As the deadline for Best Foreign Language Film submissions looms on October 1, news of further entries keeps rolling in. Italy, Vietnam and Norway are the latest additions to the list, which presently numbers 54. (By my count, at least.)
Italy’s selection is obviously the newsiest: the country’s 13 previous wins make it the leading Oscar champ in this category (though France still holds the record for nominations by a sizable margin). They’ve rather lost their golden touch of late, however, scoring only a solitary nom (“Don’t Tell,” 2005) since “Life is Beautiful” won over a decade ago, and I’m not sure they’ve made the wisest choice to reverse that state of affairs this year.
On paper, their pick of Giuseppe Tornatore’s “Baaria” may seem like an Oscar slam-dunk. It’s a lavish, decades-spanning period drama from an Academy-favored filmmaker — Tornatore won for “Cinema Paradiso” in 1989, scored a further nod for “The Star Maker” in 1995 and made the 9-film shortlist with “The Unknown Woman” two years ago.
Which is all well and good, except that “Baaria” was critically slaughtered when it opened the Venice Film Festival last month. Clearly, the massive budget of Tornatore’s film factored into the decision. I never got to see it myself, but Variety’s pan (“overblown in every sense … awash in phony nostalgia (and) cheap sentimentalism”) was typical of the consensus.