Back Row Thoughts – Jet-Setting, Part One

The countdown to the 97th Academy Awards is officially underway, and in 48 hours, I’ll begin the Oscar Blitz in earnest with the first category breakdown. However, there’s still one major block of movies that I haven’t really discussed yet, the shortlist for International Feature. Of the 15 films, I’ve already seen 14, and the final one, Armand from Norway, will be released in American cinemas next week. However, I’ve only actually reviewed six so far, and only three of the nominees.

So the time has come to start knocking them off, especially since I make a habit of ranking the entire shortlist and all other submissions I’ve seen when I finally break down the category as part of the Blitz coverage. As I always do, I’ll go over these in the order I saw them, regardless of their current status in the competition. Just because something got nominated doesn’t mean it’s more deserving of attention, and they’ll have their moment when I compare and contrast them down the line. Here it’s just about the overall impression and their grades. Since there are nine to go over, and I have eight ready, it only makes sense to do four each for now, which I’ll handle tonight and tomorrow. When Armand comes out, I’ll review it individually, and if the release is somehow pulled because it didn’t get nominated (which has happened before), then I’ll have done all I can, and this segment will be done and dusted.

This is an easy split to make, as four of the remaining semifinalists I saw at AFI Fest back in October. The other four I took in as regular theatrical and streaming viewings. We’ll start with the AFI screenings, and just like every other film submitted in this category, I recommend watching them just to see what each country thought of its cinematic profile last year, regardless of quality. That said, one of these is very much not in the same class as the others, at least from where I sit.

Universal Language – Canada

Directed by surrealist filmmaker Matthew Rankin, Universal Language is by a country mile the oddest entry I saw in this year’s contest. It was also strangely one of the most delightful. The premise is completely absurd, but there’s an odd earnestness behind it that only becomes more charming as it goes.

The film is set in a version of Canada that is essentially Iran, with the cities of Montreal and Winnipeg made to look like Tehran and be completely identical to one another. The plot is a series of interconnected mundanities that flow effortlessly in and out of each other. A group of schoolchildren find some money encased in a frozen puddle, and they make it their mission to find a way to extricate it so they can buy new eyeglasses for their classmate Omid (Sobhan Jovadi), who was ridiculed by their teacher for losing his main pair, thus making him unable to read the chalkboard. Meanwhile, a bureaucrat named Matthew (Rankin himself), has become disillusioned with his work, and decides to quit his job and move back home, crossing Canada on a bus. Finally, there’s Massoud (Pirouz Nemati), a tour guide showing an increasingly confused and frustrated group the “highlights” of the city, including a nondescript beige building and a sign dedication on a freeway exit.

The melancholy humor is 100% on point, particularly when Matthew moves halfway across the country only to end up in the exact same city with the exact same people going through the exact same motions. There are also a lot of fun references that blend Canadian and Persian culture, like a Tim Horton’s (a famous chain donut shop; it’s essentially Canada’s version of Dunkin’) that’s actually a hookah bar and teahouse. There’s also a lovely morose cyclical nature to everything that perfectly encapsulates the doldrums of existence.

It can be confusing to follow if you don’t catch on to the premise immediately, and even then, there can be some difficult moments that don’t exactly make sense even within this bonkers context, like a butcher who’s obsessed with turkeys for no discernable reason. Still, I had a lot of fun with this one, an odd bit of experimentation that can be alternately interpreted as both depressing and weirdly life-affirming, because while so much can be made redundant by routine, there is an odd comfort in knowing that the world goes on no matter what you do.

Grade: B+

I’m Still Here – Brazil

A surprise Best Picture nominee (also up for Best Actress and International Feature), I’m Still Here is a very accessible foreign film for domestic audiences, as the story is straightforward and germane to the current discourse. It’s well made, solidly entertaining, and has one of the best performances of the year.

The story revolves around the Paiva family, an upper-middle class clan living comfortably in Rio de Janeiro in 1971. The father, Rubens (Selton Mello), is a former Congressman using his (forced) retirement from public service to spend as much time with his wife Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and children as possible. He also leads something of a double life, working in secret to offer aid to political dissidents, and along with some associates publishes an underground newspaper that features stories about people disappeared by the Brazilian military dictatorship.

One day, government agents come for him, and he’s discreetly but peacefully taken away, much to Eunice’s objection, as she can’t even get a straight answer about what he’s supposedly done wrong. After the operatives occupy their house for days, Eunice herself, along with teenage daughter Eliana (Luiza Kosovski) are also taken in. The interrogations are beyond harsh, and Eunice is tortured for several days. When she and Eliana are finally released, they learn Rubens’ fate, that he’s been tortured and killed, his body disposed of in a mass burial at sea and unrecoverable.

From there, the film shifts from being something of a political drama to being a full-on crusade for justice, as Eunice spends the rest of her days fighting for information and acknowledgement of the crimes against humanity that she and so many others have suffered. Meanwhile, the government continues to monitor the family closely, looking for any excuse to silence her permanently. And believe me, these assholes are thorough. There’s one moment in particular that broke my damn heart at how intolerably cruel it was.

Torres gives an outstanding performance, one I’m glad has been recognized by the various awards bodies. I don’t know if she’d get my vote (I’m still debating in my head), but she’s absolutely fantastic. This is mostly because she’s not a one-note vessel for tragedy, nor is she an automatic superwoman. The balance between strength and grief that she has to show in any given moment is extremely difficult to pull off, and she does so admirably. No better is this demonstrated than in a scene where the family is interviewed by a tabloid of all things just to get their story out, and when they want to take a family photo, Eunice insists that everyone smile. The writer and photographer would prefer more dour and sad faces, because their editor believes that would sell better, but Eunice is just as defiant with them as she is her own murderous government. She states unequivocally that the Paivas are, were, and always will be a happy family. No one will destroy them, and no one will tell them how to feel. Powerful stuff.

Honestly, the only knock against the film is in how conventional it is in its storytelling. Like I said, it makes it appealing to American viewers, because they can see the authoritarianism unfolding as we speak in our own country. Just today Donald Trump fired every Department of Justice prosecutor who investigated his crimes and demanded his own investigation into them to see if he can punish those who dared ask legal questions of him. Don’t think he doesn’t fantasize about his own “disappearance” squads. But I don’t know. Maybe I just expect something more from the international entries. This is a really good film, but it’s far from unique, and it doesn’t really have anything resembling a Brazilian identity apart from its setting and language. Don’t let that stop you from seeing it, though. Torres alone is worth the time.

Grade: B+

Santosh – United Kingdom

Over the last few years, I’ve really come to enjoy learning more and more about India through cinema, though as I mentioned when reviewing Laapataa Ladies, I’m starting to wonder just how big the problem of corrupt and inept policing is. Sometimes it’s played for laughs, like in that film, but in the U.K.’s Santosh, the issues illustrate a concerning rot in the system.

Shahana Goswani stars as the titular Santosh Saini, a widow in a rural village. Her late husband was a police officer, and they lived in an apartment together furnished by the government as part of his compensation package. With him now dead, Santosh faces eviction, but under Indian law, she can inherit her husband’s job as well as his assets, so she joins the force in order to keep her home.

It’s there that she’s taken under the wing of the hard-nosed inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a veteran who has worked her way up the chain of command by suffering the sexist slings and arrows of the system for years, condoning and actively participating for the sake of her career, and repurposing it into her own form of workplace feminism. Together, the two of them take on a rather dark and dangerous case, the disappearance of a young Dalit (untouchable) girl, and as the mystery plays out, the compromises that are made to maintain the system are laid disturbingly bare.

I definitely enjoyed this film, particularly the lead performances and the pace of the story. There’s also a really good parallel between seeing women try to make their way through a male-dominated environment and the unofficial caste system that still exists, where the lives of certain people – especially poor women – are treated as being less valuable than those in higher and more powerful positions.

What I didn’t care for was the resolution. It made thematic sense to see how deep the corruption ran, and how prioritizing a quick arrest was more for public relations than for justice. However, the cost of it was the characterization of one of the leads, which felt just slightly betrayed. It still works, mind you, but it just came off in a way that feels like it was more for the sake of a shock twist than a logical progression.

Grade: B

Vermiglio – Italy

A lot was made of Italy’s submission, named for the Alpine town in which it’s set, to the point that I’m genuinely surprised it wasn’t nominated. That said, I honestly just didn’t see what the fuss was all about. It’s not a bad film, per se, it’s just aggressively ordinary, derivative, and at times downright frustrating.

On the surface, this is a story about a small village – and by extension Italy as a whole – finding its identity towards the end of World War II. A young army deserter named Pietro (Giuseppe De Domenico) arrives in the village, having escaped the war. Some people welcome him as a new face, while others scorn him for abandoning his post. He falls in love with Lucia (Martina Scrinzi), the eldest daughter of the town’s schoolteacher and de facto leader, Cesare (Tommaso Ragno). Pietro eventually ingratiates himself with the family, and in time he marries and impregnates Lucia, before he must return to his platoon and face the music (or so he says) before they can have their happily ever after.

That’s the premise, but in practice, this is just a fractured version of Little Women where the actions of two men doom all. Pietro himself has some massive secrets that are revealed in due but deliberate course, and Cesare acts as a nicer, more palatable Mussolini figure. For instance, while the family is poor, they have enough money to send one of their children off to a boarding school in order to get a more formal education, and thus have a chance at a prosperous life. Cesare, as teacher, uses his schoolhouse – half populated by his own offspring – as a means to test the worth of each of his children. The reason Lucia is allowed to marry Pietro is because Cesare decides that despite her intelligence, Lucia’s academic journey is over, and it’s time for her to become a wife and mother, granting the funds to the next daughter in line, Flavia (Anna Thaler). Meanwhile, Cesare’s wife Adele (Roberta Rovelli), who has likely spent more of the last decade-plus in various stages of pregnancy than not, is yet again with child. So… you’re desperately poor, you have far too many children already, and you find yourselves wondering what to do to prevent eternal poverty and a lack of any prospects for the kids you currently have? Gee, whatever could you do? Oh, I don’t know, maybe, STOP HAVING FUCKING KIDS! WRAP YOUR DICK UP, ASSHOLE!

But yeah, this is much more a plodding tale of how the women of the family try to cope with their situation. Lucia is the Meg of the family, Flavia the Jo, and the rest are different levels of Amy and Beth, especially the ones doomed to an early grave because they can’t afford basic medicines. The difference is that none of these girls (or their brothers) have any agency, so the whole film is just a constant string of tragedies set against a lovely Alpine backdrop. Whether it’s war, religion, or patriarchy in general, the sad state of affairs is unrelenting, until the film just basically stops.

It’s beautiful to look at, don’t get me wrong. The cinematography is gorgeous, and the production design is very much on point, which is what saves this from having a much worse grade than it ultimately receives. But it is an ordeal to sit through at times, and until I saw the presumptive winner of this year’s contest, it was on the absolute bottom of my rankings for the entire International Feature field.

Grade: B-

Join the conversation in the comments below! Have you seen any of these movies? What do you look for in a great foreign film? Are you rethinking a trip to India just to avoid dealing with their cops? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!