Romain Duris in The Beat That My Heart Skipped (top); Guillaume Canet, Daniel Brühl, Alex Ferns in Merry Christmas (middle); Roni Hadar in Go, See and Become (bottom)
This year's winners of the French equivalent to the Oscars, the Prix César, will be announced on Feb. 25 at a ceremony held at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Best actress nominee Valérie Lemercier (for Palais royal!) will act as Mistress of Ceremony.
The best French film nominees are Jacques Audiard's Bafta-winning psychological drama De battre, mon coeur s'est arrêté / The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which garnered nine other nominations, including best actor (Romain Duris); Christian Carion's Academy Award-nominated war drama Joyeux Noël / Merry Christmas, with a total of six nods; Radu Mihaileanu's Va, vis et deviens / Go, See and Become and Xavier Beauvois' Le Petit lieutenant, with four each; and Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's Palme d'Or winner L'Enfant / The Child, with three.
A History of Violence, The Sea Inside, Match Point, Million Dollar Baby, and Walk on Water are the five nominees in the best foreign film category. (The best European film category is no more.)
Walid Afkir, Daniel Auteuil in Hidden
Michael Haneke's excellent Caché / Hidden received four nominations, including two for Haneke — for best direction (taking Christian Carion's spot) and original screenplay. Curiously — and unfairly — Haneke's psychological mystery-drama failed to receive a best French film nod. There were also no nominations for its two leads, Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, or for supporting player Annie Girardot.
In the best first film category, there are two documentaries that have received Academy Award nominations: Luc Jacquet's La Marche de l'empereur / March of the Penguins and Hubert Sauper's Le Cauchemar de Darwin / Darwin's Nightmare.
Among the films ignored by the French Academy were François Ozon's Le Temps qui reste, Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu's well-received comedy Peindre ou faire l'amour, and Claude Berri's L'Un reste, l'autre part.
"Joyeux Noel", is a fairly accurate documentation of the Christmas Truce of 1914. My grandfather, who was drafted to serve in the German army, was one of the participants. In his sector, it began with an exchange of rations. Since the trenches were close enough to throw grenades at each other, one of the "enemy" asked if the Germans wanted to trade food for cigarettes. Both sides ultimately climbed out of their trenches to celebrate Christmas together, until the officers on both sides forced them to fight again.