Foreign Oscar Watch: Can "Elle" Slay the Competition?

Verhoeven & Huppert at Cannes this summer

France, as ever, was spoiled with options when it came to selecting their film for Oscar competition this year. Frantz (reviewed) from François Ozon would likely have appealed to Oscar voters but the selection committee went with the controversial Elle (reviewed at TIFF). It's a brave choice but we think a smart one; even if its divisive within initial voting, it will likely be a candidate to benefit under the Executive Committee 'saves' rule. Plus those who love it will love it passionately meaning it could even have a dark horse shot at a win. Not only does it have a high profile auteur and star (Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert) but it's got sensational reviews, a US release on the table in the thick of Oscar traction season (November 11th), and an outside shot at a Best Actress nomination. France has not won the category since Indochine (1992) despite numerous nominations.

Trivia: Paul Verhoeven has had one previous film nominated in this category for his home country The Netherlands with Turkish Delight (1973). If Elle is nominated it would not be the first time a director has competed for multiple countries: Akira Kurosawa, who competed many times for Japan, won the prize for the Soviet Union with Dersu Uzala (1975); Luis Buñuel who won the Oscar for France with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) was also nominated twice for Spain, his home country; and Michael Haneke won for Austria with Amour (2012) and also competed for Germany with The White Ribbon (2009) 

More News:
Oscar's other favorite country Italy has selected the Golden Bear winner, Fire at Sea (reviewed at Berlinale), a documentary about the European migrant crisis. To my knowledge only two documentaries have ever been nominated in this category (Waltz With Bashir from Israel and The Missing Picture from Cambodia) but both of those were in the past eight years so perhaps Oscar votings are loosening up about these distinctions. Among countries who have not yet announced their submissions (with a week left) Poland and Argentina are the most formidable, statistically speaking, with Oscar.

Foreign Film Oscar Charts
Predictions - 15 films that could have the best chance at the finals?
Afghanistan to Finland - 22 submissions thus far
George to Morocco - 23 submissions thus far
Nepal to Venezuela - 28 submissions thus far 

Foreign Oscar Watch: Bedouin Marriage, Persian Haunting, Slavic Space Program

Yesterday at an unusually tense and controversial Ophir Awards ceremony, Sand Storm won the Israeli Oscar and will thus be Israel's Oscar submission. The debut female director Elite Zexer, giving the last acceptance speech of the evening, spoke about how she employed Jews, Muslims, and Christians on the picture. 

Though I already think Israel should have won the Oscar in this category (for Late Marriage which was submitted but not nominated in the year of Amelie and No Man's Land) and they've had high quality films in the mix before, I'm a little cool on this particular picture. Ah well, you can't love everything!

The UK's submission is a horror thriller set in IranAs more and more titles are announced for the Foreign Oscar Race, the variety of genres keeps growing, too. We have animated films, horror thrillers, docu-fiction hybrids, political dramas, romantic comedies, crime films, as well as submissions from this particular category's three all time favorite subgenres: 1) WW II Anything, 2) Internationally Famous Auteur Made It, and 3) Emotional Journeys Featuring Young Child/Children Forming Bond and/or Travelling With Old Person/Persons. 

Beyond Israel's submission the past few days have brought us a Persian horror film submitted by the UK called Under the Shadow, Canada's third attempt at getting Oscar voters to love Xavier Dolan with It's Only the End of the World, Slovenia's docu-drama about America's interest in the Yugoslavian space program in the 1960s, Iceland's family drama Sparrows (which curiously marks the fourth year in a row that country has sent a film with an animal in the title), a big budget Pakistani effort about poets in two different eras called Mah e Mir, and Hong Kong's hit crime drama Port of Call starring Aaron Kwok. You can read about all 73 titles on the charts. 

We've reviewed 11 of the 73 titles announced thus far (with more reviews soon) In case you missed any of those reviews, here's the list:

With the caveat that i have MANY more submissions yet to see, my four favorites (to date) are the entries from Chile, Bosnia, Singapore, and Estonia

• Death in Sarajevo - Bosnia & Herzegovina's politically-loaded hotel drama 
• Mother - Estonia's black comedy about a very popular comatose man
• Elle - France's twisted comedy about a woman who reacts strangely to a rape
• Chevalier - Greece's satire on competitive masculinity
• Sand Storm - Israel's feminist drama (their first submission entirely in Arabic) about women in unhappy marriages
• Fire at Sea - Italy's documentary on the migrant crisis
• A Flickering Truth - New Zealand's doc on a quite unusual subject: film preservation in Afghanistan
• Apprentice - Singapore's prison drama on capital punishment
• My Life as a Courgette - Switzerland's animated film about orphaned/abused children
• As I Open My Eyes - Tunisia's youth drama about musicians struggling with the lack of freedom of expression they're allowed
• From Afar - Venezuela's violent intergenerational LGBT romance

Four of the submissions this year are in theaters in the US or about to hit: Australia's Tanna and South Korea's The Age of Shadows are now in theaters in select cities; Sweden's A Man Called Ove opens next Friday; and on October 14th we get one of the most high-profile competitors in Mexico's Desierto starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Foreign Oscar regular / international star Gael García Bernal. (Bernal also leads Chile's excellent submission from Pablo Larraín called Neruda; we fully expect Larraín to have two films in the Oscar running since he also directed Jackie). Desierto is directed by Alfonso Cuarón's 34 yr old son Jonás, who co-wrote Gravity with his dad. Will you try to catch these films in theaters? 

"Land of Mine" to compete for Foreign Oscar. (Plus Chart Updates)

Though I just gushed love all over Thomas Vinterberg's Oscar submission finalist The Commune yesterday, today brings news that Denmark went with another title for their submission. The committee unanimously chose Land of Mine, a World War II drama. The film looks at a little told story about German POWs in Denmark forced to dig up land mines. The film will be released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics, dates TBA. It's worth noting that the film is also up for the Nordic Film Prize on November 1st, a prize which has other Oscar submission finalists in the running:

Nordic Council Film Prize Nominees
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (Finland's Oscar submission)
The Here After (Sweden - Reviewed last year at TIFF)
Land of Mine (Denmark's Oscar submission)
Louder Than Bombs (Norway's English Language Joachim von Trier film)
Sparrows (Iceland's Oscar submission finalist - they have not announced yet)

If you haven't checked out the Foreign Film Submission Charts they've had multiple updates recently with 55 films announced thus far (the number of contenders generally falls somewhere between 75-80 when all is said and done). New announcements include Apprentice from Singapore (reviewed), Jonas Cuarón's Desierto from Mexico (opening next month in the US starring Gael García Bernal, a mainstay of this category), Asgar Farhadi's Arthur Miller inspired Salesman from Iran, Karma from Thailand, and more. You can read about the films on the charts

Submission Charts
Afghanistan to Finland - 20 submissions thus far
George to Morocco - 13 submissions thus far
Nepal to Venezuela - 23 submissions thus far 

Current Predictions 
Here are 15 hunches, alphabetically, of films that have a good shot at the 9-wide finals. In red is the only film you could argue is locked up for the finalist list.
Barakah Meets Barakah (Saudi Arabia)
Desierto (Mexico)
Happiest Day in the Life... (Finland)
Julieta (Spain)
The King's Choice (Norway)
Land of Mine (Denmark)
Letters From War (Portugal)
A Man Called Ove (Sweden)
Neruda (Chile)
Salesman (Iran)
Sieranevada (Romania)
Tanna (Australia)
Toni Erdmann (Germany) 
Train Drivers Diary (Serbia) 
"Whatever France Submits" (TBA) 

Lovesick Brides to Be at TIFF

Nathaniel reporting from the last weekend at TIFF where brides-to-be are in the air. It's easy to see little mini-festivals blossom within the overall festival you're watching. Sometimes it happens quite by accident as with three films I caught recently (two of which might be fighting for Oscar foreign film nods). All feature female protagonists who pine for a man they thought they would marry before things went horribly wrong. We've already discussed François Ozon's Frantz. In that film the fiancee is already dead when the movie begins but in these next two films The Wedding Ring from Niger and Sand Storm from Israel, both of the young women begin the movie with a combination of dread and hope: will they be able to marry the man they loved who they met in a liberal university setting or does their conservative rural village community have other futures in mind? Both films are narrative debuts by female directors. In addition to their romantic dramas these two films speak to the clash of modernity and tradition, West and East, and especially to gender roles with young women chafing at the expectations placed on them to be subservient to whims of the patriarchy...

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TIFF on Fire: "Pyromaniac" and "Death in Sarajevo"

Nathaniel R, reporting, still at the Toronto International Film Festival where you'll notice I tend to give dual grades. This is the way to go in the mad rush of festival going. As nourishing as festivals can be from a cinephile, they aren't actually the best climate in which to generate definitive feelings because when you're done with one piece of art you have to rush on to the next one. Here are two films I saw this week that were quite combustible.

Dag lights up a small Norwegian town... unfortunately it's with matches.

Pyromaniac (Dir. Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Norway)
One of Norway's best known directors (Pioneer, Insomnia) is back with another unsettling thriller. The peculiar dichotomy of a fireman who also sets fires is the focus. Create your own dream job, they do always say. Dag (Trond Nillsen, King of Devil's Island) is the son of the local firechief and when he returns to his hometown after military service a small town is suddenly plagued by arson, first in the woods but slowly closing in on actual residences. As fires go this thriller doesn't build to an inferno, as a more traditional movie might, so much as it threatens to consistent. Like someone waiting with gasoline by a small fire. The result is a discomforting slow burn, elevated considerably by artful intuitive detours with female characters. These don't serve the plot so much as bring humanity up face-to-face with inexplicable evil; some see it for what it is (one scene with a piercing scream and a lit match is absolutely terrifying), others flippantly dismiss it. Dag's own mother (a great Liv Bernhort Osa) is handed the painful evasive denouement. [Trivia Note: Strangely Norway has yet to submit Skjoldbjaerg for the Oscar race in Best Foreign Language Film though he's been a finalist before and was again this year. They didn't even submit him for his international breakthrough Insomnia (1997) famously remade by Christopher Nolan a few years later.] B/B+

a talk show host and her volatile guest come to fascinating verbal blows

Death in Sarajevo (Dir. Danis Tanovic, Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Bosnia & Herzegovina's Oscar Submission
Danis Tanovic came to fame with the anti-war drama No Man's Land (2001) which took the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in its day. Fifteen years later Tanovic is still committed to deeply felt statement films and still righteously angry about senseless wars. The entire film takes place within a cash-poor luxury hotel in Sarajevo that will soon host a meeting of European dignitaries. Everyone is on edge, nobody is getting paid, the workers are ready to strike, and guests are arriving. Though the film beguns with the taping of a talk show on the violent cycles in South Slavic history, fears that this might be little more than educational history lesson were quickly assuaged by strong storytelling and multiple interesting characters like the hotel's laundress, a lovelorn cook, an ambitious female manager, and the cerebral but fierce talk show host and a guest she berates as a "thug" who fits this description but is multi-faceted, too. In one witty but distressing bit another guest of the talk show praises the affect of all the civil wars on the Bosnian people  'it protects us from uniformity of thought.' Uniformity of thought is not a problem with these characters. We know that all the separate stories with their personal dramas and opposing agendas we'll eventually collide (that's what happens in this subgenre of drama) but it's still fascinating to watch them braid together and Tanovic does this artfully. Some of the political content still went over my American head -- especially the story of a man rehearsing a political speech (the film is based on a one man show "Hotel Europe" and this section seemed to be the most direct lift). But as with all fine political dramas, this one understands that politics is personal and vice versa. B/B+ 

more TIFF reviews