TIFF: The Quietude

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

Martina Gusman (Carancho) and Oscar nominee Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) are exceedingly well cast as loving sisters reunited when their wealthy father has a stroke in this sexy family melodrama from Argentina. The sisters are tight despite years of separation but they have dramatically different relationships with their mother (a commanding turn from Graciela Borges) who clearly favors one and disdains the other. Despite the capable and supremely sexy cast (Edgar Ramirez and Joaquín Furriel are the male love interests for the sisters... and, well, who wouldn't be interested?) and a few witty visual moments and firecracker scenes, the movie is a mixed bag. The character arcs don't fully land given the erratic quality of the screenplay.

And I'm not one to normally harp on "the male gaze," a triggering complaint now so frequently overused it's beginning to lose  meaning, but here we have a textbook example...

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Four More Foreign Film Oscar Submissions

by Nathaniel R

Four more official entries to the Foreign Language Film Oscar race.

• Birds of Passage -Colombia
  This is from the director Ciro Guerra (who has a co-director this time) the man behind Colombia's only Oscar nominee and TFE favorite Embrace of the Serpent.  The new film is a crime/family drama.
  Opening in the US in February. Orchard distributing
• Border -Sweden
  Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes this year. It's based on a novella by the author of Let the Right One In (!) and is a reportedly strange tale of a woman with the ability to sense and smell how people feel.
  Opening in the US October 26th. Neon distributing.
• Donbass -Ukraine
  From the acclaimed Sergey Loznitsa (My Joy, A Gentle Creature). This one is a cheerful tale (he said sarcastically given Loznitsa's filmography) about the degradation of Ukranian society in our post-truth world
• La Familia -Venezuela
  A father son drama about a violent neighborhood.
  Played in the US earlier this month. Film Movement distributing. 

UPDATE HOURS LATER - TWO MORE ENTRIES

• Never Look Away - Germany
  From Florian Henckel von Donnersmarch (The Lives of Others) comes this story of a romance between two art students (Tom Schilling and Paula Beer) and her father (Sebastian Koch) who fights against the relationship
• Ghost Hunting - Palestine
  A documentary about a former interrogation center in which the inmates reenact their interrogations inside a replica of the center built to scale

Related:
Updated Oscar charts for foreign film
First 10 official contenders for foreign film
49 suggested European Film Awards contenders
Spain's Finalists
Israel's Finalists

Blueprints: "A Fantastic Woman"

To celebrate Pride Month, every week of June Jorge has been highlighting the script of a movie that focuses on a different letter of the LGBT acronym. For “T”, the last installment in this miniseries, he looks at the most recent Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film.

The LGBT experience encompasses all types of people, genders, nationalities, economic statuses, and every intersectionality in between. It doesn’t look one single way, and it certainly doesn’t feel like one, either. As the canon of queer cinema being to expand beyond one or two points of view, the ways in which film reflects this experience starts to get as diverse and colorful as the community itself.

So let’s take a look at A Fantastic Woman, the Oscar-winning Chilean film about a trans woman dealing with the loss of her partner, and the overwhelming grief and pressure that come with it. While it is a sobering portrait of a trans experience, it also effectively uses surreal imagery to portray the particular moments that Marina is going through. Let’s dive into two of them. 

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The Oscars were gay and Latino, just like I am

by Jorge Molina

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece for this site about feeling seen, in a way I hadn't before, onscreen. Coco and Call Me by Your Name perfectly captured two different parts of my identity. Fast forward to Sunday’s 90th Academy Awards. Both of those movies deservedly won statues. More surprisingly a never ending parade of queer and Latino moments made me feel, yet again, that someone like myself has a place in the biggest stage in the world...

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Oscar Night: Winners List & New Trivia

by Nathaniel R

Warren Beatty presenting to Guillermo del Toro

How'd you do on your Oscar predictions. Your host got 18/24 correct which isn't terrible but isn't great. The Shape of Water emerged as the big winner of the night with 4 Oscars including Picture and Director (no split this year) with Dunkirk on its tail with 3 Oscars. Seven of the nine Best Picture nominees won at least one Oscar with only Lady Bird and The Post suffering the "zip!" fate. We'll have time to discuss the ceremony over the next two days but for now the winners list and trivia made tonight after the jump...

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