Suki Waterhouse
Jennifer Lawrence
Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy
French actress Aymeline Valade and actor Gaspard Ulliel
Argentine director Lisandro Alonso and actor Viggo Mortensen
Actors Sam Louwyck, Monica Bellucci, director Alice Rohrwacher, and actress Alba Rohrwacher
Thierry Frémaux et Monica Bellucci
Leila Bekhti
Red carpet shots from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/cannes-2014-photos-nicole-kidman-704065
A collection of pieces from The Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tag/cannes-style
Cannes photos from The
Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/cannes-film-festival/10829998/Cannes-Film-Festival-2014-In-pictures.html
Vogue guide to
Cannes:
http://www.vogue.co.uk/event/cannes-film-festival
Elle fashion
photos:
http://www.elleuk.com/star-style/red-carpet/cannes-film-festival-2014-celebrity-red-carpet-images#image=8
E Online photos:
http://www.eonline.com/photos/12518/2014-cannes-film-festival-star-sightings
Hollywood Life photo gallery:
http://hollywoodlife.com/pics/cannes-film-festival-2014-celebrities-pictures-red-carpet/#!1/blake-lively-cannes-5/
Huffington Post
fashion styles:
Best dressed 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
International Business
Times:
Another large gallery of photos:
People magazine hits the Cannes red
carpet:
http://www.peoplestylewatch.com/people/stylewatch/gallery/0,,20700799,00.html,
or more here: http://www.peoplestylewatch.com/people/stylewatch/redcarpet/
Cannes
Film Festival: Strauss-Kahn Film Under Fire Rachel Donadio from The New York Times, May 18, 2014
Late Saturday night at a beach club here, revelers gathered
on the dance floor wearing unique party favors: white terrycloth bathrobes with
black monograms that read “WTNY.” The letters stood for “Welcome to New York,”
Abel Ferrara’s graphic and barely fictionalized film about the sexual assault
case involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the
International Monetary Fund.
As a techno remix of Madonna blasted from the speakers, a
woman dressed in a nurse’s outfit dispensed blue-hued shots in large plastic
syringes and guests inspected gift bags filled with handcuffs, a small whip and
a black eye mask.
The explicit film stars Gérard Depardieu as Mr. Devereaux, a
character inspired by Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested in New York in 2011 on
charges of sexually assaulting a hotel housekeeper. The charges were later
dropped, although Mr. Strauss-Kahn still faces charges in France of
participating in a prostitution ring. Jacqueline Bisset plays his wife, Simone,
modeled on Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s former wife, the popular French journalist Anne
Sinclair.
“Welcome to New York” has generated controversy in France,
where it was seen as over-the-top and was not picked up for theatrical
distribution. On Sunday, writing for The
Huffington Post in France, Ms. Sinclair expressed
her disgust for the film, and called the references to her family
“degrading and defamatory.”
Though it is not an official selection of the 67th annual
Cannes Film Festival, its producer-distributor, Wild Bunch, organized the party
and a screening for journalists at the beach club on Saturday to coincide with
the film’s release on video on demand in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The
film will be shown in the United States later this year.
Asked why the film wouldn’t be shown in theaters in France,
the producer Vincent Maraval accused some French distributors and outlets of
“self-censorship,” indicating that they might have been afraid of offending Mr.
Strauss-Kahn’s family. Mr. Strauss-Kahn was once a contender for the leadership
of the Socialist Party and Ms. Sinclair is one of the country’s best-known
television and radio interviewers.
A power player in French cinema, Mr.
Maraval seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the media spectacle he had created
here. Asked whether the family had expressed discontent, he said the movie
opened with multiple disclaimers. Asked if he expected lawsuits anyway, he
smiled. “If they want to make us publicity, they’re welcome,” he said.
At a news conference following the screening, Mr. Depardieu
called the movie a Shakespearean saga about power, sex and money. He said, “I
never questioned the morality of my character,” adding, “I do understand
passions and impulses.”
Mr. Ferrara, who was wearing dark sunglasses even at night,
said he had asked Mr. Depardieu and Ms. Bisset to improvise for the film, which
he described as “some kind of cross between a documentary and haiku poetry.”
The poetry may be lost on viewers. The film includes a scene
in which Mr. Depardieu has sex with two women at once and another in which he
and two associates eat ice cream off the bodies of call girls. After he
assaults a housekeeper at a New York hotel, Mr. Devereaux is arrested at the
airport by New York police officers, put in a holding cell with other inmates
and subject to a strip search that leaves nothing to the imagination.
A furious but still-loving Simone pays to bail him out and
rent a duplex-apartment downtown. She looks around the place, with its mediocre
art, and tells him, “This is what $60,000 gets you in New York.” She means the
monthly rent.
Ms. Sinclair is an heir to the fortune built by her maternal
grandfather, Pierre Rosenberg, an influential art dealer to Picasso, Cézanne,
Matisse and others, who was forced to flee the Nazis and renounce his French
citizenship. In one scene in the film, Mr. Depardieu’s character says that he
is just a professor, while Simone, with her background, is the one who really
understands money and power.
In The Huffington
Post, Ms. Sinclair wrote that she would not give Mr. Ferrara and Mr.
Maravel “the pleasure” of suing them. “I am not attacking this filth,” she
wrote. “I am vomiting on it.”
Cannes Film Festival: 'Timbuktu' Director on Africa and
Fundamentalism How about more by
Rachel Donadio from The New York Times,
May 17, 2014
There’s a sad, powerful scene in “Timbuktu,” Abderrahmane
Sissako’s well-received
new film about that ancient capital’s recent takeover by Islamic
fundamentalists, that resonates even more strongly in light of the schoolgirls
kidnapped last month as child brides by Islamic fundamentalists in Nigeria.
In the scene, a foreign jihadi who’s new in town asks a
local woman for her teenaged daughter’s hand in marriage. When the mother
refuses, saying it’s not a local tradition to marry her own child to a perfect
stranger, the jihadi grows angry. He came here peacefully, he says, but if she
won’t give her consent, then he will have to use force. And he does.
In an interview here on Friday, Mr. Sissako said that he
hoped “Timbuktu,” which is in the feature-film competition here at the 67th
annual Cannes Film Festival, could help provide insights into how
fundamentalism has been encroaching across Africa in areas where Islamic
practice has long been less strict.
“The film, could help people understand — not to change
anything, but to give an insight into these themes and issues,” Mr. Sissiko
said, speaking in French. The director, 52, was born in Mauritania, raised in
Mali, and educated in Moscow; he lives in France now.
He said he was inspired to make the film after reading about
a young Malian couple stoned to death for having two children out of wedlock.
“It was just five or six lines in a local newspaper,” he said.
Filmed in Timbuktu and Mauritania, the film will be released
in France this summer, and its producers are in talks at Cannes for
distribution elsewhere, including the United States. This is Mr. Sissako’s
third film at the Cannes Film Festival, after “Waiting for Happiness” in 2002
and “Bamako,” which was shown out of competition in 2006. He has also served on
the festival jury.
It was during the filming of “Bamako” in in 2005 that Mr.
Sissiko befriended a local imam who would later help inspire the imam in
“Timbuktu,” played by Adel Mahmoud Cherif. The character chides the jihadis for
wearing shoes and bringing their weapons inside the mosque. The director said
the imam was the film’s key role. “That’s the real Islam,” he said.
“Timbuktu” unfolds quietly through a few characters — a
Tuareg herder, Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed), whose happy life with his wife (Toulou
Kiki) and their daughter is threatened when a series of accidents lands him in
the local Islamic court, which also sentences a man and women to stoning after
they are caught playing the music for which Mali has been known for centuries.
Mali underwent major upheaval when a 2012 Tuareg rebellion
gave way to a military coup; Islamic militants meanwhile took over the desert
north, leading to French intervention. The Islamists “managed to impose their
vision but not to change the people,” Mr. Sissiko said. When he returned to
prepare the film, “I became aware of the city’s peaceful resistance during the
occupation. This is why they managed to free themselves from the siege quite
quickly,” the director said, adding that the intervention last year by
French-led troops was relatively smooth because the local population was also
opposed to the Islamists.
“Timbuktu” depicts a city where sassy women, unaccustomed to
covering their heads, talk back to the foreign Islamic police who enforce a ban
on music and soccer even as they discuss highlights of championship matches and
sneak the occasional banned cigarette.
Mr. Sissako said he wanted to show the Islamists as fully
realized characters. “My starting point was to think of them as human beings
like us,” he said. “We don’t share their vision or values, we condemn them,” he
added.
But “I didn’t want to have a Manichean attitude, to have the
good on one side and the bad on the other. That’s not the way it is in real
life,” the director continued. He paused. From Nazi Germany to Rwanda in the
1990s, he added, “history has proven many times to us, that very often our
neighbors become our hangmen.”
Scott Foundas review
of David Michôd’s post-apocalyptic road movie, The Rover, from Variety May
17, 2014
The promise of Australian director David Michod’s 2010 debut feature,
“Animal Kingdom,” is amply realized in “The Rover,” a post-apocalyptic road
movie of sorts set a decade after some unspecified cataclysm has turned the
world — or at least one far-off corner of it — into a mercenary no-man’s-land.
Tipping its hat to George Miller’s “Mad Max” trilogy while striking a more
somber, introspective tone, Michod’s sophomore feature isn’t exactly something
we’ve never seen before, but it has a desolate beauty all its own, and a
career-redefining performance by Robert Pattinson that reveals
untold depths of sensitivity and feeling in the erstwhile “Twilight” star. A
commercial challenge due to its mix of explicit violence, measured pacing and
narrative abstractions, the pic should earn the warm embrace of discerning
genre fans and further establish Michod as one of the most gifted young
directors around. Upstart U.S. indie A24
rolls “The Rover” out June 13, simultaneous to Oz release via Roadshow.
Exactly what has gone wrong in the world (referenced only as
“the collapse”) is never explicitly stated here; nor are the motivations of the
film’s taciturn central character, Eric (Guy Pearce), up until a deftly
handled and unexpectedly moving final scene. All we know for most of “The
Rover” is that Eric really, really wants to regain ownership of his car, which
is stolen in an early scene by a trio of agitated, desperate-looking men
fleeing from the scene of a crime. After flipping their truck outside a forlorn
watering hole, the men — a white Australian (David Field), a black New
Zealander (Tawanda Manyimo) and an American (Scoot McNairy) — continue on in
Eric’s dust-covered sedan. Having rehabilitated the damaged truck, Eric
promptly gives chase. We are somewhere in the south Australian outback, and the
road stretches toward an infinite horizon.
Eric’s journey takes him ever deeper into the parched,
desolate landscape, shot by Michod and the Argentinian-born d.p. Natasha Braier
(“The Milk of Sorrow”) in arresting widescreen compositions that constantly
frame the actors small against the vast, enveloping nothingness. Makeshift
trading posts dot the way — only American dollars are accepted, in one
indication that the “collapse” was at least partly an economic one — while
periodic glimpses of military convoys imply that society may be under martial
law.
Also en route: arguably the creepiest farmhouse since “The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” where a disturbingly courtly grandma (the excellent
Gillian Jones) keeps watch over a traveling circus that long ago stopped
traveling. It’s there that Eric crosses paths with Rey (Pattinson), the badly
wounded fourth member of the fugitive gang (and the younger brother of the lone
American), whom he takes as a kind of hostage before continuing on his way.
Slow of wit and tongue, Rey resists his captor’s prying
questions about the others’ whereabouts and motives — as well as his repeated
suggestion that Rey had been left by his own brother to die on the side of the
road (a point of connection with “Animal Kingdom” and its insidious,
intra-familial betrayals). But after being patched up by a lady doctor (Susan
Prior), he agrees to lead Eric to their hideout and his hoped-for reunion with
his beloved automobile.
The road traveled from there shares something with the
existential highways of movies like “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “Vanishing Point,”
in which the characters keep forever moving forward because stasis looms as a
kind of symbolic death. Only gradually do both men divulge a few spare details
of their respective pasts: Eric admits to a crime in his past for which he was
never brought to justice, further eroding his already fragile faith in
humanity; Rey says that he and his brother came to Australia looking for mining work —
evidently one of the only growth industries left in this new world order. To
say that these unwitting traveling companions gradually grow close would be a
bit of an exaggeration, but a hesitant sort of trust takes hold, and when the
two find their backs against the wall, they join forces against a common
threat.
Pearce is fiercely impressive here as a man who gave up on
the human race even before the latest round of calamities, and if there are
occasional glimpses of the kinder, gentler man he might once have been, we are
more frequently privy to his savage survival instincts. But it’s Pattinson who
turns out to be the film’s greatest surprise, sporting a convincing Southern
accent and bringing an understated dignity to a role that might easily have
been milked for cheap sentimental effects. With his slurry drawl and wide-eyed,
lap-dog stare, Rey initially suggests a latter-day Lennie Small, but he isn’t
so much developmentally disabled as socially regressed — an overprotected
mama’s boy suddenly cast to the wolves — and Pattinson never forces or overdoes
anything, building up an empathy for the character that’s entirely earned. He
becomes an oasis of humanity in this stark, forsaken land.
Those looking for big action and bombast will inevitably be
disappointed, but Michod (who also wrote the script, based on a story he
conceived with actor-writer-director Joel Edgerton) strikes an eerie, unsettling
tension early on and rarely lets go — a mood immeasurably enhanced by “Animal
Kingdom” composer Antony Partos’ original score, which compensates for the
film’s spare dialogue with an inspired mix of industrial shrieks, tribal
drumbeats and wails, and fleeting snatches of melody. The rich soundscape is
further enhanced by sound designer Sam Petty’s crisply recorded and mixed
effects, which bring every humming electric light, chirping cricket and
whirring engine to the fore.
The Cannes Criterion Forum is up and running:
While Les Etoiles de la critiques is up and running as well:
http://www.lefilmfrancais.com/118376/cannes-2014-les-etoiles-de-la-critique-5
http://www.lefilmfrancais.com/118376/cannes-2014-les-etoiles-de-la-critique-5
While Neil Young from Jigsaw Lounge maintains the odds for
winners:
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2014bet/
http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2014bet/
to win the Palme d’Or
(titles in bold have been screened at the festival)
(titles in bold have been screened at the festival)
7/2 Winter Sleep
(N.B.Ceylan)
5/1 Leviathan (A.Zvyagintsev)
5/1 Leviathan (A.Zvyagintsev)
8/1 Mr Turner (M.Leigh)
8/1 Foxcatcher (B.Miller)
9/1 The Wonders (A.Rohrwacher)
10/1 Timbuktu (A.Sissako)
- – -
14/1 Maps to the Stars (D.Cronenberg)
16/1 Two Days, One Night (Dardenne & Dardenne)
16/1 Still the Water (N.Kawase)
20/1 Goodbye to Language (J-L.Godard)
20/1 Clouds of Sils Maria (O.Assayas)
25/1 The Homesman (T.L.Jones)
- – -
33/1 The Search (M.Hazanavicius)
33/1 Jimmy’s Hall (K.Loach)
40/1 Mommy (X.Dolan)
66/1 Wild Tales (D.Szifrón)
66/1 Saint Laurent (B.Bonello)
- – -
200/1 The Captive (A.Egoyan)
BEST ACTRESS
2/1 Two Days One Night – Marion Cotillard
11/4 Maps to the Stars – Julianne Moore (solo or with Mia Wasikowska)
7/1 The Wonders – Maria Alexandra Lungu
10/1 Still the Water – Makiko Watanabe
12/1 Mommy – Anne Dorval (/Suzanne Clement)
12/1 Winter Sleep – Demet Akbag / Melisa Sozen
14/1 Timbuktu – Toulou Kiki
16/1 Leviathan – Elena Lyadova
16/1 Clouds of Sils Maria – Juliette Binoche (/ K.Stewart and/or C.G.Moretz)
18/1 The Homesman – Hillary Swank
18/1 Mr Turner – Dorothy Atkinson
20/1 Wild Tales – Erica Rivas (/female ensemble)
22/1 The Search – Bérénice Bejo
8/1 Foxcatcher (B.Miller)
9/1 The Wonders (A.Rohrwacher)
10/1 Timbuktu (A.Sissako)
- – -
14/1 Maps to the Stars (D.Cronenberg)
16/1 Two Days, One Night (Dardenne & Dardenne)
16/1 Still the Water (N.Kawase)
20/1 Goodbye to Language (J-L.Godard)
20/1 Clouds of Sils Maria (O.Assayas)
25/1 The Homesman (T.L.Jones)
- – -
33/1 The Search (M.Hazanavicius)
33/1 Jimmy’s Hall (K.Loach)
40/1 Mommy (X.Dolan)
66/1 Wild Tales (D.Szifrón)
66/1 Saint Laurent (B.Bonello)
- – -
200/1 The Captive (A.Egoyan)
BEST ACTRESS
2/1 Two Days One Night – Marion Cotillard
11/4 Maps to the Stars – Julianne Moore (solo or with Mia Wasikowska)
7/1 The Wonders – Maria Alexandra Lungu
10/1 Still the Water – Makiko Watanabe
12/1 Mommy – Anne Dorval (/Suzanne Clement)
12/1 Winter Sleep – Demet Akbag / Melisa Sozen
14/1 Timbuktu – Toulou Kiki
16/1 Leviathan – Elena Lyadova
16/1 Clouds of Sils Maria – Juliette Binoche (/ K.Stewart and/or C.G.Moretz)
18/1 The Homesman – Hillary Swank
18/1 Mr Turner – Dorothy Atkinson
20/1 Wild Tales – Erica Rivas (/female ensemble)
22/1 The Search – Bérénice Bejo
BEST ACTOR
4/1 Mr Turner – Timothy Spall
9/2 Foxcatcher – Steve Carell (/ C.Tatum and/or M.Ruffalo)
6/1 Winter Sleep – Haluk Bilginer
7/1 Leviathan – Alexey Serebryakov (/ Vladimir Vdovichenkov)
8/1 Timbuktu – Ibrahim Ahmed
11/1 The Search – Maksim Emelyanov
16/1 Jimmy’s Hall – Barry Ward (/ Jim Norton)
20/1 Mommy – Antoine-Olivier Pilon (/Patrick Huard)
20/1 Two Days One Night – Fabrizio Rongione
20/1 Saint Laurent – Gaspard Ulliel
20/1 The Homesman – Tommy Lee Jones
20/1 The Wonders – Sam Louwyck
25/1 Maps to the Stars – Robert Pattinson (/John Cusack and/or Evan Bird)
25/1 Still the Water – Hideo Sakaki
28/1 Wild Tales – Ricardo Darín (/ male ensemble)
4/1 Mr Turner – Timothy Spall
9/2 Foxcatcher – Steve Carell (/ C.Tatum and/or M.Ruffalo)
6/1 Winter Sleep – Haluk Bilginer
7/1 Leviathan – Alexey Serebryakov (/ Vladimir Vdovichenkov)
8/1 Timbuktu – Ibrahim Ahmed
11/1 The Search – Maksim Emelyanov
16/1 Jimmy’s Hall – Barry Ward (/ Jim Norton)
20/1 Mommy – Antoine-Olivier Pilon (/Patrick Huard)
20/1 Two Days One Night – Fabrizio Rongione
20/1 Saint Laurent – Gaspard Ulliel
20/1 The Homesman – Tommy Lee Jones
20/1 The Wonders – Sam Louwyck
25/1 Maps to the Stars – Robert Pattinson (/John Cusack and/or Evan Bird)
25/1 Still the Water – Hideo Sakaki
28/1 Wild Tales – Ricardo Darín (/ male ensemble)
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: http://www.screendaily.com/, also: http://www.screendaily.com/festivals/cannes/reviews
The Hollywood Reporter at Cannes: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/cannes/2014
David Hudson does all the links for each review at Fandor: http://www.fandor.com/blog/?s=Cannes+2014
The Hollywood Reporter at Cannes: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/cannes/2014
David Hudson does all the links for each review at Fandor: http://www.fandor.com/blog/?s=Cannes+2014
The Film Center's Barbara Scharres and Michał Oleszczyk from
the Roger Ebert blog: http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards
Kevin Jagernauth, Oliver Lyttelton, and Jessica Kiang the indieWIRE
Playlist: http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/tag/cannes-film-festival
a round-up of indieWIRE reviews: http://www.indiewire.com/reviews/, with everything consolidated here: http://www.indiewire.com/article/the-2014-indiewire-cannes-bible-every-review-interview-and-news-item-posted-during-run-of-festival
a round-up of indieWIRE reviews: http://www.indiewire.com/reviews/, with everything consolidated here: http://www.indiewire.com/article/the-2014-indiewire-cannes-bible-every-review-interview-and-news-item-posted-during-run-of-festival
Daniel Kasman, Adam Cook, and likely others at Mubi: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/tag/Cannes%202014
The House Next Door at Cannes: http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/tag/cannes-film-festival/
Mike D'Angelo at the Dissolve: http://thedissolve.com/features/postcards-from-cannes/
Cannes Diary from Film
Comment: http://www.filmlinc.com/blog/cannes
The Guardian
collection of reviews: http://www.theguardian.com/film/cannes-2014
The Guardian
Cannes commentary: http://m.guardiannews.com/film/cannesfilmfestival
David Jenkins from Little White Lies: http://www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/features/festivals
Eric Lavallee and Nicholas Bell from Ion Cinema: http://www.ioncinema.com/category/news/film-festivals
Eric Lavallee and Nicholas Bell from Ion Cinema: http://www.ioncinema.com/category/news/film-festivals
Fabien Lemercier at Cineuropa: https://storify.com/cineuropa/festival-de-cannes-2014
Drew McSweeny and Guy Lodge & others from HitFix: http://www.hitfix.com/movies/cannes-film-festival
Various writers at Twitch: http://twitchfilm.com/festivals/cannes/
Sukhdev Sandhu and Robbie Collins from The Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/cannes-film-festival/
And, of course, George is back at Cannes this year, where he
finds off the beaten track film fare: http://georgethecyclist.blogspot.com
With no cycling films in the market this year, running films
have had to take their place for me. I saw my fourth today and have another
tomorrow. Anna is an 18-year national caliber sprinter in Czechoslovakia
in the early 1980s in the Czech film "Fair
Play." She's been taking vitamin B injections and then is told
to add another injection to her regimen. When she starts sprouting
thicker hair on her legs and a mustache and her period is late, she learns this
new injection is steroids. She stops taking them and her results suffer.
Her mother wants her to make the Olympics so she can have a better life
and potentially be able to escape the country as did her athlete father fifteen
years before. She's been the one administrating the drugs to her, so
resumes the steroids, pretending they are the B vitamins. Her daughter's
performance improves. When she is given a blood test and the doctor is
pleased by her blood levels, the daughter realizes what her mother has been
doing and isn't happy about it.
There was also some running in the Spanish film "Beautiful Youth" in Un Certain
Regard. Four guys chase after a guy who slashed the throat of one of them
after the court case trying to gain compensation from him fails. The
injured guy is desperate for money. His girl friend has just had a baby
and the two of these high school drop-outs still live with their parents, both
single mothers, and don't have jobs. This virtual documentary of the near
hopelessness of life in economically depressed Spain has the boy's girl friend
contemplating moving to Germany where she can get a job. This was as honest and
as real as a movie can be, but almost too real to be of any great interest.
The Tommie Lee Jones' Competition film "Homesman" didn't get my day off to as good a day as I
had hoped. I had no tension of gaining entry with an Invitation in hand,
but my high expectations based on Jones' other film he directed, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada,
that won two awards at Cannes in 2005, fell short. Hilary Swank as a
strong, independent 31-year old surviving on her own in the man's world of
homesteaders in 19th century Nebraska made for an interesting character and so
did the premise of the harsh life driving woman crazy, but the script did no
justice to the other women and resorted to acts that begged reality. As
with every premiering film here that has yet to be assessed by the reviewing
hoards, I was strongly rooting for this film to rise to the heights I hoped of
it. It started out adequately, as did "Saint Laurent," but did not
grow. Not a failure by any means, only in the respect that it didn't
stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the out of the ordinary.
The day's other Competition film, "The Wonders" by the Italian director Alice Rohrwacher,
one of two women in the field, gave an entertaining lesson in bee-keeping.
It is a full-fledged family operation with the young children of an
eccentric, very Italian father responsible for much of the labor. The
family is battling to survive, but the heart of the movie is what its like to
be around bees and honey all day.
I included the French Canadian film "Miraculum" on my slate for the day as the cast included
Xaviar Dolan, who has a film in Competition. He generally directs, but
when he acts he lights up the screen with his intense, explosive personality.
His visage with fierce, blazing eyes open this movie of multiple stories,
not all of which intersect. He plays a Jehovah Witness minister of all
things who is suffering from leukemia and refuses to have the blood transfusion
that could save his life. Another of the stories is about a guy who smuggles
sixty tubes of drugs in his intestinal track into the country. This
market film was another example of the strength of Canadian cinema, what with
three films in Competition, more than any other country.
When Australian Gracie Otto noticed everyone flocking around
an older man at a party at Cannes several years ago and learned who he was she
decided to make a documentary about him, resulting in "The Impressarior." The man was Michael White, a
long-time London producer of plays and movies, including Oh Calcutta, My Dinner with Andre, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Unfortunately White has
suffered three strokes and couldn't express himself very well. The film is
dominated by interviews with dozens of people he worked with--John Waters,
Wally Shawn, Naomi Watts. In the hands of a more accomplished filmmaker
this could have been an extraordinary film but instead it was another of those
ho-hum documentaries that was more informative than entertaining.
I couldn't find a new film in the eight p.m. slot with any
promise, so rather than risking mind-numbing fare I treated myself to another
Cannes Classic--"The Good
Life" from 1966 by Jean-Paul Rappeneau on hand to introduce it.
This comedy starred Catherine Deneuve as the wife of a wealthy orchard
owner during WWII. Their chateau has been commandeered by the Germans.
They are also providing temporary refuge to a member of the Resistance.
He along with the German commander are flagrantly vying for the attentions
of Deneuve right in the face of her husband. D-Day is imminent.
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