Pick of the week: A hypnotic tale of doomed romance set in colonial Africa

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

This season’s movies have been unusually obsessed with history, and especially its less savory elements. But of all these meditations on the past, perhaps none is as peculiar or as haunting as “Tabu,” the new film from young Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. You definitely need to have patience with this movie, because it opens – after a melancholy and mysterious prologue about a 19th-century explorer, a ghost and a crocodile – as a low-key art-house drama, in black-and-white, about the intersecting lives of three elderly women in contemporary Lisbon. That in itself is refreshingly unfashionable (Gomes has said he wanted to focus on the kind of women “nobody gives a damn about”), but it takes a while for the disturbing undercurrents in their story to open the portals of memory and take us back into a tale of doomed romance in colonial Africa.

Oscar shortlist for top foreign language film announced

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Nine films out of 71 have advanced passed the first round on the journey to the Oscars. The list, which be pared down to five nominees on Jan. 10, include Golden Globe nominees “Amour” (Austria), “A Royal Affair” (Denmark), “The Intouchables"(France), and “Kon-Tiki” (Norway).

French film “Rust and Bone," the fifth Golden Globe nominee, was not considered for the shortlist because the Academy Award rules dictate that each country may only submit only one film from the eligible time period. (The French film industry elected "The Intouchables," the second highest-grossing French film of all-time over the arguably more ambitious "Rust and Bone").

The full shortlist, featuring country and directors, below:

Austria, "Amour", Michael Haneke
Canada, "War Witch", Kim Nguyen
Chile, "No", Pablo Larraín
Denmark, "A Royal Affair", Nikolaj Arcel
France, "The Intouchables", Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano
Iceland, "The Deep", Baltasar Kormákur
Norway, "Kon-Tiki", Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg
Romania, "Beyond the Hills", Cristian Mungiu
Switzerland, "Sister", Ursula Meier

The 85th Academy Awards will held on Feb. 24.

Salon.com > foreign language films

Pick of the week: A hypnotic tale of doomed romance set in colonial Africa

Oscar shortlist for top foreign language film announced