Ebert Declares Oscar Winner for Foreign Next Year

Doing a follow-up Cannes piece, Ebert says:

I think I may have just seen the 2010 Oscar winner for best foreign film. Whether it will win the Palme d’Or here at Cannes is another matter. It may be too much of a movie movie. It’s named “A l’origine,” by Xavier Giannoli, and is one of several titles I want to discuss in a little festival catch-up. Based on an incredible true story, it involves an insignificant thief, just released from prison, who becomes involved in an impromptu con game that results in the actual construction of a stretch of highway. At the beginning he has no plans to build a highway. He simply sees a way to swindle a contractor out of 15,000 euros. He is sad, defeated, unwanted, apart from his wife and child, sleeping on a pal’s sofa. What happens is not caused by him nor desired by him. It simply happens to him.

This is one of those movies that catches you in its spell. It’s a hell of a story. There’s a difference between caring what happens in a movie, and merely waiting to see what will happen. The hero, who calls himself Phillip, ends by bringing about an enterprise involving millions of euros, hundreds of workers and tons of massive earth-moving machinery, falling in love with the lady mayor, and becoming a good man, all without ever saying very much. I was reminded of Chance the Gardener In “Being There.” Phillip is shy, socially unskilled, inarticulate, apparently the opposite of a con man. To repeat: There is a true story involved here. Some facts are offered at the end. The highway, which which the workers essentially built on their own, with the con man as “management,” was completed on time, under budget and up to code.