The New Nation - Internet Edition

Shakhawat Hossain

French cinema left its mark on Hollywood in 2007. From the animation Persépolis to Le scaphandre et le papillon [The Diving Bell and the Butterfly], an art-house film that premiered at Cannes last year, through La Vie en Rose, a popular feature film on the life of Edith Piaf, several very different major French films have been picked to take part in one of the world's most important cinema ceremonies on 24 February.

Marion Cotillard is doing very nicely. In this early stage of the year, the traditional awards season, the actress who plays singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose is being celebrated all over the world. Very well received at the box office on its release, the film has so far drawn an audience of 5.2 million in France. On 22 February, at the annual César awards for the best French films, it is tipped to receive a number of awards. Beyond the borders of France, this feature-length biopic has attracted an audience of 4.55 million. A sign of this success is that on 10 February in London Marion Cotillard was awarded a BAFTA for best actress at the annual British film awards ceremony. The actress beat Julie Christie and Keira Knightley, two British stars who have been highly successful in Hollywood. She is the first French actress ever to receive this award.

Since it began its life on the other side of the Atlantic, La Vie en Rose, directed by Oliver Dahan, has been very well received by an intrigued American audience. Today these same Americans have awarded it a number of prizes and nominated it for top awards. On 13 January, at the Golden Globes, although disrupted by the screenwriters' strike, Marion Cotillard won Best Actress in a Motion Picture in the Musical or Comedy category. Only one French actress, Anouk Aimée, has ever won such a prize before, in 1967 in the Drama category for her performance in Claude Lelouch's Un homme, une femme [A Man and a Woman]! Ruled out last September from participating in the Best Foreign Language Oscar by the French Ad Hoc Committee, La Vie en Rose got its revenge in January this year. The Academy Awards have nominated it for three Oscars: Marion Cotillard's performance has once again attracted attention and Marit Allen, the film's costume designer, as well as Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald, makeup artists, are in the running for their respective categories. Since then all three have also received a BAFTA. So Marion Cotillard is now in the big league. Indeed she is following in the footsteps of Catherine Deneuve, the most recent French actress to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, in 1991, for her performance in Régis Wargnier's Indochine.

On 24 February at the 80th Oscar ceremony, which will be held as always in the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, awards may well go to other French films too. Indeed, Le scaphandre et le papillon, made by American director Julian Schnabel but produced by Pathé, is tipped for four statuettes: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. When presented at last year's Cannes Festival, this film, which recounts the final days of a man suffering from locked-in syndrome, left the Riviera with an award for its direction. Today, Le scaphandre… seen by a big audience all over the world, has also been awarded numerous prizes by American critics. It won a Golden Globe for Best Director and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

The Academy Awards have not left out French animation. While the short film Même les pigeons vont au paradis [Even Pigeons Go to Heaven] by Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse is in the running for the Oscar in its category, Persépolis by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud has been picked alongside two big American productions: Ratatouille and Surf's Up. Also well received everywhere it has been released, and seen by thousands of filmgoers, Persépolis, which premiered at Cannes, won the Jury Prize there. So, with Le Mozart des pickpockets [The Mozart of Pickpockets] a short film by Philippe Pollet-Villard nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film, French cinema is off to Hollywood this year with ten nominations under its beltt it would be a real sign of bad luck if it were to come home empty-handed!