Kat Graham
Model Irina Shayk on the
red carpet in a peek-a-boo dress
Adriana Karembeu in another variation on the peek-a-boo dress
Marion Cotillard
Nebraska and Blue Is the Warmest Colour on the red
carpet from The Guardian:
Laura Dern joins her father Bruce at the Nebraska premiere, from The Guardian:
Nebraska on the
red carpet from The Hollywood Reporter:
Cannes charity event from The Hollywood Reporter:
Cannes red carpet fashion from Vanity Fair:
A French site that lists daily galleries of red carpet
photos, by date, offering regular or giant sized photos:
http://festival-de-cannes.cineday.orange.fr/diaporamas
http://festival-de-cannes.cineday.orange.fr/diaporamas
Another large gallery of photos:
http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/photos/cannes-film-festival-2013-fashion-pictures-slideshow/
http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/photos/cannes-film-festival-2013-fashion-pictures-slideshow/
People magazine
hits the Cannes red carpet:
Best dressed men at Cannes, from The Telegraph:
Backstage at the Carine Roitfelds Cannes fashion show, from The Telegraph:
David Hudson at Fandor:
SALVO Tops Critics’
Week Awards
Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza’s Salvo has won both the Nespresso Grand Prize and the France
4 Visionary Award at this year’s Critics’
Week awards, which, going by the reviews, may not come as a surprise to many.
The jury, presided over by Miguel Gomes (its other members: Film Society of Lincoln
Center programmer Dennis Lim, Bradford Film Festival co-director Neil Young,
and journalists Alin Tasciyan and Alex Vicente), has also given special mention
to Agustin Toscano and Ezequiel Radusky’s Los Dueños.
The short film jury, presided over by Mia Hansen-Løve (the
other members: Toronto International Film Festival programmer Brad Deane,
Biennale College of Cinema program officer Savina Neirotti, International Film
Festival of Stockholm program coordinator Johannes Palmroos, and Cinemart
International Film Festival of Rotterdam advisor Lorna Tee), has presented the
Discovery award to Daria Belova’s Come and Play.
The Society of Authors, Directors and Composers Award for
best screenplay goes to Sébastien Pilote for Le Démantèlment.
Robert Koehler on
Salvo from Film Comment:
After a desultory first 24 hours, it took a speedy walk down
the Croisette to Espace Miramar—home of Critics Week, the festival’s
all-too-easily overlooked independent sidebar—to catch the festival’s first
truly good film: Salvo, the debut
crime drama from Sicilian filmmakers Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza. A
sharply chiseled intelligence is on display from the first, wordless scene,
which shows hit man Salvo (Saleh Bakri) in bed as his air conditioner conks out
during a brutal Palermo summer heat wave. The cutting is precise, rhythmic,
furtive; there’s the suggestion of something imminent—perhaps the bad day that
is to come as Salvo’s alarm clock rings, only to be followed by a power outage.
Immediately after making its mark, Grassadonia and Piazza’s
film takes off running. Sooner than we can gauge, Salvo is suddenly on the job
and in a world of hurt. All too aware that his car is being pursued, he and his
gangster colleague get the jump on his pursuers, and the directorial duo stage
a stunning shootout in which the wide-screen camera doggedly stays by Salvo’s
side, jarring yet fluid, turbulent yet thoroughly in control. Salvo, it becomes
abundantly clear, is a man who won’t give up, managing to track down the crime
boss who put the hit on him.
This is mere prelude to what constitutes the film’s heart—a
string of extended sequences, the first of which is so astonishingly elongated
that it seems suspended in time. When Salvo enters the boss’s home to make the
kill, he unexpectedly encounters the man’s blind sister, Rita (Sara
Serraiocco). Grassadonia and Piazza have been fixated on Salvo’s point of view
by this point, but something surprising happens: they transfer their visual
obsession to Rita, who instinctively tries to steer clear of whatever this
intruder has in store.
The filmmakers’ grasp of on- and off-screen space and sound
is part of what makes Salvo an incisive piece of cinema and lends its distinct
texture, and this quality is at work in two different dimensions. When Salvo
attacks the boss, the camera remains trained on Rita, whose sense of hearing is
heightened by her virtual lack of sight. Sound takes over, delivering the kind
of vivid and violent pictures to the viewer’s mind that would have benefited
Amat Escalante in the blunt and unimaginative torture sequence served up in his
disappointing Cannes Competition drama, Heli.
Later, sound again rules when Rita is held prisoner by Salvo, who turns out to
have no clear idea what to do with her. (His own boss, a man of the old
Sicilian school, simply wants her snuffed out.)
Off-screen space also works not just in any given moment of
the movie’s most intense scenes, but across longer stretches of time. Salvo’s
prisoner begins to see again; the confined Rita finds herself anew, almost
reborn as a woman, and the two of them come to a well-earned rapprochement that
far surpasses the cheesy norms of B crime movies. While this is going on,
another drama—unseen, off screen—has been unfolding with the boss, who realizes
that Salvo isn’t coming to work anymore. The dramatic shock that flows out of
that story back onto the main on-screen drama may be the movie’s most sublime
gambit, one that at first may even seem to be a mistake, or a misstep. Salvo embraces crime genre tropes and
then stretches them into a new shape, so that old devices look and feel new. It
reminds us that the confinement of genre, not unlike Rita’s own constrained
circumstances, can have unexpectedly fresh results.
More Jewels Go Missing
During the Cannes Film Festival, This Time $2.6 Million in Diamonds, by
Julie Miller from Vanity Fair:
A week after a cache of Chopard jewels was
stolen in Cannes, Reuters reports
that a suspected jewelry heist of even larger proportions has occurred just a
few miles away on the Côte d’Azur. Unlike the first incident, in which jewelry
(and the safe holding it) was burgled from a hotel room, this time a diamond
necklace worth $2.6 million went missing from a party showcasing the work of
the Swiss jewelers De Grisogono—despite “80 bodyguards, local police, hotel
security, and De Grisogono staff” on duty to ensure the safety of the pieces.
The party on Tuesday, at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, was attended by Sharon Stone and Paris Hilton, among other guests, and was one of the many glittery events held this week in tandem with the Cannes Film Festival. De Grisogono’s founder, Fawaz Gruosi, has confirmed the necklace’s disappearance, telling Reuters, “We don’t know exactly what happened. . . it was one of the most beautiful items we had. . . The police are trying to figure out what happened."
The party on Tuesday, at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes, was attended by Sharon Stone and Paris Hilton, among other guests, and was one of the many glittery events held this week in tandem with the Cannes Film Festival. De Grisogono’s founder, Fawaz Gruosi, has confirmed the necklace’s disappearance, telling Reuters, “We don’t know exactly what happened. . . it was one of the most beautiful items we had. . . The police are trying to figure out what happened."
Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux from Blue Is the Warmest Colour
Mike D'Angelo on Blue Is the Warmest Color from The Onion A.V. Club:
Subjectivity and unconscious bias are on my mind largely
because of the other excellent film I just saw, Blue Is The Warmest Color. Written and directed by Abdellatif
Kechiche, the French-Tunisian auteur best known in the U.S. for 2007’s The Secret Of The Grain, it’s
essentially the distaff version of Behind
The Candelabra (minus the celebrity angle), depicting a gay relationship
from infatuation to disillusionment. Once again, there’s nothing in this
trajectory you haven’t seen many times before: the tremulous first touch, the
efforts at concealment, the inevitable cooling of passion, the tearful
recriminations, the tender reunion, etc. What makes it special is Kechiche’s
attenuated naturalism (the film runs just shy of three hours, covering events
that would normally occupy half that time), coupled with performances by Léa
Seydoux and extraordinary newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulous that capture these two
young women in all their muddled complexity. The extra length also allows for
sex scenes that are far more intense, more prolonged, and more graphic than
mainstream movies generally allow, which makes them both insanely erotic (more
on that below) and uncommonly revealing (in both senses of the word). Most
movie sex scenes function like shorthand—a series of socially approved
movements and poses that denote an exchange of fluids. They’re as divorced from
the narrative as a travel-map montage. When Exarchopoulos and Seydoux make
love, by contrast, the act carries precisely the same emotional weight as do
their lengthy conversations about art and literature. It’s communion, not
calisthenics. Blue Is The Warmest Color
is familiar in its broad outline but bracingly specific in its minute details,
and it traffics in feelings so raw that they’re almost painful to observe. And
it confirms Kechiche, who first caught my eye over a decade ago with the little
seen but first-rate La Faute Á Voltaire,
as one of the most underrated filmmakers currently working. Grade: B+
Becoming a contender for the best film at Cannes, Abdellatif
Kechiche's uncompromising Blue Is the
Warmest Color, though it's hard to believe Spielberg "the moralist,"
the maker of Lincoln, The War Horse,
Amistad, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, and E.T., and producer of a PG rated The Lovely Bones, and let's not forget The Goonies, where movies are considered family entertainment,
would vote for what will likely be labeled as an erotic lesbian flick, no
matter how good it is This may be a line Spielberg simply refuses to
cross, where the man in the yacht, listed on IMDB as "Undoubtedly one of
the most influential film personalities in the history of film," may
insist upon having things his way, since his name and reputation are at
stake. I'd love to see him break the mold, but it's Spielberg, so I just
don't see it. Review by Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian:
La Vie D'Adèle
Chapitres 1 et 2 (Blue is the Warmest Colour) – first look review
Epic and erotic yet intimate – Abdellatif Kechiche's
uncompromising story of an affair makes other films look tame
There's a devastating mix of eroticism and sadness in
Abdellatif Kechiche's new film, which returns to the style and setting of his
2003 movie Games Of
Love and Chance. It's the epic but intimate story of a love affair between
two young women, unfolding in what seems like real time. There's an
interestingly open, almost unfinished quality to the narrative, although this
could just be because the print shown here in Cannes was still without credits.
The film is acted with honesty and power by Léa Seydoux and Adèle
Exarchopoulos; the affair itself is a little idealised, and the film is flawed
by one rather histrionic scene, though not, I think, by its expansive
three-hour length. Nonetheless, this is still a blazingly emotional and
explosively sexy film, which reminds you how timidly unsexy most films are,
although as with all explicit movies, there will be one or two airy sophisticates
who will affect to be unmoved by it, and claim that the sex is
"boring". It isn't.
The movie is based on a French graphic novel, Le Bleu Est Une Couleur Chaude, by Julie
Maroh, although the film had for me something of an early fiction by Alan
Hollinghurst, like The Spell. Adèle
(Exarchopoulos) is a 17-year-old at high school in Lille, a bright, idealistic
student who loves studying literature, both English and French, and wants to be
a teacher. (She will incidentally reveal later that she loves American movies
by people like Scorsese and Kubrick – though it is Altman who is more of an
influence on this expansive, garrulous film.) After a painful breakup with a
boyfriend, Adèle goes with a gay friend to a bar, and sees a beautiful young
woman with short hair, dyed blue, whom she has noticed before in the street: it
is Emma (Séydoux), an art student.
Soon they begin a paint-blisteringly intense affair. Emma's
blue hairstyle means that the colour blue – a cleverly returning motif –
becomes the colour of happiness. But as the couple grow up and grow apart, Emma
lets the blue-dye job grow out and she reverts to her natural blonde colour. It
is a bad sign: the beginning of the end.
The extended sex scenes have an explicitness and candour
which can only be called magnificent; in fact they make the sex in famous
movies like, say, Last Tango in Paris
look supercilious and dated. (And it also rather exposes the confection of
François Ozon's Jeune et Jolie earlier in the competition.) There is something
coolly, thrillingly uncompromising about the first sex scene especially, and
also something quietly and inexplicably moving when Kechiche finally cuts from
the end of that sequence to the crowd scene at a gay pride rally.
Food is an interesting motif as well. Emma introduces Adèle
to her liberal and tolerant mother and stepfather over dinner; they are
entirely aware of Emma's sexuality and serve Adèle a sophisticated novelty –
oysters. (A hint of Kubrick here? Olivier's "oysters" speech from Spartacus?) When Emma comes back to meet
Adèle's conservative folks, however, the lovers have to stay in the closet and
pretend Emma has a boyfriend. They get served some humbler fare: spaghetti
bolognaise. Yet is precisely this kind of food that Adèle serves up at the
party for Emma's first art exhibition, cementing her submissive and domestic
position in the relationship.
The darker phase of their relationship (presumably the
second "chapter" of the title) is painful and there is ultimately
much crying, and this looks every bit as passionate and real and un-Hollywood
as the sex. I can't imagine Jessica Chastain or Anne Hathaway ever doing the
brutally authentic tears-mingling-with-snot look the way Adèle Exarchopoulos
does it.
It's a long movie, and by the end you may well feel every
bit as wrung out as the characters. But it is genuinely passionate film-making.
From the rumoured vantage point of a luxury yacht, Spielberg
and his fellow Cannes judges may have a different perspective to critics on the
pick of this year's offerings – not least Nebraska,
from Xan Brooks from the Guardian:
Rumour has it that the jurors at this year's Cannes film festival
occasionally bypass the official screenings, preferring instead to watch the
films from the luxury of Steven Spielberg's
yacht, with its infinity pool and state-of-the-art cinema. Obviously, there is
no way of knowing if such gossip has any bearing on reality (not really mixing
in those circles and all), but I do relish the image of the millionaire judges
– Spielberg, Ang Lee,
Nicole Kidman
et al – vaguely squinting at the screen while the champagne and cigars are
passed around. It sounds like something out of La
Grande Bellezza.
What they are thinking is anyone's guess. By this stage last
year, the consensus had it that Michael Haneke's
Amour
was the runaway favourite. This year we appear to be deep in William Goldman
country. Nobody knows anything.
Judged purely on the basis of critical response, the current
favourites are the
Coens' Inside
Llewyn Davis, Ashgar Farhadi's The Past and
Paolo Sorrentino's La Grande Bellezza,
although Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue is the Warmest Colour – a three-hour coming-of-age lesbian
love story – is exciting rave reviews and may yet crash the party.
Yet the sad fact is that jurors and journalists do not
always walk in lockstep. There are whispers that Spielberg – who holds the
reins as jury president – may well plump for something sweeter and slighter,
such as Hirokazu Kore-eda's pleasant yet insubstantial Like
Father, Like Son.
Chances are he will look fondly on Nebraska
as well. Alexander
Payne's monochrome road movie amounts to a catchy, maudlin ballad of the
American Depression, eased along by an over-insistent score and yet anchored by
a robust performance from Bruce Dern as Woody Grant, an ornery old alcoholic
who thinks he's won a fortune.
En route to cash his ticket, Grant and his son fetch up in
their former hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska. And it is here that
Payne sketches a portrait of small-town America that would have Norman Rockwell
weeping onto his easel. Paint peels off the house fronts, home-loan hoardings
hang over Main Street, and the family farmstead is standing empty. "It's
just a bunch of old wood and some weeds," shrugs Woody. The film's a
little soft at the centre – and perhaps a shade too indebted to About
Schmidt, in which Payne directed Jack Nicholson
in a similar vein – but it makes for a lovely, languid outing all the same. I
can't believe it will hit the jackpot but I'm awfully glad it was given a slot.
Outside the Palais, a herd of delegates are dragging their
cases towards the coach. "Terminal one!" the driver is shouting. No
luxury yacht for the likes of them. They are being packed in like sardines and
trundled back to dirty reality.
Bruce Dern and June Squibb in Alexander Payne's Nebraska
Laura Dern poses with her father Bruce Dern for Nebraska
Laura Dern pays homage to the 1920's
Mike D'Angelo had a good day at the movies, also favorably
reviewing Alexander Payne's Nebraska,
from The Onion A.V. Club:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/cannes-2013-day-eight-from-infatuation-to-disillus,98137/
http://www.avclub.com/articles/cannes-2013-day-eight-from-infatuation-to-disillus,98137/
The dirty little secret of criticism is that it’s a form of
codified rationalization. We see movies, we have emotional reactions to them
like everyone else, and then we consciously or (often) unconsciously construct
intellectual arguments to justify those reactions. For example, I was a puddle
of tears by the end of Alexander Payne’s latest film, so I find myself much
more willing to forgive or overlook the same sorts of condescending moments
that irked the hell out of me in About
Schmidt and The Descendants. Shot
in an anti-lustrous black-and-white that could more accurately be termed gray-on-gray,
Nebraska is the story of a father and
son (Bruce Dern and Will Forte) who take a road trip from Billings, Montana, to
Lincoln, Nebraska, in order to collect a $1 million sweepstakes prize Dad won.
In reality, Dern hasn’t won anything—what he received in the mail was just a
slightly more misleading variation on the classic “You may already be a
winner!” pitch—but Forte agrees to drive him there anyway, both to shut him up
and to spend some quality time with him. En route, they stop for the weekend in
Hawthorne, Dern’s hometown, where they’re joined by his wife (June Squibb) and
his other son (Bob Odenkirk) amidst a gaggle of typically Midwestern relatives,
all of whom are extremely interested to learn that there’s now a millionaire in
the family.
That phrase “typically Midwestern” signifies what’s
problematic here, as usual. Payne has repeatedly insisted that he doesn’t
intend to mock his characters (and neither he nor his former writing partner,
Jim Taylor, penned the script for Nebraska,
which is by Bob Nelson), but it’s hard to know what else to make of tableaux in
which a dozen craggy-looking men sit staring impassively at a football game on
TV, looking as if they’re auditioning for the catatonic ward in a production of
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Likewise, Squibb is encouraged to overplay her character’s ornery bluntness, at
one point lifting her skirt over the grave of a former beau to show him what he
missed out on. But the central relationship between Dern’s stubbornly deluded
dad and Forte’s passively frustrated son gradually deepens as the movie makes
its leisurely way southeast (the movie’s two dumbest caricatures are endlessly
amused by how long the drive takes), building to a resolution that’s
simultaneously touching and deeply, almost unbearably sad. There’s a sense here
of lives largely squandered that feels more genuine than anything in Payne’s
last several films (the serious ones—everything post-Election); he finally nails that conflicted tone he’s been after,
which might be either optimistic defeatism or defeatist optimism. In any case,
my defenses collapsed about two-thirds of the way through, making me
susceptible to even the film’s most conventionally crowd-pleasing aspects. Did
Payne really do something “right” here that he did “wrong” in The Descendants, a picture that I found
phony but that many others consider a masterpiece? Probably not. All I can tell
you for certain is that Nebraska got
to me. My official, professional judgment is that it’s more truthful, less
invested in comic ridicule... but maybe portraits of resigned futility just
mean more to me as I get older. Grade: B+
Alexander Payne's Nebraska
premiered, reviewed by Scott Foundas at Variety:
After making side trips to California’s Central Coast and
Hawaii (for “Sideways” and “The Descendants,” respectively), Alexander Payne
returns to his home state of Nebraska for his sixth directorial feature, a
wistful ode to small-town Midwestern life and the quixotic dreams of stubborn
old men. Sporting a career-crowning performance by Bruce Dern and a thoroughly
impressive dramatic turn by “SNL”/“30 Rock” alum Will Forte, Payne’s first film
based on another writer’s original screenplay (by debut feature scribe Bob
Nelson) nevertheless fits nicely alongside his other low-concept, finely etched
studies of flawed characters stuck in life’s well-worn grooves. Black-and-white
lensing and lack of a Clooney-sized star portend less than “Descendants”-sized
business, but critical hosannas and awards buzz should mean solid prestige
success for this November Paramount release.
Just as “The Last Picture Show” was a movie made in the
1970s about the end of ’50s-era innocence, “Nebraska” feels, despite its
present-day setting, like a eulogy for a bygone America (and American cinema),
from the casting of New Hollywood fixtures Dern and Stacy Keach to its many
windswept vistas of a vital agro-industrial heartland outsourced into
irrelevance. First seen trudging alone along a busy stretch of Montana highway,
Dern’s Woody Grant is a man who, like his surroundings, seems to have outlived
his usefulness, an ornery alcoholic whose bouts of confusion have put a strain
on his marriage to Kate (“About Schmidt’s” June Squibb) and caused sons David
(Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk) to worry that he might be losing his mind.
Offering further evidence to support this claim, Woody has become convinced
he’s won $1 million in a Publisher’s Clearing House-like sweepstakes — a prize
he insists on collecting in person at the company’s HQ in Lincoln, Neb.
Though more levelheaded parties insist that the money is
bogus, Woody cannot be deterred. Asked what he’ll do with his “winnings,” he
announces his intention to buy a new truck — even though he can no longer drive
— and a new air compressor (to replace one he loaned to a friend 40 years ago).
But like the children’s playground commissioned by the dying bureaucrat in
Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” or the interstate tractor journey undertaken by the Iowa
farmer of David Lynch’s “The Straight Story,” Woody’s quest is really a last,
valedictory gesture designed to give meaning to a life. So David reluctantly agrees
to take Dad on the road, as much out of pity as to escape his own broken-down
situation, working a dead-end retail job and recently dumped by his live-in
girlfriend.
What follows is, like many of Payne’s films, a road movie of
sorts, winding its way through Wyoming and South Dakota, slate-colored skies
hanging over pastureland and lonely blacktop, last-stop diners standing on the
edge of nowhere. The widescreen monochrome imagery, shot by Payne’s longtime
d.p. Phedon Papamichael, is at once ravishing and melancholy, evoking both
Robert Surtees’ “Picture Show” lensing and a host of iconic American still
photography (Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, et al.) without calling undue
attention to itself.
Eventually, father and son make a pit stop in Woody’s hometown
of Hawthorn (actually, Norfolk, Neb.), where it doesn’t take long for the
incipient millionaire to become headline news, like the ersatz war hero (also
named Woody) at the center of Preston Sturges’ “Hail the Conquering Hero.” Nor
does Woody seem to mind the attention, even as it brings all manner of moocher
out of the woodwork, including more than a few family members and a former
business partner (the coy, flinty Keach) with an old score to settle. Everyone,
it seems, wants — or perhaps needs — to believe in Woody’s dream as much as he
does.
Throughout, Payne gently infuses the film’s comic tone with
strains of longing and regret, always careful to avoid the maudlin or cheaply
sentimental. (A couple of nincompoop nephews, played by Tim Driscoll and Devin
Ratray, rep the pic’s only real concession to slapstick.) In a series of
lovely, understated scenes, David finds himself learning secondhand about the
taciturn father he has never really known, meeting an ex-flame (Angela McEwan)
who competed with his mother for Woody’s affections, hearing rumors of a
possible extramarital affair, gleaning details about Woody’s service in the
Korean War. Finally, rejoined by Kate and Ross for the final leg of the
journey, the entire family visits the farmhouse where Woody grew up, now a
decrepit mausoleum of farm-belt prosperity. The closer the characters get to
Lincoln, the more they appear to be receding into the past, culminating in one
magnificent sequence that equates a drive down a small main street with the
span of an entire life lived.
Dern is simply marvelous in a role the director reportedly
first offered to Gene Hackman, but which is all the richer for being played by
someone who was never as big of a star. Looking suitably disheveled and
sometimes dazed, he conveys the full measure of a man who has fallen short of
his own expectations, resisting the temptation to overplay, letting his
wonderfully weathered face course with subtle shades of sorrow, self-loathing
and indignation. Given the less innately attention-getting role (a la Tom
Cruise in “Rain Man”), Forte does similarly nuanced work, his scenes with Dern
resonating with the major and minor grievances that lie unresolved between
parents and children. Had Payne not already used it, “The Descendants” would have
been an equally apt title here, so acute is the film’s sense of the virtues and
vices passed down from one generation to the next.
Keach and Squibb (bumped off early in “About Schmidt,”
getting to go the full distance here) also stand out in a resolutely un-starry
cast, full of convincingly ordinary, plainspoken Midwesterners. In addition to
Papamichael’s camerawork, the plaintive guitar-and-fiddle score by Mark Orton
is another craft standout.
Jerry Lewis on the red carpet
How about a return of American comic icon Jerry Lewis to the
Cannes festivities in Daniel Noah's Max
Rose, by Michał Oleszczyk from The Ebert blog:
Jerry
Lewis is probably the only person in our universe who can get away with
addressing Cannes’ all-powerful festival director, Thierry Frémaux, in front of
a room full of people and calling him a putz. Famously beloved by the French
and thus at home in Cannes, Lewis was honored at this year’s festival with a
outdoor beach screening of “The Ladies Man,”
and — more importantly — with a world premiere of the latest movie featuring
him as the lead: Daniel Noah’s “Max Rose.”
The screening took place earlier today, and it was packed.
Greeted by thunderous applause that far superseded those for the score’s
composer Michel
Legrand, the 87-year-old Lewis glanced at the red-plush seats of the
theater and said: “Looks perfect for a funeral!” After Frémaux asked him if
he’d like to speak before the screening, Lewis shouted a loud “No!” at him, and
added the word already mentioned. The audience couldn’t stop cheering. Zh-erry,
we love you!
Quite possible the most manic of all American funnymen,
Lewis created a persona so grating and strange, so uninhibited and
idiosyncratic, it all but begs for a Webster definition of its own. He’s
certainly not for all tastes, but few people ever have managed to craft a
presence so recognizable and polarizing. In “Max Rose,” Lewis turns into what Martin Scorsese’s
“The King
of Comedy” already proved him capable of being, which is a serious dramatic
actor. His performance as the eponymous singer-songwriter, freshly widowed and
uncovering dark secrets of his late wife’s past, is what anchors the movie and
serves as its sole source of power.
Jokingly referred to as Jerry Lewis’s version of “Amour,” the film is a meditation
on old age and bereavement that’s as much about the characters it creates as it
is about the main actor it features. Lewis’s comedy always relied heavily on
the uncanny agility of his body and modulation of his voice: Here, with his
body visibly failing him, he’s like an artist deprived of his instruments.
There are still inspired touches, as when he’s miming playing a jazz concert,
or — morbidly — struggles to move up a steep staircase. But the real power of
the performance lies in its stillness: in Max’ stubborn stare at his
granddaughter taking care of him, as well as in his quiet resignation once he’s
put into a retirement home.
The film is punctuated by shots of Max and his wife (played
by the ever-radiant Claire Bloom)
in loving embrace, laying on their bed and discussing the shared plight of
aging. Lewis’ warmth in these scenes is quite remarkable — I cannot think of
any other role of his in which positive emotions would be so effortlessly
exposed (without the necessary dash of idiocy). Having said that, Lewis also
goes into some really dark places in “Max Rose”, of which the most chilling is
a scene in which his son begs him to say “I love you” to him — to no avail.
Less a character study than an homage to the actor playing
the main role, “Max Rose” is a singular work — not really accomplished as a
piece of filmmaking, but invaluable as a historical record. The narrative is
suspended between the reality of mourning and the fantasy of conversing with
the dead. The script has Max repeatedly interacting with his dead wife, before
he meets a group of new friends in the retirement home and starts hanging out
with them, smoking cigars and talking of the good old days. Once he discovers a
secret his wife never shared with him, he reflects upon his feelings for her,
and finds them unchanged. I never expected the star of "The Patsy" to
make me choke up, but damn me if it didn't happen tonight.
The Cannes Criterion Forum is up and running:
While Les Etoiles de la critiques is up and running as well,
where Blue Is the Warmest Color has
surpassed The Past (Le Passé) as the highest rated film,
followed by the Coens, followed by A
Touch of Sin. In Un Certain Regard, it's a tie between Stranger By the Lake and Grand Central. Without a numerical
rating, my quick criteria is counting how many films get 3 or more stars:
also Ioncinema's Critics' Panel 2013, Blue Is the Warmest Color has risen above all others with a 4.3
rating, followed by a tie between The
Past and the Coens averaging 3.7, followed by A Touch of Sin at 3.3, and three films tied at 3.1 :
Screendaily also has their Jury Grid, actual page 16
(Digital page 18) of the Screen Edition for Day 9 dated May 23, 2013, not updated since yesterday, but check back later
in the day. Start on the link provided, click on the bottom right of the image,
and there are two sets of multiple photos displayed on the bottom, where what
you want is the first group, almost all the way to the right, where page 18
does the trick, click on that page until you display the largest viewable
image. Currently only one film rates above a 3 rating, as the Coen
brothers averages 3.3, The Past and
Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty are at
2.8, while Like Father, Like Son and Behind the Candelabria are at 2.5:
While Neil Young from Jigsaw Lounge maintains the odds for
winners:
to win the 2013 Palme d’Or
which have been shown to press in Cannes are in bold
which have been shown to press in Cannes are in bold
3/1 Farhadi, Asghar – The
Past
7/2 Kechiche, Abdellatif -- Blue is the Warmest Colour
6/1 Kore-eda, Hirokazu – Like Father, Like Son
7/1 Coen & Coen – Inside Llewyn Davis
8/1 Sorrentino, Paolo — The Great Beauty
11/1 Haroun, Mahamat-Saleh -- Grigris
- – -
7/2 Kechiche, Abdellatif -- Blue is the Warmest Colour
6/1 Kore-eda, Hirokazu – Like Father, Like Son
7/1 Coen & Coen – Inside Llewyn Davis
8/1 Sorrentino, Paolo — The Great Beauty
11/1 Haroun, Mahamat-Saleh -- Grigris
- – -
16/1 Jia, Zhangke – A Touch of Sin
18/1 Soderbergh, Steven – Behind the Candelabra
25/1 Desplechin, Arnaud – Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian
25/1 Payne, Alexander – Nebraska
- – -
40/1 des Pallières, Arnaud – Michael Kohlhaas
40/1 Ozon, Francois – Young and Beautiful
50/1 Van Warmerdam, Alex – Borgman
50/1 Escalante, Amat – Heli
50/1 Winding Refn, Nicolas – Only God Forgives
50/1 Polanski, Roman — Venus In Fur
80/1 Jarmusch, Jim – Only Lovers Left Alive
100/1 Bruni-Tedeschi, Valeria – A Castle in Italy
18/1 Soderbergh, Steven – Behind the Candelabra
25/1 Desplechin, Arnaud – Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian
25/1 Payne, Alexander – Nebraska
- – -
40/1 des Pallières, Arnaud – Michael Kohlhaas
40/1 Ozon, Francois – Young and Beautiful
50/1 Van Warmerdam, Alex – Borgman
50/1 Escalante, Amat – Heli
50/1 Winding Refn, Nicolas – Only God Forgives
50/1 Polanski, Roman — Venus In Fur
80/1 Jarmusch, Jim – Only Lovers Left Alive
100/1 Bruni-Tedeschi, Valeria – A Castle in Italy
175/1 Miike, Takashi – Shield of Straw
Best Actor
7-2 Inside Llewyn Davis:
Oscar Isaac
9-2 The Great Beauty: Toni Servillo
5-1 Behind the Candelabra: Michael Douglas
….. (solo, or with Matt Damon)
6-1 Grigris: Souleymane Deme
8-1 Like Father, Like Son: Masaharu Fukuyama - – -
10-1 Nebraska: Bruce Dern
….. (solo, or with Will Forte)
10-1 The Immigrant: Joaquin Phoenix (solo, or with Jeremy Renner)
9-2 The Great Beauty: Toni Servillo
5-1 Behind the Candelabra: Michael Douglas
….. (solo, or with Matt Damon)
6-1 Grigris: Souleymane Deme
8-1 Like Father, Like Son: Masaharu Fukuyama - – -
10-1 Nebraska: Bruce Dern
….. (solo, or with Will Forte)
10-1 The Immigrant: Joaquin Phoenix (solo, or with Jeremy Renner)
14-1 Borgman: Jan Bijvoet
14-1 The Past: Ali Mosaffa and/or Tahar
Rahim
16-1 Mathieu Amalric and/or Benicio Del Toro
- – -
- – -
35-1 A Touch of Sin: male
ensemble
40-1 Only Lovers Left Alive: Tom Hiddleston
40-1 Only Lovers Left Alive: Tom Hiddleston
40-1 Michael Kohlhaas: Mads
Mikkelsen
40-1 Only God Forgives: Ryan
Gosling and/or Vithaya Pansringarm
50-1 Heli: Armando Espitia
50-1 Shield of Straw: Takao Osawa
and/or Tatsuya Fujiwara
—–
* any combination of Amalric and/or Del Toro in Jimmy P. and/or Amalric in Venus In Fur
—–
* any combination of Amalric and/or Del Toro in Jimmy P. and/or Amalric in Venus In Fur
Best Actress
—-
5-4 Blue is the Warmest Colour: Adèle Exarchopoulos
3-1 The Past: Bérénice Bejo
5-1 The Immigrant: Marion Cotillard
14-1 Venus In Fur: Emmanuelle Seigner
20-1 Only God Forgives: Kristin Scott Thomas
25-1 Young and Beautiful: Marina Vacth
25-1 Borgman: Hadewych Minis
35-1 Only Lovers Left Alive: Tilda Swinton and/or Mia Wasikowska
40-1 A Touch of Sin: female ensemble
50-1 Heli: Andrea Vergara
66-1 A Castle in Italy: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
80-1 Grigris: Anaïs Monory
80-1 Nebraska: June Squibb
The round-up of various links covering Cannes:
Screendaily still has paywalls, but if you click on the
reviews, they are 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 and Michał Oleszczyk from
the Roger Ebert blog:
Cannes Diary from Film
Comment:
Kevin Jagernauth and Jessica Kiang the indieWIRE
Playlist:
Drew McSweeny and Guy Lodge & others from HitFix:
a round-up of indieWIRE reviews:
Andrew O'Hehir from Salon:
Richard Porton and others from The Daily Beast:
Daniel Kasman, Adam Cook, and likely others at Mubi:
The House Next Door at Cannes:
Mike D'Angelo at The
Onion AV Club:
Keith Uhlich offering rival reviews from Time Out New York (Mike D'Angelo's
former employer):
Cannes Fest at Time
Out London:
The Guardian
collection of reviews:
The Guardian
Cannes commentary:
David Jenkins from Little White Lies:
Eric Lavallee and Nicholas Bell from Ion Cinema:
Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa:
Richard Corliss from Time
Magazine:
Various writers at Twitch:
Sukhdev Sandhu and Robbie Collins from The Daily Telegraph:
Julie Miller at Vanity
Fair:
And, of course, George is back at Cannes this year, where he
finds off the beaten track film fare:
I went to great ends to juggle my schedule today to work in
the Coen brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis," as it could be my last
chance to see it before Spielberg and his jury give out the awards Sunday night
in the Palais. Since its a leading contender for the top prize, it is a film
that I needed to see for the awards ceremony to be fully meaningful.
It was being screened at an awkward time slot that made it difficult to fit in
other films I wanted to see both before and after it. I also knew I had to get
in line for it at least an hour before its screening time. Seeing it came at
the price of one-and-a-half films, meaning I only have five-and-a-half films to
report on rather than the usual seven.
Two-and-a-half of them were all very worthwhile Un Certain Regard films. The
past two years I counted on Ralph to keep me appraised of what to see in that
category, as I somewhat neglect it in favor of the Market. It made for a good
day of catching up with all the special repeat screenings of the two top
categories of invited filmed. I'm certain Ralph would have been
enthusiastically telling me to see "Omar,"
a most taunt and tension-packed Palestinian film.
One of the Palestinians regularly climbs over the thirty-foot wall in Jerusalem
with a rope to work and visit friends even though it comes with the risk of
being shot at. He is a member of a cadre of freedom-fighters who gun down an
Israeli soldier. One of their members is arrested by the Israelis and subjected
to more of the extreme torture that has been featured in quite a few of this
year's films. He's given the heat-to-the-testicles treatment as seen in
"Heli," though not so graphically.
The Israelis think they have made a deal with him and release him to help them
catch the leader of their group. He wants out more to see his young girl friend
than for any other reason, though he doesn't know she is pregnant by one of his
friends and is hoping to get an abortion before he finds out. This was more
than a dashed-off script. There is wit to go along with all the strong
performances and story-line, resorting just once to an all too standard cinema
cliche--a character explaining his battered face to having fallen off his
bicycle, though we never once see him on a bicycle.
As this gave an insightful portrayal of Palestinians living in Israel, "Grand Central" gave a good
portrayal of what it's like to work at a French nuclear reactor. Tamar Rahim,
from "A Prophet" and also this year's "The Past," has just
been hired to work at one of the nineteen nuclear plants in France in a menial
position. He's immediately introduced to the gallows humor of his fellow
workers when a beautiful young woman gives him a kiss at a bar gathering of the
workers. She tells him that the weak-kneed feeling he'd just experienced was
how he'd feel if he learned that he was over-exposed to radiation, a threat
that is their lot. What happens I can't say, as I had to leave half-way through
to get in line for "Inside Llewyn Davis," but up to that point I was
enjoying another fine cinema experience.
"Bastards" from Claire
Denis was the other of my day's Un Certain Regard screenings. When the schedule
of films was announced over a month ago there was a minor hubbub over why this
film from a significant French director wasn't in the Competition category. I
was wondering the same as I watched. It had to be a tough decision for the
selection committee, but knowing their expertise I knew they had viable
reasons. It wasn't a typical talk-talk-talk French film, but let the brooding
of a brother and sister dealing with their assorted troubles, responding to the
suicide of their businessman father and their financial difficulties, carry the
weight of the movie. Denis doesn't show the man the man jumping, just thinking
about it, then an ambulance in the distance tending to a body. It's not entirely
clear at first what has happened, setting the tone for the movie. Likewise she
does not show the daughter of the sister being brutally raped. It is just
revealed by her doctor at the psychiatric hospital where she is being treated.
There may have been too many dark movies in Competition and a quota of French
films. Also there might only have been enough room for one movie with a guy
helping a kid put a chain back on his bicycle, and the selectors chose
"The Past" over this one.
The decision may well have come down to between this film and "A Castle in Italy," another
French film by a woman director, Valerie Bruni Tedeschi, a very talky and
frothy comedy. It stars not only its director but her husband, French hunk
Louis Garrel. Having the two of them walk the red carpet, as they have done
many a time, may have won them a Competition slot over Denis. It also helped
that their film was lighter fare, which the Competition field is always in need
of.
Tedeschi and Garrel play somewhat lonely and semi-neurotic actors in this film.
They work together and are friends despite their age and social status
difference. Tedeschi convinces Garrel to father a chlld as a sperm donor
through a clinic. He'd rather just have some fun sex, but goes along with her
desires despite trying to back out at the last moment as they are driving to
the clinic. Among Tedeschi's escapades are trying to get the blessing of some
nuns for her fetus. They refuse, claiming it is a mortal sin to have a child
out of wedlock despite the unusual circumstances. She barges into their sanctum
to sit in a sacred chair anyway causing havoc.
I have been avoiding commenting on "Inside
Llewyn Davis" as it was a disappointment and left me feeling empty,
forlorn and dejected like most of the characters in the movie. Davis is a
struggling folk singer in 1960s Greenwich Village. He is not only frustrated
but miserable, with a permanent scowl on his face. He is dependent on crashing
on the couches of friends, yet he has not a shrewd of decency lashing out at
one and all. He insults everyone, even some musicians who have invited him to a
studio session where he can earn some much needed cash. He refuses to sing at
dinner one night for academic friends who have come to his rescue once again,
creating a most horrible scene. He ridiculously heckles an older woman at one
of the folk venues he performs at. He leaves a string of women pregnant, the
latest the wife of a friend. At least he knows a doctor who gives abortions.
This movie may have meant to be funny, but no one was laughing in my packed
theatre. The Coens resort to the cheap gimmick of a cat that continually goes
astray. At first it seems as if it will add some comic relief to the heavy
moroseness that suffocates any enjoyment to be found in this sad, pathetic
portrayal, but it too brings down the movie. And there is all too much mediocre
singing, justifying why Davis is not a success. The jury will be very
irresponsible to give this any awards.
This movie let out too late for me to make it to the Critic's Weekly award
winning film. Instead I had to settle for 3X3D,
a trio of 3D experiments by Godard, Peter Greenaway and Edgar Pera. Greenaway
and Pera were there to introduce it. Greenaway said he wasn't sure if he would
ever attempt another while Pena called 3D a new frontier and a playground. Both
their segments were innovative and somewhat playful, Greenaway in particular
making extravagant use of the extra dimension, while Godard only marginally
took advantage of it.
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