Michel Piccoli, We Have a Pope
Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam / We Have a Pope was the top movie of 2011 according to the Cahiers du Cinéma editors and film critics. The Cahiers du Cinéma list is available in the December print edition of the French magazine.
A Vatican-set satire about a newly elected, psychologically fragile pope (European Film Award Lifetime Achievement winner Michel Piccoli) and his therapist (Moretti himself), earlier this year We Have a Pope won six awards from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, including Best Director and Best Producer (there’s no Best Film category). Margherita Buy co-stars as another psychotherapist.
Tied in second place were Manoel de Oliveira’s Portuguese drama O Estranho Caso de Angélica / The Strange Case of Angelica, about a photographer (Ricardo Trêpa) who becomes obsessed with the dead daughter (Pilar López de Ayala) of a wealthy hotel owner, and Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, a family drama starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain. The Tree of Life was the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or in Cannes and has just earned Malick the Best Director Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Manoel de Oliveira, I should add, turns 103 years old today.
Next, were Bruno Dumont’s Hors Satan / Outside Satan tied with Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing. The stark, deliberately paced Outside Satan tells the story of how a "miracle" affects the general perception of a loner (David Dewaele) — who may be either god or devil or both — living in a small town in southern France. In Essential Killing, Vincent Gallo plays a former Taliban member who manages to escape from an American-ruled Eastern European prison.
Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic Melancholia, starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg facing the end of times, and Philippe Garrel’s Un été brûlant / That Summer, in which Monica Bellucci and Louis Garrel are half of two couples spending the summer in the Italian countryside, followed in another tie.
Rounding out the top ten movies listed — in a three-way tie — were Bertrand Bonello’s L’Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close) / House of Tolerance, set in a Parisian bordello at the turn of the 20th century (and featuring That Summer’s Céline Sallette); Kelly Reichardt’s subdued Western Meek’s Cutoff, with Michelle Williams as a pioneer; and, shockingly, J. J. Abrams‘ horror-actioner-sci-fier Super 8, with Elle Fanning. What’s shocking about the inclusion of Super 8 is less its commercial appeal than its pace: just about every movie found on the Cahiers du Cinéma list makes a point of taking its sweet time to tell its story — if any.
We Have a Pope photo: Sacher Film / Fandango