Five French finalists for Oscar submission
Friday, November 13, 2020 at 10:30AM by Nathaniel R
It would never be an easy decision to select the French submission for the Oscar given how much there is to choose from each year. Their Oscar submission honor will be announced in December but we know now that it will be one of these five pictures which were selected by a film industry committee...
- Cuties (Maïmouna Doucouré)
- DNA (Maïwenn) a woman explores her Algerian heritage after her grandather's death
- Gagarine (Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh) a debut feature, one EFA nomination
- Summer of 85 (François Ozon) a gay coming of age drama which snagged a Best Director EFA nomination
- Two of Us (Filippo Meneghetti) a drama about lesbian seniors who have been hiding their love for decades.
Cuties has the highest profile of these pictures due to all the controversy around its marketing -- though there appears to be much less controversy about the actual content of the film which is, at least in part, about the sexualization of minors (which the Netflix marketing unfortunately ran with). It doesn't mean it will be the selected film. There are always a lot of politics as well as artistic considerations that go in to selecting a film to represent your country. Of these filmmakers only Ozon has been sent to represent France before with his 2002 musical 8 Women, which unfortunately failed to get the nomination.
Most of the films are about French youth, the exceptions being Two of Us, and the Maïwenn film DNA. She's an actress (you know her as the blue opera singer in The Fifth Element) and celebrity whose most famous directorial efforts to date are Polisse (2011) and Mon Roi (2015). She has received 7 César nominations during her career though she has yet to win.
Reader Comments (8)
I was Team Cuties but now I have doubts because I love Maïwenn. Polisse was great and Mon roi wasn't well-received but Emmanuelle Bercot is phenomenal and Vincent Cassel's fuckability is off the charts.
Peggy Sue -- have you seen DNA?
Have only seen two of the films listed here. Summer of 85 is a disappointing step-down for Ozon after By the Grace of God-a rather shallow and clichéd coming of age gay romance. Two of Us is absolutely lovely and contains two of the best lead actress performances of the year, but it probably has no chance unfortunately.
Not yet!
Only seen Ozon's Summer of 85 out of these 5. It was a mild dissapointment. Not worth the nomination.
I've only seen Two of Us. I liked it less than A (and most others, it is a crowd pleaser!) but still think it is worth watching. I agree that it doesn't seem like the type of film they'd pick, though.
This reminds me that I need to see Cuties.... I've been trying to watch all of the easily accessible acclaimed films by the end of the year.
Maybe France should just go ahead and choose La Daronne. I kid I kid.
La Daronne is given an English title of "Mama Weed". In the trailer, I thought they were dealing with hashish; and weed and hash are two different things, no? Maybe Huppert donning Arab garb might be seen in some quarters as culturally offensive.
Cuties is quite disturbing. Although well done, well acted, the movie follows a dangerous path by the way the camera “sexualize” and explore the bodies of 11 years old girls, with so many (and unjustifiable so long) slow-motion/close-up shots. It’s like 2 different monsters just put together: a good teenage/cultural drama & a pedophile soft porn.