In Contention

Tag: Cannes Film Festival

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Le Havre’

    The director: Aki Kaurismäki (Finland)

    The talent: Writer-director-producer Kaurismäki’s latest features a gaggle of names that should be familiar to his fans. Veteran French actor André Wilms, whose association with the filmmaker dates back to 1992’s “The Bohemian Life” (for which he won a European Film Award) takes the lead here, while other Kaurismäki alumni in the cast include New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud and, of course, the director’s favorite actress Kati Outinen. His regular crew returns as well, notably his career-long DP Timo Salminen.

    The pitch: The Finnish auteur’s second French-language effort (and his first since 1992) is a comedy-drama set and filmed in the French port city that gives the film its title. That the name also translates as “the haven” is no coincidence: the film tells the story of an elderly boot polisher (Wilms) who takes an African refugee child under his wing. The premise seemingly lends itself to Kaurismäki’s usual brand of melancholy whimsy, though perhaps with a touch more sentiment than usual.

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Kid With a Bike’

    The directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium)

    The talent: Dardennes regulars Jérémie Renier and Olivier Gourmet (who won Best Actor at Cannes for the brothers’ 2002 film “The Son”) return in supporting roles, but “The Kid With a Bike” is headlined by perhaps the most established star they’ve yet worked with: Cécile De France, the Belgian actress mainstream audiences will remember from her recent turn in Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter.” Still, the directors’ proven knack with untested actors stands to continue: starring opposite De France is pre-teen newcomer Thomas Doret. Meanwhile, the Dardennes’ usual crew, including DP Alain Marcoen, is once more on board.

    The pitch: Abandoned by his father in a children’s home, 11 year-old Cyril (Doret) escapes and returns to an empty apartment; pursued by social workers, he seeks refuge in the arms of a stranger (De France) in a doctor’s waiting room. The synopsis and recently-released trailer suggest the blend of humanism and hard realism we’re accustomed to from the Belgian brothers, though perhaps less grim than some of their work. (The film’s reasonably upbeat shooting title was “Set Me Free!”)

    (more…)

  • ‘Melancholia’ poster

    One of the mostly eagerly awaited films of next month’s Cannes Film Festival, Lars von Trier’s latest has just unveiled an international one-sheet — and while it’s less than illuminating, employing only a single (lovely) still we’ve already seen amid an ocean of white space, I’m happy for this one to play coy. Meanwhile, I suspect the wedding-invitation look is intentional. (On a side note, I’m amused by the number of outlets already labelling the film “controversial” before we’ve even laid on eyes on it. At this point, von Trier could do a shot-for-shot remake of “The King’s Speech” and still get the fainthearts quivering ahead of time.) Full poster, courtesy of the film’s website, after the cut.

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia’

    The director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)

    The talent: By this point in his career, auteur-photographer Ceylan is a self-standing arthouse brand — which is just as well, since the other names involved are unlikely to ring many bells with non-Turkish viewers. Leading man Yilmaz Erdoğan, a 43 year-old actor-writer-director, is a hugely popular figure in his home country, but his domestic hits haven’t crossed over. IMDb claims Ceylan wrote the film with his wife Ebru, as was the case with 2008’s “Three Monkeys”; other sources give him sole script credit. Cinematographer Gökhan Tiryaki, who shot Ceylan’s last two features, returns — arguably the more important concern, given the director’s reputation as a visual stylist.

    The pitch: Details on this one are closely guarded — even the usually long-winded Thierry Frémaux had nothing to add about the film at the Competition press conference. This much I have gleaned: Ceylan’s most expansive production yet, the 150-minute film covers a night in the lives of a doctor and a prosecutor on the harsh terrain of the Anatolia steppe. (Suffice to say the title’s promise of a Turkish spaghetti western is unlikely to be fulfilled.)

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Footnote’

    (Thanks to Israeli film critic Yonatan Doron for chipping in with extra information about this title. If any readers think they can help with further entries in this series, do get in touch.)

    The director: Joseph Cedar (Israel)

    The talent: Good news for fans of 2001’s wonderful arthouse hit “Late Marriage”: that film’s leading man, Lior Ashkenazi, headlines here. Other names will be less familiar to those outside Israel: Ashkenazi’s older co-lead, Shlomo Bar-Abba, is famed in his homeland as an eccentric TV comedian, but hasn’t appeared in a film in 22 years. Cedar himself, of course, carries his own level of cachet — more on that below.

    The pitch: In the press conference unveiling this year’s Cannes slate, festival director Thierry Frémaux described “Footnote” as one of the Competition’s more light-hearted entries, though there’s conflicting word on whether or not we should expect an outright comedy.

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Pater’

    (Apologies for the break this feature took over the Easter weekend — blame the holiday spirit and the London sunshine.)

    The director: Alain Cavalier (France)

    The talent: The internet is currently not rife with details on this entry, but we do know that the film is a two-hander of sorts, headlined by the veteran director himself and sturdy 51 year-old French star Vincent Lindon (seen most recently in last year’s “Mademoiselle Chambon”), both seemingly appearing as themselves. Producer Michel Seydoux, who has worked with Cavalier for the past decade, has a notable résumé, including “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Burnt by the Sun” and last year’s “Leaving.”

    The pitch: In the last decade, Cavalier has shifted from narrative cinema to more self-reflexive video diaries straddling drama and documentary. His latest, pitched as a comedy, appears to be a further excursion in that vein, though the synopsis offered by French distributor Pathé is otherwise cryptic, promising viewers a glimpse of the director and his leading man “at once in real life and in the fiction they have invented together.” (My translation.)

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘House of Tolerance’

    The director: Bertrand Bonello (France)

    The talent: Unsurprisingly for a brothel-set narrative, the film is heavy on rising female stars, including Hafsia Herzi (“The Secret of the Grain”) and Italian ingenue Jasmine Trinca (“The Son’s Room”); their more senior co-star, Noémie Lvovsky, is arguably more of an institution in France than on the international arthouse scene. Two male cast members also prompt interest: Louis-Do DeLencquesaing, so excellent in last year’s “The Father of My Children,” and the more unlikely figure of “Of Gods and Men” director Xavier Beauvois.

    The pitch: An evidently sumptuous period affair, Bonello’s film (also known by its French title “L’apollonide”) examines the goings-on in a Paris brothel at the beginning of the 20th century. After one prostitute is brutally disfigured for life by a client, the other women of the house shut themselves off from the outside world; the film tracks the rivalries and camaraderie of their isolated day-to-day existence. Bonello has been something of a controversy-monger with sexually frank films like “The Pornographer” and “Tiresia”; expect that trend to continue with his latest.

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Skin I Live In’

    [This is the first in a daily series of posts, wherein I size up the 19 films–pending further additions–in the Competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. We’re running through them alphabetically, by director, so it just happens that we start with a biggie: the length of the entries will vary according to the availability of information.]

    The director: Pedro Almodóvar

    The talent: The star, as you surely know by now, is Antonio Banderas, a one-time Almodóvar regular who hasn’t collaborated with the director in 21 years. When Penelope Cruz proved unavailable, Spanish star Elena Anaya (who previously appeared in “Talk to Her”) stepped into the female lead. Meanwhile, the names of cinematographer José Luis Alcaine, composer Alberto Iglesias and actress Marisa Paredes will all be familiar to the Almodóvar faithful.

    (more…)

  • Cannes jury includes Law, Thurman, Assayas

    [NOTE: We’re kicking off our daily Cannes preview series later today — stay tuned.]

    We knew months ago that Robert De Niro was presiding over this year’s Cannes jury, but the eight people joining him on the bench were finally named yesterday. Red-carpet stargazers should be pretty happy with this year’s crop: joining De Niro from the Hollywood side of things are Jude Law and Uma Thurman. (Perhaps festival director Thierry Frémaux is as big a fan of “Gattaca” as we are.)

    Filling the big-name auteur slot on the panel is Olivier Assayas, a three-time Competition entrant who some might say has earned jury president status. Other Cannes alumni include Chadian filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, who took the Jury Prize at last year’s festival for “A Screaming Man,” and Hong Kong action merchant Johnnie To, twice a Palme d’Or contender.

    (more…)

  • First still of Sean Penn in ‘This Must Be the Place’

    Or “Bigger, Better, Faster, More: The Linda Perry Story.” Paolo Sorrentino’s latest, due to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes next month, stars the two-time Oscar champ as a rock star turned Nazi hunter. Bernardo Bertolucci (due to receive an honorary Palme at the fest, by the by) reportedly describes the film (if not Penn’s Robert Smith wig) as “quite something.”

    [Photo: Premier PR]

  • Cannes competition includes Malick, Almodóvar, von Trier

    After weeks of speculation, this year’s Cannes lineup was unveiled in spectacularly long-winded fashion by fest director Thierry Frémaux this morning. (French TV networks clearly got so bored with his sidebar discussions on each title he announced that they helpfully cut to commercial halfway through the press conference.)

    Anyway, the speculation was largely borne out — most of the names you expected to see here are present and correct, including such Cannes regulars as Pedro Almodóvar, Lars von Trier, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardenne brothers.

    Meanwhile, the question on whether or not Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” would play in competition has been answered in the affirmative. Malick’s inclusion makes this to second Cannes competition slate in a row to feature only one American filmmaker, though it’s something of an upgrade from from last year’s Doug Liman head-scratcher.

    [More thoughts, and the full lineup, after the cut.]

    (more…)

  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘King’s Speech’ marches on

    • “The King’s Speech” continued its cruise through phase two of the season with a widely unexpected Directors’ Guild victory…

    • … and scooped top honors at a surprise-free Screen Actors’ Guild Awards ceremony.

    • Following this brace of wins, this week’s Off the Carpet column said what we were all thinking: the race is over.

    • Meanwhile, in his Long Shot column, Guy concluded that the royal biopic was likely the film to beat all along.

    (more…)

  • Woody Allen’s latest to open Cannes

    The ever-informed insider Cédric Succivalli broke the news this morning that May’s Cannes Film Festival will kick off with Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” — an ensemble romantic comedy starring, among others, Marion Cotillard, Carla Bruni, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen and Léa Seydoux.

    It’s hardly a surprising choice. Cannes has been good to Allen over the years: recently, “Match Point,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” and last year’s “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger” all premiered on the Croisette, while “Hollywood Ending” also served as the festival’s curtain-raiser in 2002.

    Moreover, the strong French flavor of his new project all but assured it a Cannes berth, while all that star power — plus the possibility of a certain Mr. Carla Bruni tagging along — guarantees maximum media coverage on opening night.

    (more…)

  • Robert De Niro to head Cannes jury

    Sure, that Cecil B. DeMille Award at the upcoming Golden Globes is nice enough, but this is the greater honour. Robert De Niro has been selected as the president of the competition jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in May — the third time this most European of festivals has tapped an American for the job in four years. (Tim Burton did the honors last year, Sean Penn in 2008.)

    For the past two years, the eventual Palme d’Or winner has seemingly, if not necessarily, borne the fingerprints of the jury president. Isabelle Huppert handed the prize to her friend and collaborator Michael Haneke in 2009 (and took a lot less stick for it than Quentin Tarantino did for rewarding his ex at Venice last year).

    Burton’s reign, meanwhile, culminated in the unusual occurrence of a fantasy film (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) taking the gold. De Niro somehow seems likely to wield a less assertive stamp on the proceedings, though you never know until the post-fest gossip starts leaking out.

    (more…)

  • Bring on spring already

    Okay, I know we’re all jacked up for the next few months of awards-watching, but would anyone mind if we just fast-forwarded straight to May? I’ll miss the Oscars, but frankly, the winter freeze is getting me down, the movies have petered out, and then I read a Cannes-teasing tweet like this from the ever well-informed Cédric Succivalli. Here it is, short and (very) sweet:

    Almodovar, Despentes, Kar Wai, Malick, Ramsay, Sorrentino, von Trier on their way to Cannes ’11.

    Cédric is a reliable source on all matters Croisette-related — so this would appear to cement the LA Times’s report yesterday of a “likely” Cannes debut for “Tree of Life,” though the film’s festival-shadowing US release date of May 27 was already something of a clue. In that LAT piece, meanwhile, Steven Zeitchik writes that Fox Searchlight plan to market Malick’s long-delayed opus as an “event” befitting its summer status.

    (more…)

  • ‘Tree of Life’ not waiting for Cannes?

    When Terrence Malick’s endlessly postponed “The Tree of Life” was finally handed over to Fox Searchlight and ruled a 2011 release, the conversation turned to which festival would get to host the film’s premiere. Many pundits (myself included) assumed that Cannes’s top dog status — in terms of both red-carpet allure and awards heft — would get it the gig, but if this tweet from the ever well-informed Cédric Succivalli is to be believed, we could be seeing it earlier than that.

    Succivalli writes that the film’s French distributor EuropaCorp has confirmed a February 23 release date, obviously ruling out a Cannes appointment three months later. That leaves only two major fests where it could potentially bow: Sundance (an idea Anne Thompson previously floated on Oscar Talk) and Berlin.

    Interestingly, the mid-February Berlinale was the festival of choice for both “The Thin Red Line” (which won the Golden Bear) and “The New World” (which played out of competition), even if neither film actually had its world premiere there. So it wouldn’t be entirely surprising to see “The Tree of Life” extend that relationship.

    (more…)

  • U.S. distrib finally steps forward for ‘Uncle Boonmee’

    It’s unusual for a Palme d’Or winner to wait this long after Cannes to find to secure a North American distributor — but then, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s death-dreams-and-monkey-ghosts fantasy “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” is a pretty unusual Palme d’Or winner.

    You’ll get why it’s such a tough sell when you see it, but that won’t be until spring 2011 for U.S. audiences. It has just been announced that boutique distribution company Strand Releasing — who previously handled Weerasethakul’s features “Tropical Malady,” “Syndromes and a Century” and “Blissfully Yours” — have once again come to the rescue, and will open the film in the quiet half of next year.

    Probably the right call: even with the Cannes fanfare, the film is destined to remain an extreme niche item, and would get buried in the late-year crush of more accessible highbrow fare.

    (more…)

  • OSCAR TALK: Ep. 27 — Special Edition! — Quick Cannes review, bleak summer season so far, counter-programming

    Oscar TalkWelcome to Oscar Talk, your one-stop kudocast between yours truly and Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood.

    In the second of three off-season discussions, Anne and I address the following today:

    • Since we haven’t talked since Cannes, Anne talks about the stronger titles from the Croisette as well as various news and notes that came out of the fest.

    • We’re in the middle of the summer, and as far as we can tell, it’s bleak out there. We discuss the lackluster box office so far and the potential hope of what’s still to come.

    • One of those hopes is Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” which Anne enjoyed. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it yet.

    • Another hope would be counter-programming, like titles such as “Winter’s Bone” and “The Kids Are All Right.” Anne and I discuss our feelings on each.

    • Finally, we address the fact that all eyes seem to be on Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” which will certainly dominate our next off-season podcast on July 16 (coincidentally the day of the film’s release).

    Have a listen to the latest podcast below. As always, remember to subscribe to Oscar Talk via iTunes here.

    [display_podcast]

    Subscribe to Oscar Talk