What can this year’s Cannes Film Festival tell us about the Oscars?

When it comes to prestige, the Cannes Film Festival is one of the most celebrated and respected film awards to receive. When it comes to the Academy Awards, though, the Cannes Film Festival doesn’t always line up too nicely with what gets honored on this side of the Atlantic. For every The Pianist or Pulp Fiction, you have many more films that completely fall out of the public eye (The Wind That Shakes the Barley is one recent example). Out of last year’s line-up, only four films managed Oscar Nods: Bright Star, Inglourious Basterds, A Prophet and The White Ribbon, and only one of those was nominated in one of the above line categories (although Precious, Up and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus played out of the main competition). Generally one or two of the foreign-language film nominees will come out of the festival, but choosing which ones this early is futile until countries start submitting films.

Only one American film was in competition this year, and that was Doug Liman’s Fair Game. The film got mixed reviews by the critics, but still looks like it could play very well over here (Matt Noler at The House Next Door called it “slick” and “porn for smug liberals”, a combination that seems destined for Oscar nods). I still think it will be a major contender next winter, and no one really seemed to hate the film, which should bode well for its future.

Two recent Oscar nominated directors had films among the best reviewed of the competition. Mike Leigh’s Another Year was arguably the best received film of the festival, and Leigh has shown up at the Oscars much more in the past 15 years that one would expect. He has garnered surprise nominations for his last two films—Vera  Drake and Happy-Go-Lucky—and if the film gets picked up (I can’t find a release date in America) it could be a minor competitor come October. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu directed 2006 Best Picture nominee Babel, and his Biutiful grabbed Oscar Winner Javier Bardem the Best Actor prize this weekend. The crime drama is in Spanish, which could put it in an uphill battle for attention in the winter, but don’t discount Bardem to carry over to another nomination.

Another Oscar winner picked up the Best Actress trophy, Cannes poster girl Juliette Binoche. This is the first time that an Oscar winner has won both the male and female prize. Binoche stars in Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami’s first non-Iranian film, Certified Copy, and the reviews of the film were rapturous. In an open Best Actress field, Binoche could be a dark horse, but the film will be a tough sell to the Academy.

Out of competition, Best Director winners Woody Allen and Oliver Stone both screened their latest films. Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps—complete with Michael Douglas reprising his Oscar-winning turn as Gordon Gekko—got strong reviews, but sequels can be a hard sell to the Academy. Woody Allen no longer garners the automatic nominations he received throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and needs a film like Match Game or Vicky Cristina Barcelona, with reviews calling it his best film in years, to be a contender. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger didn’t get those kind of reviews. I doubt either filmmaker will be back at the Kodak this winter.