Two Cheers For Emilia
Our Oscar coverage continues with a qualified defence of Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez.
Great Moments In Entertainment Journalism (a potentially continuing series): in a recent article in New York’s Vulture magazine, an Oscar pundit questions the selection process for nominees for Best International Feature Film, formerly Best Foreign Language Film. About time, you might think: given the Oscars in their entirety are meant to be a competition for world cinema, the rationale for retaining the category is far from clear. But that’s not exactly where he’s coming from. Rather, he’s focused on the rule dictating that each country can submit only a single official entry; perhaps it’s time for a more flexible approach. Then again, there’s the risk that such a shift “would only further empower the international-cinephile class,” which we’re reminded is the class that “dominates institutions like Cannes”.
Yes, you read that right: the Cannes Film Festival, run by a pack of international cinephiles. Concerning, even if nothing can be done to fix the situation for the moment. To spell out where I’m coming from in turn, I assume I myself would qualify as a member of the international-cinephile class, albeit one who speaks English, lives on the other side of the world from Europe and has never been to Cannes. From that vantage point, I wouldn’t claim that the culture underlying the global film festival circuit is ideally lacking in bias. What I would claim is that for all the admirable-in-principle recent efforts to broaden the Academy’s membership, the Cannes line-up in any given year can be counted on to represent a wider world of cinema than the Oscars.