Dearie Awards 2011: Foreign Film of the Year - THE ARTIST

You’ll be forgiven if you didn’t realize that The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius’ brilliantly beautiful ode to old Hollywood and silent movies, is really a foreign film. That’s because this homage to silent cinema is almost completely silent itself, and you won’t miss the chatter at all. Jean Dujardin, a beloved French actor known for his campy OSS117 spy spoofs, perfectly plays George Valentin, a 20’s matinee idol unwilling and unable to make the leap to talkies, and beautiful Bérénice Bejo played the captivating Peppy Miller, who becomes a star while George’s career fades. No other film better celebrated the magic and hope that movies can bring than this seemingly un-French French import, making it our Foreign Film of the Year... and a probable Best Picture Winner come Oscar time!

Honorable Mentions:
Potiche, another fantastic French film, proved that sixty-eight year-old Catherine Deneuve is still a sexy screen presence as a trophy wife who powerfully takes the reins of her husband’s company when he is taken hostage by his striking employees. Out director Francois Ozon recreated 1977 in all of its disco glory as he showed us an 'Iron Lady' we can all root for.

Andrew Haigh’s British-based romance Weekend couldn’t have been simpler in story or more profound in how it peeled away the layers of two different men who meet, have sex, and then decide to spend the weekend building a romance. Sexy bear cub Tom Cullen and gym-toned party boy Chris New made perfect surrogates for anyone who has met Mr. Right-Now, only to realize they might have found Mr. Right.

By Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.