by Cláudio Alves
We're just two weeks away from knowing the 10 finalists for the Best International Feature Oscar. It'll happen on December 16th and, as we wait away the days, it's a good time to investigate the 91 submitted films. Some of them have already been reviewed here at The Film Experience, like Senegal's Atlantics, South Korea's Parasite and Spain's Pain and Glory, among others. Still, there are many less talked about films that deserve attention too, spanning from nationalities that have been overrepresented in the Academy's history to others that have still to conquer their first nomination.
Think of Italy's newest crime epic, Palestine's offbeat comedy or Indonesia's lyrical reveries through a dancer's memories…
THE TRAITOR (Italy)
If you regularly watch Italian cinema, you'll know not a year goes by without some sort of prestigious drama about the mafia, whether it's a factual tale or a fictional story. The Traitor is a biopic of Tommaso Buscetta, one of the biggest informers in the long history of Italian organized crime. It's the sort of film that has nothing new to show or say about its subject matter, making its two and a half hours more than a little bit excessive. There are some exciting set pieces like a sudden car-crash or the opera buffa of a chaotic trial, but it all tends to feel bloated and overly solemn. Marco Bellocchio seems to be aware of the story's limitations, reconfiguring its last act as a character study that tries to understand the reasons behind its titular character's betrayal. When he abandons the film's more epic aspirations and comes down to the level of intimate reflection, Bellocchio shines and so does his brilliant leading man Pierfrancesco Favino. It's not enough to revitalize the whole affair, but it helps distinguish The Traitor from other very similar projects. B-
IT MUST BE HEAVEN (Palestine)
Elia Suleiman's first feature in ten years is the rare example of modern political cinema that finds space for a ray of optimism shining through its storms of misery. This is a comedy of absurd mundanity where Suleiman posits himself as a stone-faced Buster Keaton-esque observer that travels from Nazareth to Paris and then to New York. Throughout his intercontinental odyssey, the director presents us with a series of disperse vignettes whose cumulative meaning gestures towards a meditation on what it is to make a Palestinian film and, more importantly, what it is to be a Palestinian artist. There are tales of a desert serpent fixing a tire, a ballet of human pettiness around a Parisian fountain and even a symbolic chase through Central Park. Such descriptions may suggest a tonal mess of unearned whimsy and random insight, but Suleiman manages to bind it all together with a sense of general tenderness and hope. It Must Be Heaven is far from the directors' riskiest work, but there's always beauty to be found in his very personal sensibility and political identity. B
MEMORIES OF MY BODY (Indonesia)
Garin Nugroho's curious hybrid of documentary and lyric portraiture has caused much controversy in Indonesia. Hopefully, the film will be able to withstand the pressures of a prejudiced society in the same way it upends the conventions of biographical cinema. This is the story of a dancer, Riao, whose life is itself a challenge of gender norms and modern conservativism. His movement is a transgression of identity, his body a political weapon that can destroy and entice. Memories of My Body thus spellbinds the viewer, but it also confounds. It does so with its bizarre interludes of fingered chickens and erotic tailoring, with its dance where memory is a touch reverberating through time, a scar that still aches or the whisper of a poem coming out of a lover's lips. It's a complex view of History viewed through the prism of a sexual body's queer wants, a shattered mosaic of intimacy and overt provocation. This isn't the easiest film to experience, but it rewards those that are open to its transformative delights. B+
It's unlikely any of these films will reach the Oscar shortlist. Of them, The Traitor is surely the most Academy-friendly while Memories of My Body is the least accessible. That said, who knows what the committee will save this year. They have surprised us many times before.