Barbara Palvin
Cindy Bruna
Luma Grothe
Pedro Almodóvar
Rossy de Palma
Adriana Lima
Bela Hadid
Red carpet shots from The
Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/cannes-2016-photos-red-carpet-892898/1-blake-lively
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/cannes-2016-photos-red-carpet-892898/1-blake-lively
A collection of pieces from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/package/cannes-style
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/package/cannes-style
more from PopSugar
here:
http://www.popsugar.com/fashion/Cannes-Film-Festival-Style-2016-41269799#photo-41269799
http://www.popsugar.com/fashion/Cannes-Film-Festival-Style-2016-41269799#photo-41269799
still more here:
http://www.popsugar.com/fashion/Best-Style-Moments-Cannes-2016-41278473#photo-41278473
http://www.popsugar.com/fashion/Best-Style-Moments-Cannes-2016-41278473#photo-41278473
a look back to Cannes in years gone by:
http://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/Best-Old-Pictures-From-Cannes-Film-Festival-37467077#photo-37467077
http://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/Best-Old-Pictures-From-Cannes-Film-Festival-37467077#photo-37467077
Cannes photos from Glamour:
http://www.glamour.com/gallery/every-gorgeous-dress-from-the-cannes-film-festival
http://www.glamour.com/gallery/every-gorgeous-dress-from-the-cannes-film-festival
Best dressed from Vanity
Fair:
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2016/05/cannes-red-carpet-best-dressed-2016
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/photos/2016/05/cannes-red-carpet-best-dressed-2016
with a historical glimpse into the past:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/cannes-film-festival-party
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/05/cannes-film-festival-party
Red carpet fashion from The
Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2016/may/18/cannes-day-seven-helen-mirren-william-friedkin-in-pictures
http://www.theguardian.com/film/gallery/2016/may/18/cannes-day-seven-helen-mirren-william-friedkin-in-pictures
Cannes photos from The
Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/10/cannes-2016-the-film-festival-in-pictures/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/05/10/cannes-2016-the-film-festival-in-pictures/
and The Belfast
Telegraph:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/galleries/entertainment/cannes-film-festival-2016-george-clooney-cheryl-cole-and-victoria-beckham-spotted-on-red-carpet-photos-34706503.html
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/galleries/entertainment/cannes-film-festival-2016-george-clooney-cheryl-cole-and-victoria-beckham-spotted-on-red-carpet-photos-34706503.html
photo gallery from Marie
Claire:
http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/news/g3721/cannes-2016-best-dressed/
http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/news/g3721/cannes-2016-best-dressed/
best dresses at Cannes from Marie Claire:
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/fashion/ideas/37571/cannes-film-festival-2016-the-best-dresses-celebrity-pictures-from-this-year.html
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/fashion/ideas/37571/cannes-film-festival-2016-the-best-dresses-celebrity-pictures-from-this-year.html
best Cannes dresses of all time, from Marie Claire:
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/celebrity/pictures/33488/best-cannes-film-festival-dresses-of-all-time.html
http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/celebrity/pictures/33488/best-cannes-film-festival-dresses-of-all-time.html
The International
Business Times:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cannes-film-festival-2016-best-photos-celebrities-red-carpet-1559876
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cannes-film-festival-2016-best-photos-celebrities-red-carpet-1559876
A French site that lists daily galleries of red carpet
photos:
http://festival-de-cannes.cineday.orange.fr/diaporamas/
http://festival-de-cannes.cineday.orange.fr/diaporamas/
Celebrities arrive for the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, from The NY Daily News:
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/stars-flock-france-2016-cannes-film-festival-gallery-1.2631521
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/stars-flock-france-2016-cannes-film-festival-gallery-1.2631521
Vogue guide to
Cannes:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/celebrity-photos/2016/05/11/cannes-film-festival-2016
http://www.vogue.co.uk/spy/celebrity-photos/2016/05/11/cannes-film-festival-2016
Elle fashion
photos:
http://www.elleuk.com/fashion/celebrity-style/the-cannes-film-festival-2016-red-carpet
http://www.elleuk.com/fashion/celebrity-style/the-cannes-film-festival-2016-red-carpet
Los Angeles Times
gallery photos:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-film-festival-2016-pictures-photogallery.html
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-film-festival-2016-pictures-photogallery.html
Photo gallery from The
Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3593378/Toni-Garrn-risks-wardrobe-malfunction-revealing-dress-Cannes-Film-Festival.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3593378/Toni-Garrn-risks-wardrobe-malfunction-revealing-dress-Cannes-Film-Festival.html
Daily list of best dressed at Cannes from Blouin Art Info:
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/galleryguide/894412/894411/event/1305845
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/galleryguide/894412/894411/event/1305845
Harper’s Bazaar at
Cannes:
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/red-carpet-dresses/g7249/cannes-fashion-2016/
http://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/red-carpet-dresses/g7249/cannes-fashion-2016/
Red carpet photos from Shopstyle:
http://www.shopstyle.com/blog/Cannes-Film-Festival-Red-Carpet-Style-2016-41273516?_ga=1.194392813.1574263862.1463067386
http://www.shopstyle.com/blog/Cannes-Film-Festival-Red-Carpet-Style-2016-41273516?_ga=1.194392813.1574263862.1463067386
Hollywood Life
photo gallery:
http://hollywoodlife.com/2016/05/11/blake-lively-best-dressed-celebrities-2016-cannes-film-festival-kristen-stewart-pics/
http://hollywoodlife.com/2016/05/11/blake-lively-best-dressed-celebrities-2016-cannes-film-festival-kristen-stewart-pics/
People magazine
hits the Cannes red carpet:
http://www.people.com/people/gallery/0,,21005726_30489946,00.html
http://www.people.com/people/gallery/0,,21005726_30489946,00.html
Jury member Kristen Dunst
Jury member Vanessa Paradis
Cannes Film Festival 2016: Arthouse Cinema on the Riviera Stephen Garrett from The Observer, May 17, 2016
Now that Woody and Steven have left the Riviera, Cannes chatter
can get back to its raison d’être: hardcore arthouse cinema. The festival’s
programmers certainly expect their international journalists to feast on
candied confections with Hollywood-friendly casts and splashy budgets; but they
also demand an equally ravenous appetite for fiber-rich filmmaking. What better
way to follow Mr. Allen’s sentimental soufflé Café Society than with the
high-colonic of Christi Puiu’s 173-minute familial reunion Sieranevada?
That caustic slice of Romanian miserablism unspooled for the press on the very
first night of the fest, a sadistic face slap to jet-lagged travelers and a
sober reminder that bright-eyed movie stars and breezy plots have no place in
the upper echelons of the Seventh Art.
An Eastern European domestic epic with shrill players and an
infatuation for verbal diarrhea, Sieranevada (the title remains a
mystery) is a raucous morass of internecine conflict among relatives gathered
for a burial ritual. Grappling equally with nobly profound ideas and gratingly
self-aware camerawork, Sieranevada is ultimately sunk by its own lofty
pretentions, an undisciplined hodge-podge by a talented director who was
clearly given too much creative freedom and not enough challenging debate about
his cinematic vision.
Maybe Puiu’s kitchen-sink realism was just too mundane compared
with the French auteurs. Want to see a young stud performing euthanasia-tinged
geriatric sodomy while early Pink Floyd plays on a turntable? Or a moonlit baby
left out as nocturnal bait to attract wolves? How about a man stripped naked by
a mob of homeless beggars? Alain Guiraudie’s Staying Vertical has all
three scenes, plus a slew of other quasi-dreamlike moments that lurch this
tonally eccentric modern fable from reality to fantasy and back again. It’s a
laudable, though erratic, look at one man’s resistance to conformity—social,
sexual, vocational—and the disorderly epiphanies he leaves in his wake.
But Staying Vertical has nothing on Bruno Dumont’s wildly
grotesque comedy Slack Bay, an almost avant-garde slapstick send-up of
class warfare set 100 years ago on the coast of Northern France. A family of
wealthy vacationers, including a maniacal Juliette Binoche, delight in the
earthy squalor of the underclass who later reveal themselves to be murdering
cannibals.
Among the lighter moments: mussel-combing children scoop out
loose fingers and ears from a pot of bloody body parts while their mother
vainly tries to get them to eat a freshly butchered human foot. Hilarious! Most
famous for his severely stern humanist dramas, Mr. Dumont has produced such an
oddly mannered approach to humor that it’s both inherently funny as well as a
studied critique of what it means to be funny. Ultimately exhausting at two
hours, Slack Bay is still riddled with enough bizarre behavior to make
it unsettlingly delightful.
Even one of this year’s prestige pictures is surprisingly louche.
(Consider it bespoke kink.) Park Chan-wook’s sumptuous, handsomely mounted
period piece The Handmaiden, a wicked, noir-infused lesbian thriller,
starts out as 1930s story of a con man who uses an orphaned young Korean woman
to infiltrate the staff of a wealthy Japanese heiress and help bankrupt her.
But the twists and turns start to build as the two women develop an undeniable
attraction. Cue the erotic literature, BDSM devices, Ben Wa balls, and—naturally
to represent the spectrum of Asian sex fantasies—the inevitable octopus tank.
Surprisingly enough, and in stark contrast to the other
competition films, this week’s English-language selections have been
unabashedly tame if not downright decent-minded. Ken Loach’s trademark liberal
politics inform the gut-punch tearkerjerker I, Daniel Blake, which
follows a widowed carpenter with a heart condition trying to stay on the dole
(per doctor’s orders) but meets chronic resistance in Britain’s welfare system
(civil servant drones keep making ominous referrals to a never-seen
“decision-maker”). Aside from a few unfortunate plot points that could have
been just at home in a silent-film melodrama, Mr. Loach’s bittersweet morality
tale showcases the true heroism of small gestures among average people helping
each other fight for their own dignity in the face of a chillingly indifferent
social system.
Representing the first wave of Oscar-bait “issue movies” this
year is Jeff Nichol’s Loving, a muted but poised portrait of Richard and
Mildred Loving and their successful U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit Loving v.
Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage in 1967. Don’t expect scenes
with strident speechifying or fervent crowds erupting into applause amid
rallying swells of orchestral treacle: Mr. Nichols plays the film’s emotional
cards close to his vest, celebrating the quotidian moments of marital life
while stressing how Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga), both
quietly defiant but clearly intimidated by the law, were far from crusaders.
Mr. Edgerton and Ms. Negga, respectively Australian and Irish-Ethiopean, do a
superb job nailing their rugged Southern accents, and deliver the kind of
performances that Oscar voters adore.
But the most modest movie by far is Paterson, Jim
Jarmusch’s still-water meditation on the creative inner worlds of everyday
people. Simple but never simplistic, the site-specific story follows a week in
the life of a New Jersey Transit bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) who
writes poetry in his down time and enjoys domestic bliss with quirky wife Laura
(Golshifteh Farahani). The Patersons reside in Paterson (naturally) and subsist
on his modest salary. Not much happens, except that life happens, which is more
than enough: Mr. Jarmusch’s mastery of human rhythms reveals the profundity
within an unassuming moment. The film is a tiny miracle, a multifaceted gem
that’s the perfect refutation of the festival’s carnivorous carnival
atmosphere—as well as the perfect cinematic definition of what Cannes, at its
best, truly does showcase.
Sonia Braga and the Brazil contingency
'Brazil
is divided': Aquarius star Sonia Braga and director address Cannes protests Nigel M. Smith from The Guardian, May 18, 2016
A day after staging a demonstration against what they believe to
be a coup in their country, Aquarius writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho and
actor Braga explain why they are concerned for Brazil’s future
“Brazil is divided,” declared writer-director Kleber Mendonça
Filho at the Cannes
film festival on Wednesday, where his new film, Aquarius, is competing for
the Palme d’Or.
His comments, made to the Guardian at a press conference for the
drama on Wednesday, come a day after the film’s premiere, where the cast and
crew used the opportunity to
mount a protest against what they describe as a coup.
Filho and his team are angered about the the recent impeachment
of president Dilma
Rousseff, the country’s first female president, who was forced from office,
as well as interim president Michel Temer’s controversial decision to abolish
Brazil’s culture ministry. Temer has since sought to tamp down the
criticism by appointing a culture secretary, but four potential candidates have
reported refusing
the job.
“They picked the wrong month to extinguish the ministry of
culture, because a movie made with very public funds is currently
competing in Cannes,” Filho said.
The film-maker added that the “dramatic divide” Rousseff’s
impeachment has brought to Brazil
is “terrible”. “It’s bringing out the worst in both sides - particularly the
right side,” he said. “People in congress saying women shouldn’t work because
they get pregnant - shocking ideas like that.”
“All this transition is going to be very hurtful for our
democracy – that was hard to get in the first place,” added Sonia Braga,
Aquarius’ lead actor. “It’s not easy to lose.”
The film features Braga as a fiercely resilient aging music
critic eager to remain in her apartment despite developers’ pressure. The
Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called
it a “a densely observed and superbly acted portrait of a woman of a certain
age.”
“It was very important to take this international platform here
to expose what’s happening in Brazil,” Braga said of the red-carpet protest,
echoing what Filho said. “Because of the biased media [in Brazil], and because
of what people are feeling, Brazil is divided.”
Filho said the demonstration came together following discussions
with fellow Brazilian film-makers and producers at the festival.
“We liked the idea of doing something,” he said. “I didn’t want
to do something noisy, or something that would be in some way inadequate. So
the idea that we decided to go for was: A4 pieces of paper with really short
sentences, which expressed what is happening in Brazil. Cannes has many cameras
and powerful long lenses, and it worked very beautifully.”
Banners, held by cast and crew on the steps of the Palais, and
inside the theater by audience members, bore messages such as “Brazil is not a
democracy” and “The world cannot accept this illegitimate government”. The
overtly political act was met with loud applause inside the venue.
Asked if the seaside town Recife in north-east Brazil, where Aquarius takes
place, was meant to come across as a crumbling location, Filho said he’s “not
into apocalyptic portraits.”
Said the film-maker: “I think when you’re critical of something,
you also have to show its normality and beauty in some way. The city is where I
live. It’s far from perfect, but so is Paris.”
Sonia Braga
Cannes Review: Sonia Braga Gives a Brilliant Performance in
'Aquarius' Eric Kohn from indieWIRE,
May 18, 2016
The "Kiss of the
Spider Woman" star provides a powerful center to Kleber Mendonça Filho's
absorbing drama.
"When you like it, it's vintage. When you don't like it,
it's old." That observation epitomizes the struggle facing the 65-year-old
widow Clara in Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's absorbing drama
"Aquarius," and she's played by the great Sonia Braga in a fiery
performance that's all about vintage appeal. Thirty years after "Kiss of
the Spider Woman" first brought her international acclaim, the actress
delivers an extraordinary performance as the resident of an old Recife
apartment building standing her ground in the face of avaricious developers
looking to kick her to the curb. It's the ultimate tough cookie role: Shrewd,
domineering and confident against daunting odds, she turns an ageist threat
into an opportunity to reclaim her youth.
Braga's powerful screen presence energizes Mendonça's otherwise
meditative filmmaking, a style familiar to anyone who caught his first
narrative feature, 2012's "Neighboring Sounds." While that movie
captured the daily rituals of a middle-class neighborhood threatened by an
outside force, "Aquarius" reiterates that challenge for a single
individual, in the home she's claimed for decades. Though Braga's performance
sometimes outshines Mendonça's leisurely two-and-a-half hour narrative, in its
better moments the two work in marvelous harmony.
The story unfolds across three chapters, the first of which
begins in 1980, when Clara enjoys her youthful lifestyle as a music critic
already living in the elegant building that shares the movie's title; in modern
times, she remains a free-spirited partier even though her world has grown much
smaller. With vinyl strewn throughout her apartment and a wine glass never too
far away, Clara seems content with the way her lifestyle consolidates the past
and present; an average day finds her thumbing through old photographs and
enjoying the occasional visits from her grown offspring.
Though troubled by her bout with breast cancer, she's still
nimble enough to visit the local pub to engage in hookups, drink with friends
and relax in her hammock. But her humble routine faces an existential threat in
the form of young real estate hustler Diego (Humberto Carrão), who runs a
merciless development company with his father and dreams of transforming the
forties-era building into a luxury condo. The other residents have already
moved out; Clara won't have any of it.
The tension between Clara and Diego doesn't mount so much as it
gradually simmers over the course of Mendonça's wandering plot, which fixates
on quiet scenes in which the retired scribe converses with family and friends,
pours over old photographs and generally just tries to relax. There are shades
of Sebastian Lelio's "Gloria" to Braga's embodiment of a woman
pushing past assumptions about her physical state; she simultaneously confronts
the perception of her aging body and defies it, at one point drunk-dialing a
younger man for a late night tryst after blasting "Fat Bottom Girls"
to drown out the orgy taking place upstairs. She's the consistent center of the
film, even when it drags, by simply commanding every moment of her screen
time.
Mendonça's loose storytelling eventually catches up to her in the
bracing final act, when Diego kicks up efforts to push Clara out the door and
the stage is set for a final showdown riddled with meaning. Mendonça's fixation
on the analog quality of Clara's surroundings is tinged with melancholic desire
that seeps into the pace itself. Like Clara, "Aquarius" stakes a
claim to the lasting value of a patient approach. In her case, it's an attempt
to wear down her would-be oppressor until he gives up. Mendonça may not intend
the same effect, but it works a gentle spell that should justify its heft to
even the least patient viewer. The filmmaker offers the ultimate rejoinder to
fast-paced age of developmental progress by romanticizes a tactile setting and
letting the engaging atmosphere reflect Clara's commitment. In a broader sense,
"Aquarius" also engages with the paradox of a society so keen on
building its future that it steamrolls the past. As one character states in a
later scene, once the company resorts to dirty tricks, "this is so
Brazil."
No matter its specific geographical resonance, however,
"Aquarius" works just as well on more universal terms, particularly
in its expertly crafted finale, which is rich with the spirit of defiance.
Above all else, "Aquarius" celebrates the prospects of growing
stronger with age, with Braga's resilience providing more than a vessel for
that concern — she's a sharp weapon of resistance, both as the character and in
her rousing capacity to give it life.
director Brillante Mendoza
Cannes
2016: "Julieta," "Aquarius," "Ma' Rosa" Barbara Scharres from The Ebert site, May 17,
2016
“Ma’ Rosa,” the competition entry by Filipino director Brillante
Mendoza (“Thy Womb,” “Kinatay”), is less a look at the life of the wife and
mother of the title than a portrait of a society in which corruption and
poverty-driven betrayal run up and down the social scale. It’s shot largely at
night in a cinema verité style and in muted color, and punctuated by a sparing
score of electronic effects and percussion.
Ma’ Rosa (Jaclyn Jose) and her husband Nestor (Julio Diaz) run a
tiny, makeshift neighborhood convenience store on the ground floor of their
home off a narrow alley. The store is such a homemade operation that Rosa buys
her stock at a regular supermarket and hauls it home in a taxi with the help of
one of her four kids. She also deals small amounts of “ice” on the side.
One night the police make a drug raid on the store and take the couple in,
where they are shaken down and threatened.
The film becomes a process more than a story, with the chain of
bribery and barter extending from the police station to the neighborhood, and
to the family itself, with violence, promises, and lies becoming the currency
that assures day-to-day subsistence. Rosa is forced to turn in her drug
supplier, a young addict who is beaten and kicked unconscious when the money
the cops confiscate from him is not sufficient to cover the bribe they demand.
They jubilantly use some of the cash to order out two roast chickens and a case
of beer for themselves. Of the drugs, one of them says, “We’ll try some of that
later.”
The police demand that Rosa and Nestor make up the difference in
the payoff, even though she had been promised their release in return for
ratting out her source. The amount needed is the equivalent of about $1000. The
four kids spread out into the streets looking for the cash. The eldest son
attempts to peddle the family TV, and the younger resorts to prostitution. The
girls throw themselves on the mercy of relatives, who have little
themselves.
Mendoza is one of a generation of Filipino directors working in
the socially conscious tradition of the great Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka
(1939-1991). “Ma’ Rosa” is a relentlessly pessimistic film, and yet it is one
in which grim beauty is paradoxically evident in the tropical downpours in the
night market, in the teeming chaos of the streets, and in the sweating faces of
people who will give, take, or be taken in order to survive.
* * * *
Cannes critics ratings, a composite of 7 different critic
scores:
The Cannes Criterion Forum is up and running:
Screendaily Jury Grid (Page 24 from Digital edition from Day 8), where Toni Erdmann, one of the few films that appeals to both French and American critics, has been bought by Sony pictures, setting records for high scores, Cannes: 'Toni Erdmann' sets Screen Jury Grid record:
Ioncinema Critics Panel:
Les Etoiles de la
critiques is up and running as well (click on image to obtain a full
screen):
While Neil Young from Jigsaw
Lounge maintains the odds for winners:
* * * *
The round-up of various links covering Cannes:
Screendaily still
has paywalls, but if you click on the reviews, they are at least
temporarily open to the public:
The Hollywood Reporter
at Cannes:
David Hudson does all the links for each review at Fandor:
The Film Center’s Barbara Scharres, Ben Kenigsberg and Chaz
Ebert at Cannes from the Roger Ebert blog:
a round-up of Cannes news and reviews from indieWIRE:
The Guardian
collection of reviews:
Mike D’Angelo back at The
Onion A.V. Club:
Sophie Monks Kaufman and David Jenkins from Little White Lies:
Daniel Kasman, Adam Cook, and likely others at Mubi Notebook:
Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa:
Sukhdev Sandhu and Robbie Collins from The Daily Telegraph:
Slant magazine at
Cannes:
Eric Lavallee and Nicholas Bell from Ioncinema:
Various writers at Twitch:
And, of course, George is back at Cannes this year, where he
finds off the beaten track film fare:
There may be a dearth of films directed by women with only
three of the twenty-one films in Competition, but there is no shortage of films
that are stories of women. If this continues it will be the men
protesting.
“The Unknown Girl”
by the Dardenne brothers is the compelling story of a young woman physician
searching for the identity of a young African woman who died after she refused
to open her clinic door to her when she came knocking after closing time.
She seems burdened by the demands of her profession to begin with, having
no life outside her work, but even more so with her issues of guilt. Only
once is her perpetual frown broken by a smile, when she receives a phone
regarding another matter. She is in a continual state of anguish, but totally
committed to being a responsible doctor. She lives and works in Seraing,
a run-down industrial city outside of Liege that has been a Ville Étape twice
in my years of following The Tour de France. Social issues aren’t as
dominant of a focus as the Dardennes usually make them, but they aren’t much
below the surface. The plot has its facile contrivances, but it serves its
purpose.
The first Brazilian film in Competition in years, “Aquarius,” is the story of a 65-year
woman who refuses to move from her large apartment building that is being renovated
by a young developer who has just completed business school in the US.
She is the lone resident of the complex that overlooks the vast beaches
of the large city of Recife. Her children encourage her to accept the large
offer to move, but she refuses. This film didn’t need to be
two-and-a-half hours long other than to indulge in directorial art capturing
the beauty of Brazil and the vitality of its people. It lapses into rousing
musical interludes that don’t have much to do with the story. I could
hardly object though when the woman pulls out Queen’s “Jazz” album and puts it
on her turntable. I was hoping for the “Bicycle Race” cut, but “Fat
Bottomed Girls” was fine too.
A woman is also the center of the Iranian film “Inversion.” Tehran is smothered
by pollution, an inversion, and an elderly woman is advised by her doctor to
leave the city immediately. Her daughter is being pressured by her older
brother and other family members to go with her since she is unmarried and has
no children, though she runs a small sewing shop. She’s not so happy
about giving up her life in the city and continually ordered about by her
brother. This continues a long line of socially realistic films from Iran
and continues the string of fine films in Un Certain Regard. There hasn’t
been a fizzle yet.
My day’s documentary also featured a woman—“Bernadette Lafont, And God Created the
Free Woman.” Commentary from this French New Wave actress, who
appeared in more than 120 films and died in 2013, provides a voice-over for
this film recounting her legendary career that began with Chabrol and Truffaut.
She took a break when she was still in her prime to have three children,
among her many acts of independence that made her career so exemplary.
My lone Market screening was a virtual one-man performance
by the prolific Gerard Depardieu. He ventures off into the forest with
his dog and a rifle in “The End.”
He loses them both and himself as well. He becomes frantic trying
to find his way out. He comes upon a barefoot woman who remains mute.
The eventually encounter a pair of hikers who lead them back to his car.
This might have been inspired by Gus Van Sant, but it was no more
successful than his effort to plumb the essence of a lost soul.
The day of cinema was highlighted by the festival’s annual “Master Class,”--a nearly two-hour
conversation between William Friedkin and Michel Ciment accompanied by clips
from Friedkin’s oeuvre. After the two were introduced by Festival director
Thierry Fremaux, Friedkin said, “Before we start I’d like to say what a great
pleasure it is to be here with Michel Ciment, the greatest living film writer
and critic.” Friedkin remained gracious and enthusiastic, like a perfect
guest. Ciment didn’t have to ask many questions, as Friedkin had much to
say.
Much like a previous Master Class subject of Ciment, Philip
Kaufman, Friedkin also came out of Chicago. His first film was a
documentary of someone on death row in Chicago. Kaufman had gotten his
start in television and made this film to try to save his life. He didn’t
attend film school, but gained his skills from “Citizen Kane,” the French New
Wave and Hitchcock.
The first clip was from “The Birthday Party,” a Pinter Play.
The next was from “The Boys in the Band,” an early representation of gays
in cinema. It was Friedkin’s fourth film and as Ciment pointed out, his
fourth commercial failure. “Why did you bring that up?” Friedkin joked.
“I didn’t come here to be insulted.”
Ciment brought it up because his next film was the monumental
“The French Connection,” followed by the equally momentous “The Exorcist.”
Until then it took a considerable effort for him to make a film. Every
studio turned town “The French Connection,” some twice. But it was the
same with “Forest Gump” and “Star Wars.” After “The French Connection” he
said he could have made a movie of his son’s bar mitzvah.
Friedkin also set the record straight on Howard Hawks.
Hawks claimed that he urged Friedkin to make “The French Connection.”
Hawks daughter, Kitty, was Friedkin’s girlfriend at the time he made “The
Boys in the Band.” Hawks wasn’t surprised that the film made no money.
He told Friedkin that the public wants action movies. That wasn’t
what made Friedkin make “The French Connection,” though Hawks wanted to think
so. Friedkin’s stories on Brando and Hackman and others were so lengthy
that Ciment couldn’t play all the clips he wanted to, but no one could be
disappointed. When they finally had to end their talk, many in the
audience rushed the stage to ask Friedkin questions of their own. Any film
festival would be lucky to have him as a guest. It’d be a great treat to
have him at Telluride.
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