Volver was robbed!

That is my last word on the Best Foreign Film Oscar race of 2006. After having seen all five nominated movies, I can now say that Almodovar's latest is at least the equal of two of the nominees -- the excellent "Pan's Labyrinth" from Mexico, and the eventual winner from Germany, "The Lives of Others" -- and is clearly superior to the other three: Denmark's Efter Brylluppet ("After the Wedding"); Algeria's Indigenes ("Days of Glory"); and 'Canada's' "Water" (which is about as Canadian as the Blue Jays starting lineup!).

I found Indigenes to be the best of the three (I will discuss it in more detail in a later post entitled "Fighting the Good Fight"). Like Water, Efter begins in the subcontinent of India, leaving the audience off-balance momentarily. Not to worry: when the action shifts to Kobnhavn (Copenhagen) the movie slides into familiar Dogma territory: emotionally intense scenes of angst and anger, scripted by the sure hand of Lars von Trier-acolyte Anders Thomas Jensen, whose string of hits begins with 1999's Mifune, and extends to 2004's Brothers and the upcoming Red Road (premiered U.S. in the at the AFI-Dallas Film Fest in 2007). Only this film has a musical soundtrack (thankfully); one of the strange charms of the movie is being introduced to the Donald Trump-like character of listening to "It's Raining Men" on his car radio--then later dancing to it at his birthday party! [Picture a bunch of straight, white Europeans getting down with the gay anthem in the land of the midnight sun!]

There are fine performances all around, especially by the lead actor, (a Danish Viggo Mortensen!) and the actress who plays his daughter. That cannot mask the flaws in the movie's structure and technique, including an unnecessary, too-pat ending. In Volver, you know from the start you are in the hands of a master: so you sit back and let him take you wherever he wants to go.

It speaks volumes to the lameness of the Hollywood Foreign Press that, with the wealth of good foreign films in competition, their lack of imagination led them to nominate two 'American' films: Letters from Iwo Jima and the execrable Apocalypto, in their Foreign Film category.