Judy Garland at the end of her tragic life in “Judy.

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