If you haven’t already heard, “Gomorrah” producer Domenico Procacci has made the decision to submit the lauded gritty Italian drama and potential Best Foreign Language nominee into other categories too, a la “Life is Beautiful” to heighten its Oscar chances outside just the foreign ghetto category.
While “Gomorrah” isn’t Oscar material the way “Life is Beautiful” was, Procacci says, “I know it’s a long shot, but I think the film deserves it.” You know who else agrees with him? Martin Scorsese who thinks it’s “great.” “Gomorrah” will now set for select U.S. cities in December a low-key L.A. Dec release for Oscar qualification hopes (the film opens up in the U.S. properly in February 2009). That’s fine and all and we liked the film about the corruption in Naples via the Cammora crime family (who want the author of the non-fiction novel that the film is based on as dead as Dillinger), but we’ve seen probably about a dozen foreign films that we’d go to bat for first. That’s not to say it’s terrible by any means, quite the opposite, and yes, it’s a personal choice by the producer to go out front like this (and it’s comparing oranges to apples, we know), but we find it slightly (and only slightly) strange that of all the foreign films released this year, “Gomorrah” seems to be eating up all the U.S. press. Maybe it’s just the boldness of this recent announcement (or maybe because it features a lot of guns and violence), but it has a low-wattage longtail resonance with us compared to some other foreign-language films we’ve seen. Anyhow, here’s the English-language version of the trailer.