Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Oscar prognosticating is a sign of corruption, or at least weakness. But—can we indulge in this weakness for a moment? Because the Best International Film category is shaping up as one of those typical Academy moments, where offscreen concerns mix with the usual tendency toward middlebrow tastes, and sentiment generally wins the day.
The front-runner in this category this year has been Emilia Pérez, not least because its 13 overall nominations. But funny things can happen to front-runners, and one of those funny things happened with the film's star, Karla Sofía Gascón, as ugly social-media posts emerged from her past and put a hiccup in the film's momentum. That in itself might not be enough to get in the way of Emilia Pérez taking home the consolation prize of Best International Film, but there's something else at play.
Emilia Pérez is zany, racy, a dizzying mix of genres and styles—but this is not always what Oscar voters prefer. Remember the 2007 ceremony, when Pan's Labyrinth had six nominations (and won three of those), but lost the Best Foreign Language Film award to The Lives of Others. It was an upset that should have surprised no one who actually tracked the moods of Oscar voters—the triumph of a straightforward, sober look at a serious subject over a peculiar, magical-realist piece by a quirky artist. (You can keep going: consider Nowhere in Africa winning over Zhang Yimou's Hero and Aki Kaurismäki's The Man Without a Past, or The Secret in Their Eyes taking it over Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon and Audiard's A Prophet—which means Audiard could get snookered out of this thing for a second time.)
Although I would not count out The Seed of the Sacred Fig or the lovable Latvian animated film Flow, the movie with the best current odds to surprise here is Walter Salles' I'm Still Here, the Brazilian nomination. And I don't want to make it sound like this movie is the square's choice, but it is a much more traditional picture than Emilia Pérez, and on a politically potent subject (the "disappearings" of anti-dictatorship resistors in Brazil in the 1970s). It is a respectable movie, and Salles leans toward sentimentality in general—here, especially in the film's two epilogs.
All of which might win it the Oscar, but let's not hold that against it. I'm Still Here is a strong, committed movie, wisely draped around the shoulders of Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres, who plays the wife of a politician who vanishes one night. She must keep their family and household together, as the months drag by; she also endures her own imprisonment for a relatively short period. (Selton Mello makes such an intensely human impression as the husband that you genuinely feel the void when he leaves the movie.) One of the things Salles does best is create a sense of place—you get to know this Rio household, its comfortable rooms, the way the children move in and out of the space with confident, thoughtless ownership, and the way Torres' matriarch keeps everything balanced during this period of uncertainty.
The best international film released in 2024? No. The likely Oscar winner? Could be. The influx of new Oscar voters, allegedly younger, more diverse, and well, more international, might tip the scales toward more adventurous pictures, but I wouldn't be too sure. Don't be shocked if it's Brazil's night.
February 21, 2025
