Foreign Films: The Language of the Cinema : Sicilian film maker Giuseppe Tornatore’s ‘Cinema Paradiso’ stands out as the front-runner

Oscar nominations are valuable assets for foreign-language films being distributed in the United States, so politics and economics often determine which films will be officially submitted by their countries of origin. That means some of the greatest foreign-language films are never even seen by the nominations branch of the academy.

The five films nominated this year are a mixed bag, in quality as well as language. There are two fine French-language nominees, “Camille Claudel” from France and “Jesus of Montreal” from Canada. “Cinema Paradiso” is in Italian, “Waltzing Regitze” in Danish and the Puerto Rican entry, “Santiago, a Story of His New Life” is in Spanish.

“Cinema Paradiso” is clearly the front-runner. Sicilian film maker Giuseppe Tornatore’s warm account of a young boy growing up in love with the movies he sees in his small village’s lone theater has struck a universal chord with moviegoers. The film, however, is more than nostalgia and is dominated by the full-bodied performance of Philippe Noiret, who is both the theater projectionist and boy’s father figure. Giving further dimension to the film--and undercutting its unabashed sentimentality--is its ending on a note which suggests that as adults, those who’ve made the movies their abiding passion, may have trouble establishing relationships with others.

Denys Arcand’s “Jesus of Montreal” has not been released in Los Angeles yet, but figures to be an art house crowd-pleaser when it does. The idea of an acting troupe doing a passion play in which the roles begin to take over their lives is scarcely new, but Arcand has come up with a dynamic film of terrific immediacy which asks us to stop and consider the lack of spirituality in contemporary life. A French-Canadian, Arcand is best known for “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” a 1986 nominee.

Bruno Nuytten’s “Camille Claudel” has already become an art house success and its star, Isabelle Adjani, got one of the few best-actress nominations ever given to someone in a foreign-language film. “Camille Claudel” is a romantic tragedy in the grand manner, a rich, dark, gorgeous period piece in which Adjani goes extravagantly mad as sculptor Auguste Rodin’s one-time lover and protegee. Gerard Depardieu offers us a robust Rodin, who eventually sells out while the neglected Camille perseveres at the risk of her physical and mental health.

The Danish film “Waltzing Regitze” was adapted by writer-director Kaspar Rostrup from Martha Christensen’s 1987 novel, a best seller in Denmark. It evokes an unexpected sense of mortality in its warm recall of an enduring World War II marriage between an attractive, outgoing, life-loving woman and her more reserved, hard-working husband. Rostrup does give us a sense of married life--through two sets of well-matched actors, who play the couple in youth and maturity--between people of very different but eventually complementing temperaments.

Puerto Rican director Jacobo Morales’ “Santiago, the Story of His New Life” gives a warm depiction of a freshly retired San Juan accountant’s relationships with his hard-driving, 35-year-old divorced daughter and his sweetly aimless and emotionally unstable 30-year-old son. But it runs into trouble with the ex-accountant’s improbable romance with an ethereal, vaguely mysterious woman some 15 years his junior--and with a pace that could scarcely be slower. The sheer tediousness of “Santiago, the Story of His New Life” cancels out its novelty as a Puerto Rican production.