César Noms: "Amour" vs "Rust & Bone" vs "Holy Motors"

Editor's Note: You may have figured out over the years that The Film Experience is more than a little fond of France and French cinema. Sadly I've never been to France. This year I've asked my friend in Paris, Julien to keep us up to date so he sent in the following article about this year's nominations. You should follow Julien Kojfer on Twitter because he's great. Just pretend you understand French whenever he goes there! - Nathaniel R

Julien takes it from here.

Three Films that also made waves Stateside

Here’s one for all you francophiles out there. France’s very own AMPAS, the César Academy, revealed its own set of nominees this morning. Since I’m guessing a lot of you won’t be familiar with most of the anointed films and performers, I’ll guide you through the major categories - a usual mixed bag of auteurist fare, populist hits, and biopic dreck.  

BEST PICTURE

• Amour
• Rust and Bone
• Holy Motors
• Farewell, My Queen
• In the House
• Camille Rewinds
• Le Prénom (What’s in a name) 

BEST DIRECTOR

• Michael Haneke for Amour
• Jacques Audiard for Rust and Bone
• Leos Carax for Holy Motors
• Benoît Jacquot for Farewell, My Queen
• François Ozon for In the House
• Noémie Lvovsky for Camille Rewinds
• Stéphane Brizé for Quelques heures de printemps

The major categories were bumped up from 5 to 7 nominees since the last couple of years, which makes no sense to me whatsoever, but who cares. The über-frontrunner is obviously Amour, which will be difficult to deny considering that Palme d’or and those 5 Oscar nominations.

This is Michael Haneke's 2nd Best Director nomination at the César Awards. He was previously nominated for Caché (Hidden)Rust and Bone seems to be the main challenger, but since Jacques Audiard has already triumphed twice at the César for his two most recent efforts, voters will presumably see no objection in handing the César-less Haneke his due. Also keep in mind that César voters are notoriously generous to foreign auteurs: Roman Polanski has won the Best Director prize thrice (and for English-speaking films to boot: Tess, The Pianist and The Ghost Writer) and past best director winners also include Joseph Losey (American) for Monsieur Klein, Andrzej Wajda (Polish) for Danton, Ettore Scola (Italian) for Le Bal and Denys Arcand (Canadian) for The Barbarian Invasions. 

The other nominees make for a surprisingly strong lineup: Farewell, My Queen (on Nathaniel’s own Top Ten list) is superior costume fare from respected veteran Benoît Jacquot; the deliciously sly In the House is François Ozon’s best film since 8 Women; Noémie Lvovsky’s Camille Rewinds is so charming and heartfelt that it manages to make you forget how blatantly it rips-off 80s classic Peggy Sue Got Married; and of course Leos Carax’s astonishing Holy Motors is everyone’s favorite comeback story of 2012 (I’m sorry, Ben who?) 

MORE AFTER THE JUMP including Cotillard vs. Riva

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A Lively Live Action Short Race: Bryce Dallas Howard, Matthias Schoenaerts & More...

Yesterday the finalists list for the Live Action Short film category at the Oscars was announced. Bryce Dallas Howard could be an Oscar nominee in just 39 days time! But Ron Howard's daughter is not the only familiar face in the mix here. 

Matthias Schoenaerts in "Death of a Shadow"

One film about mountain climbers, The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars features popular 80s stars Nastassja Kinski (Tess herself) and Julian Sands. Another, Death of a Shadow, stars the rapidly ascending Belgian god Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead & Rust & Bone). He plays a dead soldier who hopes to win his life back by capturing thousands of shadows of dying men and women.

Father and Daughter will be nominated together if "when you find me" wins the nomination on January 10thThe 11 wide finalist list, which also features multiple films about children in war-torned countries (a frequent subgenre within award-winning short films), goes like so:

• A Fábrica (The Factory) 
• Asad 
• Buzkashi Boys 
• Curfew 
• Death of a Shadow (Dood van een Schaduw) 
• Henry  
• Kiruna-Kigali 
• The Night Shift Belongs to the Stars 
• 9meter 
• Salar 
• when you find me 

More info and trailers on the Animated, Shorts & Documentary Oscar Chart Page

The Linking Daylights

Variety's "The Vote" looks at all time great film scores
NYT remembers voice actress Lucille Bliss (RIP) the voice of Smurfette and Anastasia in Cinderella. 
Art of the Title Sequence has a cup of fresh coffee with Cabin in the Woods
EW watch Anthony Hopkins become Hitchcock in under a minute (though in real life it took an hour and a half each day 
In Contention Angelina Jolie campaigning for Ewan McGregor's work in The Impossible. Whoa

Unreality Marvel superheroines as Bond Girls
Salon uh oh Activists claim that 27 animals have died making The Hobbit films 
Pajiba shows us Val Kilmer and Joann Whaley's kids all grown up. Think they'll be actors? I always wished that Whaley had had a better career. Loved her in Scandal and Willow.
Movie|Line Ryan Gosling's beat up face on the Only God Forgives poster 
IndieWire first Joaquin and now Anthony Hopkins calling Oscar campaigns "disgusting" 
French Premiere the semi-finalist list for the Best Newcomer prizes at the Césars in France. Expect a nomination at least for Matthias Schoenaerts for his awesome double attention-grabber Bullhead and Rust & Bone  
The Playlist fun gallery of behind the scenes shots from Kill Bill
Awards Daily James Franco made a music video. Lindsay Lohan is in it 

And finally here's Jeremy Renner making fun of Hawkeye on SNL...

It'd definitely been the year or archery what with Brave, The Avengers and The Hunger Games among the top blockbusters. And now we have gifted archers on two television series: Revolution and Arrow... which is also about a guy who shoots arrows. That's kind of his thing. Before this trend dies a swift death from ubiquity, can someone please give actual archer and awesome actress Geena Davis a good role and combine the two?

LFF: The French are coming!

David here, heralding the return of the BFI London Film Festival – Craig and I are back again, and we’ll be bringing you various updates across the next two weeks. The 56th festival kicked off last night with the European premiere of Frankenweenie, but my first round-up post has more of a Francophile feel to it…

Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard in 'Rust & Bone'

With Rust & Bone, director Jacques Audiard is still in the business of tempering abrasive, down-on-their-luck characters in the French banlieues with a style that smears the poetic and the aggressive into one confrontational melting pot. It seems to be part of Audiard’s intention to throw severe miserablism at his audience just to see if they can survive. Still, such a vibrantly aggressive film with a charged sense of the physical is a rare thing, and Audiard works to balance the lead performances by Marion Cotillard (whom Jose was just raving about) and Matthias Schoenaerts between a dark emotional percolation and a keen awareness of their physicality and the relationship of their bodies. Cotillard is expert at scorching her character Stephanie’s lust and enhanced sense of her own body onto the screen, and the building frisson between Stephanie and Schoenaerts’ Ali happens less through dialogue (the brisk, careless attitude of Ali puts paid to that) and more through the relation of their bodies and faces. The film may tilt wildly into grandiose dramatics or voracious sentimentality and some notes may strike an off chord, but they are all part of Audiard’s passionate approach; they reflect the beautiful, distorted, uncomfortable mess of a world that these two people inhabit. The rust rubs up against the bone and they spark, hurting but creating fire and feeling. (B+) (full review)

Wild in a different way is the narrative conceit of François Ozon’s In the House, confident again after the successful pastiche. French literature teacher Germain (Fabrice Luchini), despairing of his students’ lack of talent and effort, is intrigued by Claude’s (Ernst Umhauer) piece on the homelife of his best friend Rapha (Bastien Ughetto). Pushing his new protégé to enliven his continuing stories, the lines between fiction and reality blur as Claude, Germain and Germain’s wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) become more invested and obsessed with the lives of Rapha’s family. There are echoes of younger Ozon in the cautious dissection of a middle-class family home by an Umhauer’s enigmatic potboiler, but the director sticks less rigidly to the theatrical setting of Water Drops on Burning Rocks and 8 Women and delineates various domestic and public spaces with distinctive mise-en-scene. With this consistent shift in setting come the frivolous shifts in tone – Claude’s interpretation of Germain’s literary suggestions remain unpredictable to all but him, and so the audience is thrown between caustic parody, sensual romance, ghostly thriller, and myriads of diverse moods with gleeful abandon. Ultimately, Ozon makes little of what amounts to a toe-dip in social politics, but it skips along at a brisk pace and Umhauer’s pleasingly chilled performance is matched by Emmanuelle Seignier’s melancholy, spaced ennui as Rapha’s mother. In the House is a unique prospect and even if could’ve been so much greater, it’s a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours. (B-)

Jean-Louis Trintignent holds Emmanuelle Riva in 'Amour'

As you might expect, Michael Haneke’s Amour is pretty much the opposite proposition. Haneke presents the story’s end before his title card prompting a rewind to the beginning. The udience knows they’re in for a wearing, emotional experience to reach the beatific sight of a decomposing body surrounded lovingly by petals. We’re in familiarly confrontational territory with Haneke here, but the title suggests the tender centre of this enterprise, inhabited by breathtaking work from Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. They play a wealthy, elderly French couple whose life becomes confined to their apartment after Anne (Riva) suffers a stroke. Haneke’s camerawork is predominantly his usual tableau-style observation, but increasingly, as Anne worsens, the close-ups proliferate. The actors and the camera draw us deeper into the nauseatingly devastating slide towards death. Such is the power of Anne’s irascible pride that Haneke feels intrusively cruel when he won’t let her escape his camera, cutting across the apartment to catch her wheelchair zooming away from her husband. Questions niggle about why Haneke felt the need to film such a painful story, but it gains infinite legitimacy and value from the presence of Trintignant and Riva, who uncover every emotional nook and cranny of the wounded dignity and painful decisions involved in such a lengthy and dedicated love. (B+)

Follow David on Twitter @randomfurlong for instant, 140-character screening reactions.

Million Dollar Marion

Jose here, still reeling from Rust and Bone this past Sunday (going again today in a couple of hours because it's that good). My first reaction after watching it was: wow, Marion Cotillard truly has been trying to prove to us all her Oscar win was no accident.

I am not a fan of La Vie en Rose but year after year I have found myself more astounded by Cotillard's work. She was heartbreaking in Nine and was the only thing in Inception worth anyone's time, but it's in Rust and Bone where she provesonce and for all  that she's one of the most fearless actresses of our time. Most people think she's a shoo-in for a Best Actress nomination but I'm not sure this will be so easy, given that her character isn't likable at all and we know that AMPAS likes to like its leading ladies; even Margaret Thatcher and Aileen Wuornos had redemptive qualities in their movies.

Cotillard's Stephanie doesn't give a damn if someone likes her or not. When we first meet her she's just been beaten by a guy in a club and she just picks herself up and goes home to her boyfriend, whom she resents for asking for an explanation. After a gruesome accident leaves her disabled, she doesn't change her ways; instead she finds herself a f*** buddy (Matthias Schoenaerts) and becomes involved in some shady business. Can you imagine Million Dollar Baby's Maggie Fitzgerald becoming fiercer after her accident? Rust and Bone is surprising in more than one way and its extreme lack of sentimentality will surely leave some perplexed. But Cotillard is phenomenal. There is one particular scene - set to Katy Perry's "Firework" of all things - where she doesn't speak, but communicates so much through her eyes and face that she should be a frontrunner. She is that good.