Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 4: "Hey, I know that face!"

"everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category
*...but were afraid to ask"
Pt 1 All 81 Trailers | Pt 2 Women Directors & Debut Filmmakers | Pt 3 Zoology 

Actors You Know & Possibly Love
Successful actors really rack up the frequent flyer miles. The savvy ones cultivate relationships wherever they go. The very smartest of them pick up a second or third or fourth language and actually use those languages in their careers. Viggo Mortensen doesn't have quite the Hollywood career he deserves but notice that he doesn't settle - he's truly in love with his craft and uses his Spanish, English, Danish, and French in films all over the world. When the Danish Connie Nielsen was starting to look basic after lots of unsatisfying American films, she reminded everyone that she was actually gifted by going international with France's demonlover and returning home for Brothers. Actors who are bilingual and never use that onscreen are a mystery. It would be fun to see Sandra Bullock in a German movie or Hugh Jackman or Bradley Cooper in a French flick... even if it was only cameos since we know none of them are hurting for work. Why did Mira Sorvino not really capitalize on her Mandarin during her long dry spell? It's no accident that Charlotte Rampling and Carmen Maura never stopped working or that Kristin Scott Thomas only quit working when she wanted to; they speak multiple languages and make films outside their home countries often.

Let's look at the actors with a strong international presence that pop up in this year's Oscar submitted foreign-language films after the jump...

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NYFF: My Golden Days

Manuel reporting from the New York Film Festival with an improbable prequel among this year’s selection.

No one does brooding romantic despair like the French. Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days, a pseudo-prequel to his 1996 My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument so revels in it that you could just as easily title it “The Sorrows of Young Esther.” And while yes, that title would be aping a German novel, Desplechin’s Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet) merits being name-checked alongside the most famous romantically bereaved character in all of literary history, and not only because Goethe’s novel, like Desplechin’s film, depends on the epistolary form.

Esther, who falls for Paul Dédalus (Quentin Dolmaire playing the younger version of Mathieu Amalric’s character from Desplechin’s earlier film), spends most of the time daring the camera to turn away from her sorrows, her tears, her despair, all of which she channels into the letter she sends Paul while he’s off at university in Paris. She cannot bear being away from him. Cannot bear her life without him.

Can you blame her? Dolmaire is beautiful!

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NYFF: The Oscar Contender "Son of Saul"

Manuel here reporting from the New York Film Festival on Hungary's Oscar submission, a powerful debut film...

The Holocaust film is, as historical subgenres go, perhaps the most well-worn. From John Ford and George Stevens’ documentary footage of the camps liberation all the way through Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, cinema has been irrevocably tied to our cultural remembrance of that most barbaric killing machine. Cinema’s ability to record, to bear witness, has no doubt played a central role in this artistic canon. Of course, at the heart of the cinematic project of the Holocaust lie conflicting and controversial ethical questions. From Theodor Adorno’s “There is no poetry after Auschwitz” dictum to storied arguments about the validity and usefulness of recreating the images of Western civilization’s most gruesome chapter, directors, victims, and historians have asked plenty of hard to answer questions.

Does the depiction not merely replicate the dehumanization on which that enterprise depended? Is there a way to narrativize this barbaric act without simplifying history? Can cinema’s images ever do anything more than ring hollow when compared with the immensity of human life lost?

If all of this sounds heady as an intro to a review of László Nemes’s debut film Son of Saul, you should’ve heard leading man (and poet) Géza Röhrig and his director talk at length about these very issues while quoting Primo Levi at the press conference a few days ago...

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This one is for movie buffs who love animals and also know how to read subtitles

Pt 3 Everything you wanted to know about the foreign language film Oscar race.... * but were afraid to ask

Do you love animals? Who doesn't love animals? If you don't love them, we can't be friends!

A True Story From Nathaniel's Sick Bed/Office... 
I've been sick all week. Yesterday, feeling vaguely human again, I risked a movie at NYFF which happened to be Taiwan's Oscar submission The Assassin. It is sure pretty but after falling for a red herring involving a blue bird I gave up trying to follow the plot. When I returned home I collapsed. I dreamt of being forced to pack up all my earthly possessions and load them on a barge that was heading to outerspace. In order to survive the interstellar journey by water we needed to wear very tight scuba space suits. I realized I couldn't bring my beloved Monty unless I could squeeze him into his own catsuit (literal catsuit, not sexy-diva figurative). He wouldn't comply and I was holding him tight and we were just sweating in those damn suits. I woke up abruptly buried in blankets and sweat with my cat sound asleep on top of me. He LOVES when I am sick. The feeling is not mutual in reverse and he has been.I can't even talk about it. I can't.

I got back to work when Oscar news dropped. I spent the day/evening frantically updating the foreign Oscar Charts and compiling that director trivia and collating all those subtitled trailers for you. I took one wee break to take an online quiz for The Lobster -- which is about people who become animals if they can't find mates -  and somehow I came out as a bear? I am relatively hairless but I do love honey and fish. Type-type-type. Blog-blog-blog. Through my sniffles and remaining sickly delirium I thought 'No one appreciates all this work I do. Gah. I should just sail to outerspace!' and then I remembered the dream and that I was crazy and should go to bed again and I love my cat. The End.

My point is this: Animals and Oscars and Movies are all on my brain simultaneously. And though that's not uncommon, here is an incomplete list of this year's Foreign Film Oscar Contenders which definitely feature our furry / feathered / scaly friends.

Xenia (Greece)
Bunny Rabbits, apparently. This one is on the poster albeit in normal bunny rabbit size.

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate Ones (Portugal) 
Mangy Poodles. Silent Parrots. Talking Litigous Cows! This is a must see for fans of animal-related cinema. [my confused review]

Sivas (Turkey)
The plot centers on a young boy who saves a sheep dog 

The Wanted 18 (Palestine)
This documentary is actually about cows! 

Baba Joon (Israel)
It takes place on a turkey farm 

Stranger (Kazakshtan)
A young man with a tight relationship to nearby wolves

Rams (Iceland) and Lamb (Ethiopia)
What the titles say

Embrace of the Serpent (Colombia)
The animals only really get cool chapter marking cameos but see this movie! [my besotted review]

Brand New Testament (Belgium)
I know this satire is about God living in Brussells but somehow Catherine Deneuve and a Gorilla are involved??? I'm in. When can I see it?

Which of the foreign submissions are you most curious about?

ICYMI
All the trailers | submissions from women and newbies | prediction & charts

Oscar's Foreign Film Race Pt 1: All 81 Trailers

Pt 1 Everything You Wanted to Know About the Foreign Language Film Category... *But Were Afraid to Ask

Here are all the trailers in one place. We're helpful that way. Tis the season of wondering what the Academy's Foreign Language Film committees might take a shine to. We're sprucing up the Official Submission Charts right now to make them cleaner with the full list but until then here are all the trailers for your viewing pleasure.

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