A prescription for the elusive foreign film Oscar nod

The first foreign film I saw in 2011:  El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes).  This Argentine film won the Oscar Best Foreign language film in 2009.  It beat  Germany’s The White Ribbon and France’s The Prophet, two of the most delicately crafted films I saw last year.  

Watching El Secreto confirmed my distrust in the Oscars.  The film was directed by Juan José Campanella who I read somewhere did a lot of episodes for House and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.   The film played is a cross between those two shows: investigative, and filled with sexual tension a la Doctors House and Cuddy. 

The foreign language category is one that interests me most when the Academy announces its nominees.   Through the years, and because of the Oscars, I came to know about foreign films that local theatres wouldn’t show.  Some winners deserved their Oscars: The Lives of Others (2006), Day for Night (1973), All About Mother, Babette’s Feast (1987), The Tin Drum (1979), The Garden of the Finzi Continis (1971), 8 ½ (1963), Un homme et une femme (1966).  The dubious ones were Mediterraneo (1991), Departures (2008), The Sea Inside (2004), Life is Beautiful (1997), Belle Epoque (1992).  But every year, the Oscars comes up with a good mix.  They may not always get it right, but you could be sure there’d be at least two great nominees thrown in.

Babette's Feast.  Forget Like Water for Chocolate.  The best movie about cooking.

Day for Night. A must-see if only for the beautiful Jacqueline Bisset and Valentina Cortese.

The Tin Drum.  One of the very few movies where the movie adaptation was as good as the book.

But no Filipino film has ever made it!   I know, the Oscars isn't the best arbiter of taste, but we could use some good PR.  Apparently, from the 50s till the 80s, only 4 films were submitted to the Academy.  During the golden age of Philippine movies – from 1976 to 1982 – only Eddie Romero’s Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon  (1976) was entered (and didn’t make it).  None of these classics were submitted: Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (1974), Maynila: Sa Kuko Ng Liwanag (1975), Insiang (1976), Jaguar (1979) and Orapronobis (1989); Peque Gallaga's Oro, Plata, Mata (1982); and Ishmael Bernal's Manila by Night (1980) and Himala (1982).  But these were the Marcos years, and the government could’ve have stopped the local film industry from entering films that didn’t live up to Imelda’s “the true, the good, the beautiful” standards (but Oro and Himala were produced by Imee!).  Or was it sheer laziness?

It was only in the recent years that the Film Academy of the Philippines revived the campaign for a Pinoy film to be nominated.  And what did they send for Hollywood’s consideration?  Dekada ’70, Ploning, Ded na si Lolo.  Jeez.  Bad styling, tedium and hysteria do not bag Oscars. 

Curiously enough, no film of Brillante Mendoza, the toast of Cannes, had ever been submitted by the FAP.   I thought his movies were curiously Philippine enough to compete with very un-Hollywood imports.

So what would it take for a Filipino director to walk down the red Oscars carpet?  Here’s my own prescription:

1. Do not do digital.  Only foreign movies done with film finish make it.
2. Produce period films (if only Rosario had anything more profound to say).
3. Have a political backdrop like El Secreto. 
4. Enter and win in major festivals like Cannes and Berlin, and publicize like hell. 
5. Hire the best writers.  Originate!
6. Never gay-themed.  The prudes in Hollywood couldn’t even give the top Oscar to Brokeback Mountain.