Nominations for the European Film Awards 2008

Sorry we're a little late - at the Seville European Film Festival (7-15 November 2008), the European Film Academy and EFA Productions announced the nominations for the 21st European Film Awards. The 1,800 EFA members will now vote for the winners, who will be honoured during the awards ceremony on 6 December in Copenhagen. Naturally, we'll keep you posted about who wins what on the big night...

And the nominees are:

EUROPEAN FILM 2008

IL DIVO, Italy
Written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Produced by Indigofilm, Lucky Red, Parco Film, Babe Films, StudioCanal,
Arte France Cinéma

ENTRE LES MURS (The Class), France
Directed by Laurent Cantet
Written by Laurent Cantet, François Begaudeau & Robin Campillo from the novel by François Begaudeau
Produced by Haut et Court, France 2 Cinéma

GOMORRA (Gomorrah), Italy
Directed by Matteo Garrone
Written by Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni di Gregorio, Matteo Garrone,
Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano
Produced by Fandango, RAI Cinema

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, UK
Written and directed by Mike Leigh
Produced by Thin Man Films Ltd., Summit Entertainment, Ingenious Film
Partners, Film4, UK Film Council

EL ORFANATO (The Orphanage), Spain
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
Written by Sergio G. Sánchez
Produced by Rodar y Rodar S.L., Telecinco Cinema

WALTZ WITH BASHIR, Israel/France/Germany
Written and directed by Ari Folman
Produced by Bridgit Folman Film Gang, Les Films d’Ici, Razor Film
Produktion, ARTE France, ITVS International

EUROPEAN DIRECTOR 2008

Laurent Cantet for ENTRE LES MURS (The Class)
Andreas Dresen for WOLKE 9 (Cloud 9)
Ari Folman for WALTZ WITH BASHIR
Matteo Garrone for GOMORRA (Gomorrah)
Steve McQueen for HUNGER
Paolo Sorrentino for IL DIVO

EUROPEAN ACTRESS 2008

Hiam Abbass in LEMON TREE
Arta Dobroshi in LE SILENCE DE LORNA (Lorna’s Silence)
Sally Hawkins in HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
Belen Rueda in EL ORFANATO (The Orphanage)
Kristin Scott Thomas in IL Y A LONGTEMPS QUE JE T’AIME (I’ve Loved You So Long)
Ursula Werner in WOLKE 9 (Cloud 9)

EUROPEAN ACTOR 2008

Michael Fassbender in HUNGER
Thure Lindhardt & Mads Mikkelsen in FLAMMEN & CITRONEN (Flame & Citron)
James McAvoy in ATONEMENT
Toni Servillo in GOMORRA (Gomorrah) and IL DIVO
Jürgen Vogel in DIE WELLE (The Wave)
Elmar Wepper in KIRSCHBLÜTEN - HANAMI (Cherry Blossoms)

EUROPEAN SCREENWRITER 2008

Suha Arraf & Eran Riklis for LEMON TREE
Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni di Gregorio, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso & Roberto Saviano for GOMORRA (Gomorrah)
Ari Folman for WALTZ WITH BASHIR
Paolo Sorrentino for IL DIVO

CARLO DI PALMA EUROPEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER AWARD 2008

Luca Bigazzi for IL DIVO
Oscar Faura for EL ORFANATO (The Orphanage)
Marco Onorato for GOMORRA (Gomorrah)
Sergey Trofimov & Rogier Stoffers for MONGOL

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY PRIX D’EXCELLENCE 2008

Marton Agh for production design, DELTA
Magdalena Biedrzycka for costume design, KATYN
Laurence Briaud for editing, UN CONTE DE NOEL
Petter Fladeby for sound design, O’HORTEN

EUROPEAN COMPOSER 2008

Tuur Florizoone for AANRIJDING IN MOSCOU (Moscow, Belgium)
Dario Marianelli for ATONEMENT
Max Richter for WALTZ WITH BASHIR
Fernando Velázquez for EL ORFANATO (The Orphanage)

Click here for more information on other award categories to be presented during the ceremony.

Belle toujours (2006)

Rings a Belle?

So, we're 39 years on, and someone decided to provide a follow-up to the classic cult film from Luis Buñuel, Belle De Jour (1967), without Catherine Deneuve returning to the role of Severine that she made legendary.

Instead of Bunuel's surrealism, we are shown how people change. Henri Husson (Michel Piccoli, who was in the original) spots Severine (played now by Bulle Ogier) at an elegant opera house, and his curiosity is sparked. How has her life moved on after the torturous events of four decades ago when she was secretly a prostitute at a high-class brothel?

Henri, who was the man who planted the seeds of Severine's downfall years earlier, begins to pursue his quarry relentlessly - Severine does everything she can to avoid him, but the inevitable happens and, over a candle-lit dinner, the two old would-be lovers recall their "wickedness" and choose whether or not to reveal their darkest secrets. Husson quickly discovers, however, that his psychological games are no longer effective...

In fact, while purists may blanche, 98-year-old (!) director Manoel de Oliveira (Romance de Vila do Conde (2008)) has made the right choice in replacing Deneuve with Ogier - Husson's advances towards Severine, despite his own years, are still anyting but gallant, with their meeting once again not serving as a renewal or conclusion to their passion, but rather, to turn the knife in the wound of their previous 'misdemeanour', due to mischievousness, or an urgent need to be reassured on both their parts, as De Oliveira plays out the cat-and-mouse game in Paris's fashionable districts.

An interesting experiment.


Awards: Michel Piccoli was nominated as Best Actor in the 2007 European Film Awards.

JD
70 mins. In French.

Mesrine: L’instinct de mort (2008) & Mesrine: L’ennemi public n°1 (2008)

Vive Mesrine!

Let’s face it – no one does Real McCoy, well-’ard gangster flicks like we Europeans. Of course, Stateside, you can cite Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) or Casino (1995) and, at a pinch, Coppolla’s The Godfather (1972) but sorry, when it comes to what violence, fear of violence and callous characterizations are really all about, we have (among many others) Get Carter (1971). We’ve got The Long Good Friday (1980).

Frankly, you’ve never really had a glass smashed into your face unless you’ve had it this side of the Atlantic, and there is a gritty, seamy, downright dirty side to the 70s gangster look and feel that only European pubs, bars, clubs and strip-joints can effectively convey.

And that’s why we should all be on our knees, to give thanks for Mesrine: L’instinct de mort and the follow-up Mesrine: L’ennemi public n° 1 (released across Europe on 19 November) – both have this dirt in spades. Order has been restored.

Jean-François Richet, whose previous film was the somewhat uninspiring remake Assault on Precinct 13 (2005), from John Carpenter’s 1976 original, has simply outdone himself with this balanced, and, in spite of the grim violence at its core, non-hysterical account of what drives a man to devote his entire existence to the crooked path, and the price that must be paid for taking on the system single-handed.

Although Cassel’s previous form might indicate he could play a hot-blooded, moody but intelligently motivate gangster in his sleep, his turn as Mesrine offers a whole lot more than murder and mayhem by the numbers. Helped enormously by the ensemble cast (Gérard Depardieu makes a welcome return to the classic brutish role that first made him famous, Olivier Gourmet is simply wonderful as Commissaire Broussard, Mesrine’s reluctant nemesis on the ‘right’ side of the law), plus a splendidly tight, acerbic screenplay from Abdel Raouf Dafri, which was in turn adapted from Mesrine’s own ‘novel’, written while in jail, Cassel simply IS Mesrine.

A peerless master of disguise, Mesrine, whose sworn enemies were the banks, became France’s public enemy numero un during the 1970s, but his road into crime began shortly after his return from France’s war against Algeria in 1959 – aged 23, our man comes back with a clean service record, but quickly finds, despite the best efforts of his loving mother and father (Myriam Boyer and Michel Duchaussoy) the straight and narrow of civvy street too restrictive. Gifted with a quick mind and first-class improvisational skills, Mesrine is also a man of his word, no matter what the cost to himself, as he proves when, upon breaking out of the inhumane Saint-Vincent-de-Paul penitentiary (to which he had been sentenced to 15 years) in 1972, he returns two weeks later to break his jail mates free.

The story of the two films charts his nearly two decades of legendary criminal feats (including multiple bank robberies and numerous, increasingly spectacular, prison breaks), finishing on 2 November, 1979, when his story ends, as outlaws’ stories usually do, at the point of a gun. Several guns, in fact…

There are those who may say that the story is romanticized, as much in love with the man at its centre as Mesrine so clearly was with himself. Pooh-pooh to them – what Richet and Cassel achieve is a near-peerless account of a man who became a myth in his won lifetime, let alone nearly 30 years after his death. Make no mistake – in this film, people die and people bleed. In some ways, none more so than Mesrine himself, who was tortured by his notions of neither being a good son, husband, or father. Put it this way – I know who you will be rooting for from start to finish, and it isn’t any of the representatives of the system that the ‘gangster’s gangster’ swore to bring down.

And, to boot, the films are truly thrilling, with Richet proving he is just as adept at the big action scenes as he is with the expository dialogue. Vive Mesrine!

JD
Both films 110 mins. In French.