Those who were hoping that the promised additions to the Cannes Competition selection announced last week would bring some added name appeal to a lineup shorter than usual on star auteurs — particularly in the English-language realm — will be disappointed by today’s announcement. Cease your prayers for “The Tree of Life” to show up … they haven’t been answered.
Boosting the number of Competition titles to 18 are “Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project,” from Hungarian director Kornél Mondruczó (who also made the lineup two years ago with “Delta”) and Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Chongqing Blues.”
The latter has been promoted from its initial placing in the Un Certain Regard lineup — which suggests to me that selectors are running thin on options as certain hoped-for candidates have failed to pan out. As it stands, it’s one of the more sober (not to mention shorter) Competition lists in recent memory.
Joining the Un Certain Regard selection, meanwhile, are another Chinese title, Jia Zhang Ke’s “I Wish I Knew,” as well as the latest from Argentinian director Pablo Trapero, “Carancho.” The placement of both films surprises me, given that Jia’s “24 City” and Trapero’s “Lion’s Den” were both well-regarded Competition entries two years ago. That they’ve been demoted in this fashion while Mondruczó keeps his spot is but one of the lineup’s curiosities.
Sure to be a hotter ticket than any of these titles, however, is Olivier Assayas’s five-hour-plus Carlos the Jackal study “Carlos,” which was revealed as an Out of Competition selection earlier this week. (It is reportedly ineligible for a Competition berth due to an imminent airing on French cable television. Pity.) Joining it in that category is yet another product of Romania’s prolific new wave, Andrei Ujică’s “Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu.”
Finally, congratulations to ubiquitous composer Alexandre Desplat, whose name has been added to the Tim Burton-led main jury that already included Kate Beckinsale, Alberto Barbera, Emmanuel Carrere, Benicio Del Toro, Victor Erice, Shekhar Kapur and Giovanna Mezzogiorno.
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5 responses to “Cannes finalizes Competition lineup, jury”
Sober is definitely the word. Maybe the quality of the films themselves will make-up for the lack of hyped titles. I had my eye out on Carlos, I’d read somewhere that it’d make the line-up but alas. Though I must say I became interested in Assayas only after watching Summer Hours and this is a completely different direction.
This is great for Desplat because I believe composers rarely get this honor. I hope the Jury which is leaning mainstream can make some interesting choices this year.
Well, even if Delta was no ground-breaker, I’m actually curious where Mundruczó is headed. I admit this isn’t the most scintillating lineup on the surface, but it’s actually fun to contemplate learning some new names, and not having any movie or director charging into the fest as an automatic front-runner. I’m a bit taken aback (as ever) by some of the filmmakers who’ve been shunted into other sections, but at least after all the well-justified complaints that last year’s Palme competition was mostly made up of subpar work by established auteurs, they haven’t gone that route again (or, at least, not quite so pronouncedly). Hopefully at least a couple of these are worth getting excited about. I’m definitely eager for the Lee, the Im, and the Apichatpong, and curious about the Haroun.
It sounds like many of the submitted films were not to the committee’s liking. I wonder why they wanted to give Julian Schnabel an out of competition spot and not a competition spot. They surely would have accepted Tree of Life but it wasn’t ready. It will be interesting to see what/who wins the prizes this year.
It’ll be interesting to see how much Ujică’s style matches up with the rest of his “new wave” colleagues, given that he hasn’t made a film since the mid-90s. That’s three Romanian films in the festival, all from a “movement” whose existence is denied by its leading filmmakers. Is this the most Romanian representation at Cannes in any one year so far? Anyway, the title alone promises quite a lot, and hopefully it makes good.
If I’m scanning the lists right the competition is now finalized with a single woman filmmaker, in the Un certain regard section. I guess the “Year of the Woman” was a one-time deal?
With a record number of both female-directed Competition entries and female jurors last year (in fact, the jury was mostly female), I guess they feel they’ve bought themselves a couple of years of male domination.