Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.

What do you mean "The Blind Side" got nominated for Best Picture? I refuse to acknowledge that a racist fable straight out of redneck America got in; not the year after they elected an African American president, Hollywood discussed equality so much through blockbusters ("District 9") and Clint Eastwood made a biopic about Nelson Mandela's struggles against racism.
Now that we're clear on my denial, why not see the good things AMPAS did today?

• They didn't screw Best Foreign Language Film!
  "The Secret in Their Eyes", "The Milk of Sorrow","A Prophet" and "The White Ribbon" are perhaps the best collective nominees in any category this year.
  That they chose something like the Peruvian film when they had the chance to nominate yet another WWII melodrama ("Winter in Wartime") or a disastrous inspiration film ("The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner") is quite a breakthrough.
  Kudos to Latin American cinema but more than that kudos to great cinema from wherever in the world it may come from!
• The great Christopher Plummer finally became an Academy Award nominee (that probably doesn't mean that much when Sandra Bullock is one too, but still...)
• This one's completely personal and very biased but yay Penélope Cruz! As much as you hated the movie, she was terrific in it!
  
• Kathryn Bigelow becomes the fourth woman nominated for Best Director and the first who actually has a chance of winning it! (I had to bring that up sorry) And not only that, but the phenomenal "The Hurt Locker" tied "Avatar" as the most nominated film with nine each.
  As much as everyone is trying to point out the David vs. Goliath, ex vs. ex, man vs. woman and CGI vs. naturalist aspect of these films, the matter of fact thing is that for once AMPAS wasn't afraid to choose quality over quantity, given how "The Hurt Locker" might be the best live action American movie of 2009.
• "Up" becomes the second animated film to be nominated for Best Picture. Its nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Sound Editing and Best Score perhaps continue to announce that a day will come when such events won't even have to be highlighted.
• Random nominations I'm glad about:
  "The White Ribbon" Best Cinematography
  "Bright Star" Best Costume Design
  "In the Loop" Best Adapted Screenplay

Now excuse me while I go nurse my nausea.

The Secret in Their Eyes ***1/2

Director: Juan José Campanella
Cast: Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago, Javier Godino
Guillermo Francella, José Luis Gioia, Carla Quevedo

Retired court employee Benjamín Esposito (Darín) decides to spend his days writing a novel. The recurrent theme that comes to his head is the murder of Liliana Coloto(Quevedo) almost thirty years before. Through flashbacks we learn how his division reluctantly became involved in the brutal rape and assassination of Liliana.
How the empty leads affected his relationship with his new boss Irene (Villamil) and his alcoholic co-worker Sandoval (Francella).
How Liliana's husband Ricardo Morales (Rago) became obsessed with catching the murderer and tried to take justice in his own hands once authorities proved ineffective.
But above all it becomes the story of how Benjamín must learn to stop living in the past.
Executed with an affecting warmth by Campanella, the film is an exemplary combination of detective story and profound character study as Benjamín's narration through his flashbacks becomes an enigmatic, conflicting source.
Should we believe he's remembering things as they were or is his attachment to these memories affecting them to the point of romanticism?
In several scenes we see how the older Irene recognizes herself in the drafts and mocks Benjamín's tendency to over dramatize. Or perhaps she's also trying to tone down the obviousness of their unfulfilled love affair.
Despite this ambiguity Campanella makes his story so compelling that eventually we might not even realize that we don't really care if the murder is solved or not.
We care of course because the genre has spoiled us to expect such resolutions, but the real thrills of the movie are in watching the unstable Benjamín shape his own life.
Campanella who adapted the screenplay from the novel by Eduardo Sacheri, is at his best with the dialogues that most likely will suffer a great loss from their translation.
Each word from the flashbacks is delivered with enough pulpy wit and Argentinean oomph that again make us observe the nature between fact and fiction.
Since the flashbacks are set in the politically convoluted 1970s Campanella has a ball involving real life figures in the latter half's greatest twists and giving the antagonists a crude, almost operatic cruelty. They couldn't change a government that repulsed change.
"The Argentina that's coming isn't taught in Harvard" ejects a corrupt official as Irene and Benjamín try to grasp their recent encounter with a demon straight out of hell.
It helps greatly that Darín and Villamil have the quality to travel aimlessly through time (their makeup is a thing of naturalistic wonder) because we never lose the sense that we are watching the exact same people in both cases.
Darín's remarkable presence anchors the film in some of its most ludicrous turns , the final twist which had the potential for ridicule becomes worthy of a Greek tragedy as filtered through the actor's haunting eyes.
While Villamil's kind of sass establishes her as some sort of neo-femme fatale shaped out of Ava Gardner and Rosalind Russell. She bewitches us without even trying to.
The film is rounded up by a series of superb performances including Godino as a vicious, predatory force and the enchanting Francella who avoids making Sandoval a cliché and delivers one of the film's most alive speeches in a superb soccer discovery.
Most of all the film shines because of its insistence to hook us in any way it can. When the crime investigation becomes too dense, it throws us into a whirlwind of romance and humor.
All of this with the apparent intention to remind us that "in a novel you don't need to write the truth" and sending us home questioning what the truth even means.