Jaoui has always been a tough nut to crack. Her latest, Let it Rain (the original translates as the more evocative, Speak to Me About the Rain), is a comedy of manners that is supposed to illuminate the rampant class divisions in modern France, with an ethnic twist. The only problem is that no character is particularly stimulating or interesting. Not even Jaoui herself, the ostensible protagonist, whose lack of many sympathetic qualities I suppose we’re supposed to read as self-critique. I can’t say that I’m convinced. What’s more, the movie is so blandly filmed without any sparkle to its images that it’s difficult to see the profundity in Jaoui’s wit.

Hansen-Löve, meanwhile, may have a bit more to offer. A bit. Her newest is The Father of My Children, a narrative bifurcation that depicts a movie producer (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) at the end of his financial rope, and then how his family copes with grief. Hansen-Löve is clearly the product of her mentor (now-husband), Olivier Assayas, in the way in which she sensitively depicts the dynamics of a family, and in how she keeps her camera constantly roving, searching and exploring space. However, she doesn’t transcend the sum of her influences. Colleagues have told me that the manner in which each family member copes with death is the true meat of the film, but all I see are cliches re-hashed. Although I will admit that some imagery is quite breathtaking. Her Assayas-isms allow for the film to breathe, but I’d take Summer Hours and Late August, Early September over this any day of the week.

I wouldn’t try to claim that this new generation of Frenchie cinéastes has no purchase on their country’s movie legacy; Assayas, Claire Denis, Serge Bozon, Philippe Garrel, Arnaud Desplechin, and others are all post-New Wavers still making great work. (I am aware that most of these directors are over the age of 50, but I digress.) For the purposes of this New York summer, though, the old guns ruled the day. Exhibit A: Resnais’s best film in god knows how long, Wild Grass. Resnais company players Andrè Dussolier and Sabine Azèma are on hand as potential lovers whose paths continually cross, and the balance of whose passions continually exchange. Forming continuity with Resnais’s favorite new-generation filmmaker,  along with fleshing out his cast, are Desplechin regulars Anne Consigny, Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric. Borders between reality and fantasy, especially as to how they relate to desire, quickly dissolve thanks to Resnais’s elegant, balletic editing, using past inserts and slow-motion images of the future to suggest violent, cinematic passions roiling inside Dussolier’s smitten stalker and AzÈma’s flighty dentist. A beautifully systematic color design along with allusive dialogue suggest even further temporal breakdowns, but with an effortless glee that defines a certain strand of late film: the “I can get away with anything, so I will” type. Or perhaps the little girl who just wants to be a cat dreamed the whole thing up. Who knows? Does something so lithely beautiful require such answers? Christopher Nolan had better take note.

Finally, we turn to Rivette. While the Americans are calling his newest Around a Small Mountain, I prefer the original French, translated as 36 Views of Saint Wolf Mountain. It’s Rivette’s shortest film by about 45 minutes, and for a guy who once made a 12 -hour opus, that’s no small thing. There are few directors who know how to capture the texture of space, and Rivette achieves this once again. How is this achieved, you might ask? It’s done via slow tracking shots that examine and reveal new spaces, sound design that makes dialogue and bird songs part of the same landscape, and natural light that has physical weight to it. This is pure filmmaking. The Rivettian thematic tropes are all there too: performance as identity, mysteries that must be unraveled, sheer joy from using performance as play. Jane Birkin, Sergio Castellito, and the rest of the circus troupe seem to be having great fun with what they do. Maybe it’s slight or minor, as a friend said to me over post-screening drinks, but it sure ain’t no “abortion,” as one old woman said as she exited the theater.

No trends, no grand speculations, no in-depth analyses; just some whimsical, subjective ideas from a man who will be sorry to see his Gallic summer end. Here’s to hoping all four of these movies show up outside major metropolitan centers; sadly, I am much less convinced of that little thought.

A short bit of history: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was begun in 1927 as a clearinghouse for technicians, studio personnel, and members of the service industry to meet, share ideas, and decide the general direction in which the movie industry would head, especially with regard to standards of technology. The awards were almost an afterthought: the first ceremony took place in 1929 as an informal private brunch, the winners announced weeks beforehand. It didn’t take long for the Oscars—as they came to be known—to become the cultural force they (technically) are today.

What does winning an Oscar mean? Most people are basically aware of the fact that the films nominated every year don’t represent the best of what cinema has to offer. They earn mainstream critical acclaim, but as time passes, they are usually relegated to the status of a trivia question. Most academic and highbrow critical modes of taste reject the films as middlebrow claptrap, intended to be marketed as “art” to the masses. Indeed, David O. Selznick—the Harvey Weinstein of his day—only had aspirations to sell big, glossy, “serious” pictures to the American public as a way to escape from the more quotidian double features that regularly filled the neighborhood movie house.

Indeed, it’s not guaranteed for an Oscar-nominated film to be exorbitantly profitable. Granted, major Best Picture winners like Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia and The Sound of Music were major cash cows for their respective makers. In the modern age, an Oscar is a marketing tool to sell more DVDs, and it usually works. The long-term ramifications of this, however, are more suspect. Not too many people take Shakespeare in Love all that seriously these days.Even the awards ceremony itself seems to be less important. The Academy and its broadcasting partner, ABC, struggle to maintain ratings, its nadir reached during the 2008 awards season. This year, though, Avatar could change that.

Has anything changed about the Oscars since the 1930s? Studio marketing and release patterns have certainly changed. For the last 30 years, “Oscar Season” has ruled studio calendars from mid-October to the end of December, in which “serious” films that deserve recognition from the Academy are released for maximum fresh exposure to Oscar voters. (Eligibility closes on Dec. 31^st.) The awards season builds momentum for various contenders, forcing nominees to show up at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Independent Spirit Awards in order to keep their names seemingly important. (Read Mark Harris’s profile of the “momentum” phenomenon here.)

The Academy is reaching into its past this year by nominating 10 films for Best Picture, the first time that’s happened since 1943. But don’t expect many surprises: Kathryn Bigelow, Jeff Bridges, Sandra Bullock, Christoph Waltz, and Mo’Nique are pretty much sure things. “The Battle of the Exes”—a Best Picture contest between Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and James Cameron’s Avatar—is a real question. At the end of the day, however, none of these contests will be too Up in the Air.