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Kidman, Sandler lead Oscar contenders out of Cannes

AP PHOTO Actress Nicole Kidman poses for photographers during the photo call for the film The Beguiled at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday.

CANNES, France — It’s a long way from May in France to February in Los Angeles, but the Cannes Film Festival has often been a breeding ground for Academy Awards campaigns.

The Oscars aren’t much on the minds of the filmmakers or attendees in Cannes; the festival is its own achievement, with nearly as much spectacle and prestige as the Academy Awards. Oscar potential, though, is often born in Cannes, and some early handshaking with the Hollywood Foreign Press, which puts on the Golden Globes, is sometimes sneaked into busy schedules.

Not since 2011’s “The Artist” has a Cannes Palme d’Or winner gone on to win best picture. And, if anything, the fall gauntlet of festivals — Telluride, Toronto, Venice, New York — has recently only reasserted itself as the premiere path to the Oscars. Such was the road of most of the recent best-picture winners, including “Moonlight,” ”Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave.”

Still, Cannes last year kick-started eventual nominees like the best-picture candidate “Hell or High Water,” Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”), Ruth Negga (“Loving”), “The Lobster” (which scored a screenplay nod) and foreign-language winner “The Salesman.” The 2015 Cannes accounted for nearly 20 nominations, including “Mad Max: Fury Road,” ”Carol,” ”Inside Out” and “Son of Saul.”

This year’s festival, which concludes Sunday with the Palme d’Or presentation, might not produce such a haul as that. But standing ovations on the Croisette appear likely to lead to awards consideration for a number of big names — some of whom aren’t the usual suspects.

When Sandler has waded into drama, he’s often won raves. But even more than his turns in “Punch Drunk Love” and “Spanglish,” Sandler’s tender, rumpled performance as a recently divorced father in Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” was hailed as a new high point for the Sand Man. The Netflix release could also earn some attention for Dustin Hoffman, who with typical distinction plays the prickly father of Sandler in the film.

It’s less a question of whether Kidman will be back in the Oscar hunt than for which film. She had two in competition in Cannes: Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Lobster” follow-up “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled,” a remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War thriller. While the nod for “The Lobster” suggests considerable support for Lanthimos’ grandly demented comedies, the handsome period piece “The Beguiled” is probably the more likely shot.

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