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Talk to Her, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Maria Full of Grace may have charmed audiences worldwide, but due to rules snafus, none had a shot at the Best Foreign Language Oscar. This year, Caché (Hidden), director Michael Haneke's Cannes prizewinner that stars Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche, joins the growing list. Nominations won't be announced until Jan. 31, but Caché is one of eight films bounced for various reasons, sparking a minor outcry. ''We're in the process right now of considering some very radical changes,'' says producer Mark Johnson, chair of the Academy's foreign-language committee.
Every year, countries nominate one of their films for Oscar consideration. New Academy rules, meanwhile, require that the dialogue in the film be in one of the main languages of the submitting country. Austria submitted Caché (Haneke is Austrian), but the Academy nixed it because the whole movie is in French, not German. ''The picture's in French because the story dictates it,'' says Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, the movie's U.S. distributor. ''It's just unfortunate that a film this well received doesn't have the opportunity to be nominated.''
