The Foreign Oscar: Like the U.N., only with less agreement

By Steven Zeitchik

The foreign-language Oscar can sometimes seem like an awards anomaly: it draws interest in inverse proportion to the number of people who see the the films.

While foreign-language films at the box office are -- a small renaissance thanks to pics like "Tell No One," "The Counterfeiters" and "La Misma Luna" notwithstanding -- still at a low ebb, the cinephiles who follow the films are so intense and the field so diverse that the race has become one of the more suspenseful ones around. And ever since a mysterious panel of thirty was added a few years ago to whittle the submissions down to a shortlist, even the rules come with drama.

Two years ago the race offered the subplot of a critical darling, "The Lives of Others," taking on, and beating, a $40 million-grosser and fanboy favorite, "Pan's Labyrinth." Last year the howls could be heard from Bucharest when "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" was left off the shortlist.

This year's shaping up to be no less rich. (For a growing list of the films that countries around the world are putting forth, see THR's snazzy foreign-language Oscar page.)

For starters, there are two early favorites with some solid Oscar storylines.

One is "Waltz With Bashir," the Israeli animated doc automatically submitted by the country after it took home six of the country's Oscar awards, the Ophirs, Tuesday. (It's perhaps the only film in history to potentially be eligible for foreign, animated, doc and picture). Ari Folman's dreamlike meditation on war is topical and dripping with buzz after its strong showing in Cannes. And SPC, a distrib with a strong foreign-Oscar track record and a two-time defending winner in the category, is releasing. 

On the other hand, the prize has gone to a country outside Europe or North America exactly twice in the last twenty-two years.

Also a strong contender because of the Cannes talk -- and with an SPC pedigree -- is Laurent Cantet's, "The Class," a movie of social realism and moral complexity that's captivated us pretty much since the moment we saw it. But the film won the Palme d'Or, which in the upside-down logic of the foreign race actually seems to work against a pic, as it did "4 Months" last year.

And then there are the other contenders-- Jordan's Sundance winner "Captain Abu Raed," a battered-wife drama in an exotic setting (see under: the adjacent compelling image) that's the country's first-ever feature, and Iceland's "White Night Wedding," Baltasar Kormakur's return to both his homeland and to dark relationship comedy (really dark, actually) after his genre turns in the U.S., not to mention pretty much whatever Italy winds up submitting.

Do voters reward an emerging country like Jordan? Rectify the Palme d'Or oversight of last year with a "Class" win? Where does a headline-grabbing pic like controversial Germany submission "Der Baader Meinhof Komplex" fit in? Does "Bashir" get a sympathy vote after Israel's "The Band's Visit" was jobbed -- we mean disqualified -- last year on language grounds? Or does it lose support because of its eligibility in other categories?

It's September, and we're excited about the foreign Oscar. Please don't hold it against us.

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