MCLC: why China chose a French-directed film as its Oscar submission

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why China chose a French-directed film as its Oscar submission
Source: China Real Time, WSJ (10/10/14): http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/10/why-china-chose-a-french-directed-film-as-its-oscar-submission/
Why China Chose a French-Directed Film as Its Oscar Submission
By Lilian Lin and Josh Chin
After decades of failed bids for the best foreign-language film Oscar, China appears to be hoping it can borrow a little of France’s Academy Award magic. Actually, make that a lot.
In a surprise choice, China’s film authority submitted “The Nightingale,” a Sino-French co-production directed by French director Philippe Muyl, as its entry in this year’s foreign-language category at the 2015 Academy Awards, state media reported this week.
“The Nightingale,” which tells the story of a road trip taken by an old man and his spoiled granddaughter through the southern Chinese countryside, is an adaptation of Muyl’s uplifting 2002 odd-couple drama “The Butterfly,” which was well-received in Chinadespite never being officially released here.
Although the structure of the two films is similar, Mr. Muyl has described the “The Nightingale” as a thoroughly Chinese story. “We originally planned to make a Chinese version of ‘The Butterfly,’ but later we changed our mind and wanted to created something more originally Chinese,” he said in a video promotion for the film.
In choosing “The Nightingale,” China’s film authorities passed over a number of strong candidates, including period drama “Coming Home” by Zhang Yimou, arguably the country’s most prominent director, and Diao Yinan’s noirish “Black Coal, Thin Ice,” which walked away with the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year.
Precisely how China landed on the film as its Oscar choice remains unclear. The film’s Chinese producers declined to comment. Several Chinese film critics also declined to comment on the record, saying they didn’t want to be seen as criticizing the government.
A person close to the selection process told China Real Time that the effort to identify Academy Award submissions is typically overseen by the country’s top film regulator, the General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, based on votes from a slate of state-backed film associations. Voters are supposed to consider the “national situation of the year” in making their choices, the person said.
“The Nightingale,” which has yet to be released in China, hit French theaters in May and by July had been screened at 17 international film festivals, according to the state authority.
Politics is an obvious part of the appeal of “The Nightingale” for China’s film authorities, according to Clarence Tsui, a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter.
“It’s a mild, breezy, accessible, feel-good drama which really pictures China as a harmonious, wonderful place where conflicts of various stripes – across age, class or geographical divides – could easily be reconciled,” he said. “It really fits with the Chinese government’s current dominant political narrative of seeking to maintain stability in society at the same time when chaos sweeps across the body politic.”
An anonymous but influential film critic who writes under the handle “Dark Knight” offered a similar assessment in a post on Weibo, noting that other candidates for submission dealt in potentially sensitive subject matter: the Cultural Revolution in the case of “Coming Home,” and the post-reform economic devastation of China’s northeast in the case of “Black Coal, Thin Ice.”
“Submitting ‘The Nightingale,’ which deals with family and nature…is undoubtedly a politically harmless choice,” he wrote.
China’s entry for last year’s best foreign-language Oscar, Feng Xiaogang’s sober famine film “Back to 1942,” failed make the shortlist. So far, the only Oscar-winning film made in Mandarin is Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” a co-production involving U.S., Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese companies that took four awards at the 2001 Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film — for Taiwan.
Some social media users in China held out hope that Mr. Muyl’s art-house style might help China better cater to the Oscar judges’ tastes, though many were disappointed at the seemingly safe selection.
“I recommend ‘Tiny Times,’ which pays tribute to the great achievements of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the prosperity of Shanghai,” wrote one Weibo user, in a sarcastic reference to a high-grossing but critically despised series about the lives and loves of the country’s wealthy youth.
“The Nightingale” is expected to be released in China on Oct. 31.
–Lilian Lin and Josh Chin
 
by denton.2 at osu.edu on October 10, 2014
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