In Contention

Tag: Cannes

  • Early rave for Cannes entry ‘Thirst’

    ThirstPark Chan-wook’s erotic vampire film “Thirst” opened over a week ago in its native South Korea, but it will soon make its international bow at Cannes, where it’s one of several adventurous-looking films in the competition. Screen International, however, has got a head start and offered this review — and the news is good.

    Park has been in the wilderness for a few years, but critic Darcy Paquet (awesome name, by the way) calls the film a return to the award-winning form of his 2004 hit “Oldboy.” He raves:

    Since his breakthrough with Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance in 2002, Park’s work has been characterised by its visual inventiveness, dark humour, intense acting performances, and strange but compelling shifts in tone. The first 90 minutes of Thirst is a robust display of these talents, but it is anchored in a melancholic lyricism that is new to Park’s oeuvre. Although the focus of its narrative movement is not always clear, in its best moments, Thirst offers something of the poetic force of cinema’s timeless masterpieces.

    He also adds the interesting (to me, anyway) factoid that the film — about a Catholic priest who becomes a vampire following a botched medical experiment — is a loose adaptation of Emile Zola’s 1867 novel “Therese Raquin.” Well, there you go. I must admit I’ve never really connected with Park’s work before, but the current spate of contemporary vampire tales is an intriguing trend. This could be one to keep an eye on at the fest.

  • Troublemakers united

    IrreversibleYours truly began a two-part Cannes preview this morning, but there is plenty more such coverage around if you’re beginning to get festival fever. I particularly liked Jonathan Romney’s rundown in the Independent, in which the critic points out an interesting trend in this year’s lineup: namely the convergence of several renowned enfants terribles in one year.

    There’s almost always one title in contention whose extremities — whether of sex, violence or other — set tongues wagging along the Croisette, but this year looks to be particularly hard on the faint-hearted. Quentin Tarantino’s bound-to-be-grisly “Inglourious Basterds” looks positively milquetoast compared some of the other fare on offer, including “Oldboy” director Park Chan-Wook’s decidedly adult vampire tale “Thirst” and Lars Von Trier’s seemingly unnerving foray into horror territory, “Antichrist.”

    Michael Haneke’s new effort doesn’t look like a box of kittens either, but as Romney writes, none of these filmmakers instil quite as much fear in mild-mannered filmgoers as Frenchman Gaspar Noé:

    These days, the shocks come a little stiffer. A hardened colleague of mine walked out of Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible (2002) after the opening salvo of 13 blows to the head with a fire extinguisher – thereby missing considerably worse to follow … With Enter the Void, it’s more than likely that he’ll attempt to up the ante on Irréversible. Touted as “a hallucinatory maelstrom”, it involves a stripper’s brother who reviews the violent circumstances of his death, from the afterlife. Laden with special effects and screeching neon colours, Noé has promised it will be more psychedelic than violent – but at two-and-a-half hours, it certainly won’t be an easy ride.

    I’m interested to see whether Noé can build more critical cache this year beyond the controversy that greeted his previous work — for all its look-at-me theatrics, “Irréversible” is a much better film than it’s usually given credit for. With several other title jostling for the attention of the more excitable media outlets this year, perhaps there’s more of a chance people will find the film beneath the fuss.

    And as Romney points out, if anyone can handle it, it’s a jury that includes such notably fearless figures as Isabelle Huppert and Asia Argento. Bring it on.

  • Cannes: sizing up the Competition, part one

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesWith the Cannes Film Festival only two days away, it’s time to take a long hard look (or just a look, if you prefer) at the 20 films in contention for the Palme d’Or, a typically eclectic bunch married by only one factor: all but one are from directors who have been in the race before. (And people accuse the Oscars of playing favorites.)

    Cannes is a notoriously tricky (and often well-nigh impossible) contest to predict: partly because the voting body is an ever-changing template, but largely because there’s been no time ahead of the festival for any kind of critical or popular consensus to build around the mostly unseen films on the shortlist.

    This may mean that in some cases the jury is susceptible to a film’s auteur cache — think “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” in 2006 — but it also allows for surprise attacks by less heralded titles on the basis of quality alone. Though it may seem an obvious winner in retrspect, few were talking about “The Class” last year before it snuck up on the last day and slayed the competition.

    With those caveats on the table, here’s a film-by-film (10 today, 10 tomorrow) rundown of this year’s lineup, detailing the Cannes credentials of each director, and offering some thoughts as to where they may sit in the competition. I make no promises — except that at least half my speculation will likely be proved wildly wrong in a fortnight’s time.

    “BROKEN EMBRACES” (Pedro Almodovar)

    The pitch: Already widely seen and reviewed, the film marks a return to film noir territory for the Spanish master, a complex melodrama headed by Penelope Cruz as an actress trying to rid herself of an aging lover. (Spanish dialogue)

    The history: On his two previous Competition appearances, for “All About My Mother” in 1999 and “Volver” in 2006, Almodovar entered the race as the bookies’ favourite, only to land the consolation prizes of Best Director and Best Screenplay, respectively.

    The outlook: Reviews so far have been kind, if reserved; several critics appear to delight in Almodovar’s trademark color-saturated visuals and off-kilter humor, but few have suggested that this ranks among his finest works. Almodovar is surely overdue for the festival’s top honor, but if a more unanimously lauded work like “Volver” couldn’t do the trick, my guess is that “Broken Embraces” won’t either. I think the jury may pass altogether.

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  • All over it

    It’s been around for a few weeks now, but since next week is going to be pretty Cannes-heavy (the fest kicks off on Wednesday), this is as good a time as any to say that I want to buy this year’s official, Antonioni-referencing festival poster, frame it, and stick it on my living room wall. Forever. Sheer perfection.

    Official Cannes 2009 poster

  • Just the one, then?

    Quentin TarantinoYou may or may not have caught this piece on Quentin Tarantino in Sunday’s New York Times magazine. Overall, it’s a fairly flimsy Cannes-oriented interview that serves mainly as an accompaniment to some pretty pictures (very pretty, in the case of the Diane Kruger shots), but two of QT’s statements jumped out at me.

    In the first, he (fairly, I think) defends his decision to hand “Fahrenheit 9/11” the Palme d’Or in 2004 as a reward for being “a movie of the moment” — but when the conversation turns to “Inglourious Basterds,” he offers up this line:

    NYT: On this movie, you worked very quickly. Was that partially to have the film ready in time for Cannes?

    QT: Yes. I wanted to have a masterpiece before the decade’s out.

    I’ll let slide the overweening pride of Tarantino’s statement for a moment — partly because, as many misgivings as I personally have about the new film, it’s that brash confidence that also gave birth to a genuine masterpiece like “Pulp Fiction.” Largely, however, it’s because I detect a note of cryptic self-deprecation there.

    Perhaps I’m reading too much into his wording. But the use of the indefinite article “a” rather than, say, “another,” intrigues me. Is he admitting that, “Basterds” aside, he hasn’t made a masterpiece this decade? If so, on behalf of “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” — and only that, I hasten to add — I’d like to disagree.

  • New stills and trailer for ‘Antichrist’

    Chances are it won’t net him the same level of mainstream kudos as “Slumdog Millionaire,” but a series of newly released stills for Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” confirms that we can expect some pretty special work from Academy Award winner Anthony Dod Mantle. (How great does it feel to read those last six words, by the way?)

    You can view more stills here, but it’s the milky lighting and Brothers Grimm-style atmospherics of the following shot that really got my attention. Whether the film is straight-up, balls-out horror fare or not (and given Von Trier’s ever-defiant track record, I can’t help wondering if we’re being wrong-footed by the marketing here), it’s clearly going to be a thing of considerable beauty. Cannes can’t come soon enough.

    A second gorgeous still after the cut, plus a new (presumably European) trailer: the latter isn’t significantly different from the first, but it quickens my heart nonetheless.

    AntiChrist

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  • Coppola goes to Cannes after all

    Francis Ford CoppolaAfter turning down an out-of-competition slot at Cannes earlier this week, it seems Francis Ford Coppola has had a change of heart. Variety reports that his new film, “Tetro,” will open the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight on May 14, marking the much-awaited film’s world premiere.

    The addition of Coppola adds some welcome lustre to a sidebar that frequently gets unfairly neglected in favour of the Official Selection (where “Tetro” was previously offered a place). The Director’s Fortnight may also attract attention for showcasing significantly more US talent than the selection of competition films announced yesterday, which included a mere two American titles (and only one from a Yank filmmaker, at that).

    In contrast, five American features make the Fortnight lineup, including Sundance talking-points “Humpday” and “I Love You, Philip Morris.” (Meanwhile, Lee Daniels’ much-garlanded Sundance sensation “Precious” (AKA “Push”) will appear in the Un Certain Regard strand of competition.

    Though the media focus tends to remain on the 20-odd films up for the Palme d’Or, Cannes runs far deeper than that. Some have complained that yesterday’s competition lineup, with its high quotient of previous winners and established auteurs, feels a bit too safe and insular (though “safe” hardly seems an apt adjective when the likes of Gaspar Noe and Lars Von Trier are involved), but it’s not just new talent lurking in the sidebars.

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  • Almodovar, Campion, Lee in Cannes lineup

    Abbie Cornish in Jane Campion's Bright StarThe official list of films competiting for the Palme d’Or at next month’s Cannes Film Festival is out, and while it’s not a very surprising list — it’s been a given for some time that “Inglourious Basterds,” “Broken Embraces” and “Antichrist,” among others, would be in the mix — it still an exciting one, packed to the gills with auteur works from both regular visitors (Michael Haneke, Ken Loach) and long-absent ones (Jane Campion, Alain Resnais).

    I’ll dig into the selection in more depth later, but for now, here’s the list:

    “Broken Embraces” (Pedro Almodovar)
    “Fish Tank” (Andrea Arnold)
    “Un Prophete” (Jacques Audiard)
    “Vicenre” (Marco Bellocchio)
    “Bright Star” (Jane Campion)
    “A L’Origine” (Xavier Giannoli)
    “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo” (Isabel Coixet)
    “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke)
    “Taking Woodstock” (Ang Lee)
    “Looking for Eric” (Ken Loach)
    “Spring Fever” (Lou Ye)
    “Kinatay” (Brillante Mendoza)
    “Enter The Void” (Gaspar Noe)
    “Thirst” (Park Chan-Wook)
    “Les Herbes Folles” (Alain Resnais)
    “The Time That Remains” (Elia Suleiman)
    “Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
    “Vengeance” (Johnnie To)
    “Face” (Tsai Ming-liang)
    “Antichrist” (Lars Von Trier)

  • Coppola turns down Cannes

    TetroNow here’s a curious strategic decision. Having been offered the chance to unveil his much-anticipated “Tetro” in an out-of-competition slot at Cannes, Francis Ford Coppola has responded with a polite “thanks, but no thanks”:

    “While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film,” Coppola said in a statement released late last week. “More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the US release this June 11th.”

    Coppola is instead opting for a considerably more low-profile bow at the Seattle Film Festival. What gives? Perhaps he just wants to avoid the pressure of a major festival environment: the Cannes crowd can be notoriously hostile towards auteur works that don’t meet certain expectations. (Just ask Coppola’s own daughter.)

    But they can also be welcoming towards veteran filmmakers looking to rediscover form, particularly in the more relaxed out-of-competition strand — Woody Allen has twice benefitted from such platforms in recent years. Considering that “Tetro,” an Argentinian-set family saga headlined by Vincent Gallo and Maribel Verdu, doesn’t sound like the easiest sell in the world, I’d say the Cannes exposure could have done it some good — but maybe Coppola knows something we don’t.

  • Cannes-bound?

    With the “news” (which has, of course, been common knowledge for the better part of a year) that Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is set to compete at Cannes, it’s time to start contemplating what else might appear in the festival lineup.

    For my money, one of the safest bets has to be Ken Loach’s latest, “Looking For Eric.” A comedy centred on a working-class football fanatic who receives life coaching from legendary French footballer Eric Cantona, it looks like a refreshingly fanciful departure for a filmmaker celebrated usually for bleaker social-realist fare. That may not exactly sound like a festival gimme, but it’s been almost two decades since a Loach feature didn’t compete at one of the three major European fests — Cannes being the most hospitable of his work.

    Loach has an enviable track record at the Croisette — though 2005’s “The Wind That Shakes The Barley,” which finally netted him the Palme d’Or after eight attempts, never really caught on after the festival. The chirpy teaser below suggests to me that “Looking For Eric” may find more of an audience, even if it’s less award-friendly than previous Loach efforts. (Thanks to commenter Han for the tip.)

  • Thoughts on Cannes, Huppert and ‘Up’

    Dull but hindering circumstances kept me offline yesterday, so I couldn’t get to the Cannes/”Up” news that Kris recently posted.

    By the way, before I get into that, can I just say what a great choice the Cannes organisers have made in selecting Isabelle Huppert as their jury president this year?

    It’s been a while (8 years, to be specific) since a woman took on the role, and as one of the most adventurous, intelligent and hard-working actors of her generation, Huppert (a two-times Cannes winner herself) has earned the position. Here’s hoping she brings the same kind of fearless thinking to the panel that she does to her roles.

    As for “Up, “Being the first animated title to open the world’s most prestigious film festival is obviously a notable accomplishment — and probably an overdue one, at that.

    Chiming in with last year’s tide of critical accolades for “WALL-E” and “Waltz With Bashir” (which, of course, began its buzz at Cannes), it’s clear that the artform is increasingly nearing an equal footing with live-action filmmaking as far as cineastes are concerned — even if some conservative viewers (and of course, AMPAS voters) would like to pretend otherwise.

    However, amid the breathless reporting of “first evers,” it seems to me one crucial detail has been somewhat neglected — the film is playing out of competition.

    This strikes me as an opportunity missed. I’m guessing it was Pixar’s decision not to submit the film for competition consideration, but one has to wonder what they stood to lose by trying. Given Cannes’ arthouse bent, nobody would have expected the film to win anything anyway, but a Palme d’Or nomination could have lent the film some impressive additional cache.

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  • Pixar’s ‘Up’ to open Cannes

    Old news now but I’m just resurfacing on the east coast.  From the press release:

    UP, the new animation film from the Disney•Pixar studios, produced under John Lasseter’s supervision, will be the Opening Ceremony film of the 62nd Festival de Cannes in Disney Digital 3-D on Wednesday May 13th, 2009…

    This is the first time that an animation film, in 3-D, will be the Opening Ceremony film at the Festival de Cannes.

    Animations distinguished by their participation in the Official Selection are, DUMBO (1947), THE FANTASTIC PLANET (1973), FRITZ THE CAT (1974), SHREK (2001), THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003), SHREK 2 (2004), OVER THE HEDGE (2006), KUNG-FU PANDA (2008) and WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008)

    UP will be released in the United States on Friday, May 29th and in France on July 29th.

  • ‘Three Monkeys’ joins the Foreign Film mix

    Nobody who was paying attention at Cannes will be surprised that Turkey has selected Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” as their entry in the foreign-language derby.

    The film was one of the critical sensations of the festival back in May and was many pundits’ pick for the Palme d’Or — it wound up with the Best Director award. Just to jog your memory, here’s a rave from the ever-reliable Jonathan Romney:

    An ostensibly routine noir-style psychological thriller vaults into the realms of high art in “Three Monkeys” … For the first time, Ceylan really involves himself in narrative complexity, spinning a subtly-twisty yarn with echoes of such crime writers as Simenon and James M. Cain … the smallest amount of trimming could well turn an exceptional film into a near-perfect one.

    I have been excited by this for some time. Ceylan’s 2002 film “Uzak (Distant)” is one of my favourite films of the decade so far, a work of visual wonder and immaculate storytelling grace. While wildly acclaimed, his follow-up, “Climates,” did less for me — it was exquisitely rendered, but on a narrative and thematic level, Ceylan seemed to me to be treading water. So I like the idea of this move into more genre-tinged territory. It’s one of my must-sees at the upcoming London Film Festival.

    I suspect the film may prove a little too resolutely arthouse for the frequently auteur-shy Foreign Film committee, but no matter. As when Mexico selected Carlos Reygadas’ bold, beautiful and thoroughly Academy-unfriendly “Silent Light” last year, I applaud Turkey for the bravery of their selection.

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  • Countdown to Venice: the future of festivals?

    So the Venice Film Festival kicks off tonight with its glossiest title, the out-of-competition “Burn After Reading.” Reviews ought to start trickling in tonight, though it’s worth bearing in mind that festival fever can often give the premature illusion of critical consensus.

    Screen International has a very handy rundown of the festival lineup – both in and out of competition – which paints a much clearer picture of the more international entries than anything else I’ve read so far.

    Less-covered competition films that particularly caught my eye include “Inju: The Beast in the Shadow,” a Franco-Japanese thriller starring the excellent Benoit Magimel, marking a return to fiction film for Oscar nominee Barbet Schroeder, “Jerichow,” a German riff on “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and, by far the least heralded of the US entries, “Vegas: Based on a True Story,” a portrait of down-and-outs in the titular city from Iranian director Amir Naderi.

    (Not to mention an out-of-competition contingent that includes new works from such weighty auteurs as Claire Denis, Agnes Varda and Abbas Kiarostami, whose “Shirin,” starring Juliette Binoche, I’ve already mentioned is my most anticipated film of the fest.)

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  • Foreign film race begins… get ready to groan

    Variety carries details of the first official entry that I’ve heard of in the Best Foreign Language Film derby – Denmark has put forward “Worlds Apart,” from director Niels Arden Oplev. The country has a pretty good track record in this category, having won back-to-back in the 80’s with “Babette’s Feast” and “Pelle the Conqueror,” while Susanne Bier’s popular “After the Wedding” nabbed a nomination two years ago.

    “Worlds Apart,” which has already secured US distribution, is a small-scale pic focusing on a teenage Jehovah’s Witness forced to make a difficult choice when she falls in love with a non-believer. It all sounds terribly earnest, but that’s right up the Academy’s alley when it comes to this category. Reviewing the film at the Berlin festival back in February, Variety called it a “provocative, well-turned drama,” and speculated that a US remake could be on the cards.

    Apparently, the Academy has invited 96 countries to enter the race this year, with the submission deadline looming large on October 1. They should be looking to regain some credibility in this category after the embarrassing fiasco of last year’s race, which saw a banner year for world cinema reduced to the most tepid slate of foreign-language nominees in recent memory, as landmark pictures like “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “Lust, Caution” and “Persepolis” were, one by one, either snubbed or disqualified.

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  • ‘Che’ trailer hits

    A trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s “The Argentine” (the first half of his “Che” epic, which received mixed reactions at Cannes this year but certainly has its devotees) has landed on YouTube. James at Cinematical points the way, but get it while it’s hot. Not that there’s a studio involved that could yank the trailer down, but I don’t imagine this was an intentional leak.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsyGJbuU9Q

    It’s certainly not good news that the film hasn’t secured U.S. distribution as far as the upcoming awards circuit is concerned. We struck the film from the record (well, the charts in any case) a month ago because that grim feeling is starting to set in. “Che” may have to live to fight another day in 2009.  But this should be enough to whet your appetite in the interim.

  • Sean Penn defends ‘Che’

    Benicio Del Toro in CheBritish film magazine Sight & Sound has a nice new tradition of interviewing the jury president of the most recent Cannes Film Festival, which makes for interesting reading. (Last year’s prez, Stephen Frears, presciently predicted in his interview that “No Country for Old Men” would “do really well,” despite not winning anything at the festival.)

    Unsurprisingly, 2008 president Sean Penn is rather more candid in his interview with  Richard T. Kelly. After admitting that he had four clear favourites in the competition (two of which, “The Class” and “Che,” were unanimously awarded their respective Palme d’Or and Best Actor prizes), he then launches into an impassioned defence of Steven Soderbergh’s polarising opus, as well as an attack on the journalists who dismissed it:

    Right through the festival I had no awareness of what the ‘buzz’ was, and I shut people down if they tried to talk about movies in front of me. But when I did a little bit of catch-up browsing afterward I read some of the stupidest, ugliest, most cynical responses to what had gone on, and I had the front-seat to be aware of their inconsistencies.

    “Che” is a great example. I pray it finds distribution in the four-hour-plus form I saw, because otherwise people will be missing out.  The film-making is stellar: there are so many details in the execution of that huge story. Every sentiment about Guevara I’ve heard passionately expressed when I’ve travelled in Cuba and South America was not only dramatised, but without exposition, seamlessly, fulfilling the narrative. Then you have one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn’t rely on the close-up.

    This is a film, I later find, that had some negative responses…I was in a jury room of nine people with more expertise in their big toenails than any of the people writing in these papers: nine out of nine wanted to go out and change the world afterwards.

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  • International ‘Blindness’ trailer

    Can this overcome the critical thumping it took at Cannes this year?  Personally, I think it looks rather good.  I’m devoted to Fernando Meirelles, even if I found “The Constant Gardener” to be overbearing and overrated.  But it’s hard to argue with talent when it’s clearly there, and this guy has it.  Check out the new trailer:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azLX4jjngpY