Cracks show in Cannes lineup

After surveying the reviews of Johnnie To’s “Vengeance” and Brillante Mendoza’s “Kinatay,” it seems safe to assume that neither film is a contender for the Palme d’Or — in the latter, we may even have our first real critical punchbag of the Competition.

ScreenDaily dismisses “Vengeance,” an action effort teaming Hong Kong genre lord To with iconic French actor/singer Johnny Hallyday, as a “revenge shoot-em-up which fires mostly blanks,” citing a “contrived plot,” “wooden English dialogue” and a “stilted” lead performance as the key problems. Variety is more charitable, calling it “smoothly executed” but ultimately “more of the stylish same” from the director.

Less predictable, and a lot more contentious, appears to be “Kinatay,” a grim, ultra-violent (the title translates as “slaughter”) tale of an ordinary man drawn into a crime syndicate — though apparently a lot weirder than that generic premise indicates. Variety slates the film, labelling it both “unpleasant” and “banal,” and predicting a general critical drubbing.

Roger Ebert confirms that prognosis, with a vicious takedown in which he claims the film surpasses Vincent Gallo’s infamous “The Brown Bunny” as the worst in the festival’s history:

There will be critics who fancy themselves theoreticians, who will defend this unbearable experience, and lecture those plebians like me who missed the whole Idea. I will remain serene while my ignorance is excoriated. I am a human being with relatively reasonable tastes. And in that role, not in the role of film critic, I declare that there may not be ten people in the world who will buy a ticket to this movie and feel the money was well spent.

It is inclusions like these that show up the laziness and favoritism of the Cannes selectors. Even before the critics had their say on “Kinatay,” people were wondering what exactly Mendoza had done to merit back-to-back Competition slots after last year’s “Serbis” proved more a curiosity than a breakout success. As for To, I would venture that even the director’s most successful work lacks the artistry and innovation that Cannes should be showcasing.

In the meantime, possibly the most unanimously glowing reviews I’ve read for any title at the festival have been for a little non-competing Australian title, “Samson and Delilah.” In just one of the rave notices emerging since the film screened yesterday, the Telegraph’s Sukhdev Sandhu likens the film, a feature debut for Warwick Thornton that maps the relationship between two Aboriginal teenagers, to the works of Charles Burnett and the Dardenne brothers.

It’s rumored that “Samson and Delilah” was originally selected for the Competition, only to be demoted to the Un Certain Regard strand to make way for higher-profile auteur work. As I’ve noted before, of the 20 filmmakers in contention for the Palme, 19 have been selected before, while the odd woman out, Isabel Coixet, is an established name in her own right. The weak reception for today’s two Competition titles, combined with the collective critical shrug given to “Taking Woodstock,” confirms that the festival selectors need to take more chances in future.