Being Julia
Producer: Robert Lantos
Director: Istvan Szabo
Writer: Ronald Harwood,
based on the novel Theatre by Somerset Maugham
Starring: Annette Bening,
Jeremy Irons, Bruce Greenwood
Distributors: ThinkFilm,
Sony Pictures Classics
Box office: $725,648 (domestic); US$7.6 million (int’l)

Ever since opening the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, Being Julia has been buzzing because of Annette Bening’s central performance. The Hollywood thesp’s Academy Award nomination marks the first time in two decades that a Canadian film has generated an Oscar nom in an acting category.
Even critics who panned the film praised its leading lady. ‘She gives a crafty, entertaining performance charged with emotion of deliberately varying degrees of truthfulness. Bening smiles and makes nice more than another actress might in the part, but delivers the dramatic goods when it counts,’ writes Variety’s Todd McCarthy.
Bening plays Julia Lambert, an aging star of 1938 British theater who nearly lets her career slip after indulging in a love affair with young social climber Tom (Shaun Evans), who later betrays her. But at the last moment Julia is able to turn the tables.
Bening earlier won awards from the Golden Globes and the National Board of Review for her performance, but because the US$18-million Being Julia is a minority copro with the U.K. and Hungary, and Bening is foreign, the Canadian Academy has deemed her ineligible for a Genie nom. The film has received only one other nomination – best supporting actor for Canuck Bruce Greenwood.

Love, Sex and Eating the Bones
Producer: Jennifer Holness
Director/writer: David ‘Sudz’ Sutherland
Starring: Hill Harper, Marlyne Afflack
Distributor: ThinkFilm
Box office: $150,556

‘[David] Sutherland’s artful trick is to stick a serious tension – sex objects versus love subjects – into a genre flick without losing his balance,’ Globe and Mail critic Rick Groen writes in a favorable review of Scarborough, ON, native David ‘Sudz’ Sutherland’s debut feature Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.
Unlike the other nominees in the best pic category, this underdog flick doesn’t rely on big-name actors (although Hill Harper has subsequently gained attention for a recurring role on hit cop series CSI: NY) and the film was produced on a relatively low budget.
Sutherland’s urban romantic comedy about struggling photographer Michael (Harper), whose pornography addiction becomes a serious impediment to a healthy relationship with his dream woman Jasmine (Afflack), was produced for $2.5 million by Jennifer Holness, Sutherland’s wife. The film has also reaped noms for Sutherland for both direction and original screenplay.
Sutherland’s short My Father’s Hands preemed at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999, and he received a 2000 Gemini writing nom for the series Drop the Beat, but Bones has launched him to a new level. The film won best Canadian first feature at TIFF2003 and has screened at festivals in Halifax, Sudbury, Calgary and Victoria.
ThinkFilm applied an innovative distribution strategy to the film’s release. Targeting a student audience, the distrib didn’t focus heavily on the traditional marketing outlets, but instead offered patrons a $6 cash rebate at the theater box office.

Ma vie en cinémascope
Producers: Denise Robert,
Daniel Louis
Director/writer: Denise Filiatrault
Starring: Pascale Bussières,
Chantal Baril
Distributor: Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm
Box office: $3.1 million

Ma vie en cinémascope is tied for second-most-nominated film at the Genies this year with seven nods, including best director, actress for Pascale Bussières, original screenplay, editing, costumes and cinematography.
It also received a pack-leading nine nominations at Quebec’s Prix Jutra, including best film, director and art direction. Whie it lost out to Mémoires affectives for best film and direction, it went home with five Jutras, including best actress and art direction.
The film is a period biopic of Canadian superstar recording artist Alys Robi (Bussières). The 1940s nightclub diva was on the brink of becoming a Hollywood star when a serious bout of depression landed her in a Quebec City mental hospital. Robi endured a lobotomy and endless electric shock treatments to eventually stage a comeback in Montreal.
The film brings together three of Quebec production’s most accomplished women: Bussières, producer Denise Robert and veteran writer/ director Denise Filiatrault.
Filiatrault has a proven track record attracting huge audiences in Quebec. She collaborated previously with Cinémaginaire’s Robert and Daniel Louis on C’t’à ton tour, Laura Cadieux (1998) and L’Odyssée d’Alice Tremblay (2002), both of which enjoyed box office in the $2 million range in Quebec.
And Robert is no stranger to awards. Last February, she and her partner, director Denys Arcand, went around the world collecting trophies for Les Invasions barbares and came home to pick up a half-dozen Genies for the film.

Mémoires affectives/Looking for Alexander
Producer: Barbara Shrier
Director: Francis Leclerc
Writers: Francis Leclerc, Marcel Beaulieu
Starring: Roy Dupuis, Robert Lalonde, Rosa Zacharie
Distributor: Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm
Box office: $321,000

The Quebec psychological thriller Mémoires affectives is up for six Genies, including best director, screenplay and actor for Roy Dupuis. The thesp portrays 42-year-old Alexandre Tourneur, who, after being declared clinically dead, emerges from a coma with a severe case of amnesia.
Barbara Shrier (The Red Violin) also produced director Francis Leclerc’s debut feature, Une jeune fille à la fenêtre. The idea for Mémoires came while they were editing that film, and they and cowriter Marcel Beaulieu collaborated closely on Mémoires from the beginning. The $3-million feature was in development for three years. Shrier says she submitted the proposal to Telefilm Canada four times and to SODEC three times before it was accepted.
Mémoires received five Prix Jutra nominations and won four, including best film, direction, and actor for Dupuis. Although its impact at the Quebec box office was not huge, it will be rereleased there to capitalize on its Jutra success. There is no word yet on an English-Canada release.
For Shrier, Genie and Jutra nominations each represent a different type of recognition.
‘The Jutras are important to me – this is where I live and make my movies. But the process of the Genies is more valid,’ she says. ‘The people who nominated our film for Genies had seen all the films and it was about the work. In Quebec, there isn’t a jury – it goes straight to the industry.’

Les Triplettes de Belleville/The Triplets of Belleville
Canadian producer: Paul Cadieux
Director/writer: Sylvain Chomet
Voices: Beatrice Bonifassi,
Charles Linton, Lina Boudreault, Mari-Lou Gauthier
Distributors: Remstar Distribution, Sony Pictures Classics
Box office: $1.5 million (domestic); US$9.5 million (int’l)

While trying to complete his first animated short The Old Lady and the Pigeons in France in 1993, Sylvain Chomet, The Triplets of Belleville auteur, went looking for a place where ‘they understood animation,’ and ended up moving to Montreal. Six years later, he began work on Triplets, his first feature. Both projects received Oscar nominations.
‘If I hadn’t moved to Canada, I would probably never have done either The Old Lady or The Triplets,’ Chomet told Playback just after the Triplets’ Canadian release.
At the 2004 Academy Awards, Triplets was nominated for best animated feature (against Disney’s Finding Nemo, which won, and Brother Bear) and best original song for Montreal’s Benoit Charest.
Charest won the same award at France’s César awards and finds himself up for a Genie for best original score. Triplets lost best film to Les Invasions barbares at the César, but was voted best animated feature by the New York Film Critics Circle and best foreign-language film by the Boston Film Critics.
The US$8-million Canada/ Belgium/France copro tells the story of Madame Souza, who travels across the Atlantic in a paddleboat in search of her grandson after he is kidnapped by the French Mafia while competing in the Tour de France. Charest’s music drives the action in the virtually dialogue-free film.

Playback Picks
* Being Julia: PV, MD
* Les Triplettes de Belleville: LB, IE
* Love, Sex and Eating the Bones: SD
* Ma vie en cinémascope: MH