In Contention

Tag: Mia Hansen-Love

  • FIRST-HALF FYC: Best Director

    With precisely three weeks to go until Oscar nomination morning, we continue to flag up worthy work from 2010’s first half, much of it lost (or, indeed, never present) amid the crush of more recent awards contenders. You know the January-to-June drill by now: beyond that, we can get as far-fetched as we like.

    I certainly did this week, as my field of Best Director suggestions betrays the extent to which foreign arthouse fare rules the quality ranks in the early months of the year, while American studios save their prize ponies for summer. For this ballot to pan out, the Academy would have to overcome their usual resistance to subtitles several times over, while making history twice by nominating two women and a documentary filmmaker. Not much to ask, is it?

    Speaking of women, by the way, it bears repeating that opening months of the year were strong ones for female filmmakers: between the likes of Debra Granik, Jessica Hausner and Mia Hansen-Løve, all of whom were closely considered, I could have cheerfully assembled a ladies-only field.

    Finally, before I get into my picks, I should add that while many (certainly the Academy itself, on recent form) see the Best Picture and Director categories as interchangeable, I don’t quite work that way — as often as they inevitably overlap, sometimes a director’s formal ambition and achievement burns a little brighter than the whole.

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  • INTERVIEW: ‘Father of My Children’ director Mia Hansen-Løve

    As film critics continue to pick over the spoils of Cannes 2010, for regular cinemagoers, it can take an awfully long time for the movies in question to trickle down to them.

    Case in point: Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkable sophomore feature “Father of My Children,” which impressed critics and won a special jury prize in the Un Certain Regard strand a year ago, but is only now wending its way to U.S. theaters. It opened last week in Los Angeles; tomorrow, New Yorkers get to lay eyes on it.

    They’ll find it worth the wait. “Father of My Children,” which I reviewed out of the London Film Festival last October, is a marvelously mutable, personal study of family and film, beginning as a story about one thing and ending as quite another. Reviews and marketing materials may make it difficult to remain innocent of a key mid-film development — not a “twist” by any means, but a turn that entirely shifts and deepens the focus of the narrative — that floored me on my first encounter with the film. (I’ve done my best to keep it wrapped, but will insert a spoiler alert anyway.)

    This much I can tell you: the film is inspired by, and ultimately something of a tribute to, the late Humbert Balsan, a prolific French film producer and renowned champion of the arthouse. Before his premature death in 2005, he shepherded works by the likes of Lars von Trier, Claire Denis, James Ivory and Béla Tarr, but also acted as mentor to rising talents — the young Hansen-Løve, then an aspiring filmmaker and sometime Cahiers du Cinéma critic, among them.

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  • Tom Ford, Scott Cooper on Variety’s Directors to Watch list

    Tom FordVariety’s annual Directors to Watch list lives up to its title more often than not, frequently highlighting names that go on to be hotter talking points in the year that follows.

    Last year’s list, for example, include “(500) Days of Summer” helmer Marc Webb, who recently signed on to reboot the “Spider-Man” franchise, as well as Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) and Adam Elliot (“Mary & Max”) — in addition to already-lauded names like Matteo Garrone and Steve McQueen.

    This year’s list similarly blends directors still in the wings with those who have already arrived. The year’s most successful freshman filmmaker, Neill Blomkamp, isn’t on the list (Variety hardly needs to remind the industry of his presence, after all), but two first-timers with films in the Oscar hunt are: “A Single Man”‘s Tom Ford and “Crazy Heart”‘s Scott Cooper.

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  • LONDON: ‘Father of My Children,’ ‘Bellamy’

    Gerard Depardieu in BellamyIt’s been a busy weekend at the festival, but aside from “Up in the Air” — which I finally encountered this morning and will offers some thoughts on in due course — it’s also been a rather low-key one. Several films I had seen in pre-screenings made their London debut; I’ll round them up with some brief capsule reviews later.

    The best film of the weekend would have been Jessica Hausner’s critical darling “Lourdes,” if I hadn’t already seen it in Venice. Happily, a pair of different French-language titles made for a most enjoyable Saturday, even if I can only make significant claims for one of them.

    Viewed in succession, Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Father of My Children” and Claude Chabrol’s “Bellamy” made for a fascinating transition between two guards of French cinema: the former, low in star wattage, is the sophomore effort of 28 year-old director, while the latter marks the first collaboration between two industry titans, 79 year-old Chabrol and 60 year-old Gérard Depardieu. One, I think, has the potential to be a major arthouse hit — it might not be the one you think.

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