In Contention

Tag: Fish Tank

  • Teenage star of ‘Fish Tank’ wows Cannes

    Katie Jarvis in Fish TankOnly two films in so far, but it seems we have a formidable contender for the festival’s top honors in the shape of Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank.” The film has just screened for the press, and Arnold — who won the bronze-medal Jury Prize in 2006 with her debut feature “Red Road” — has evidently built on that success, but it seems the real revelation is the film’s 17 year-old star, Katie Jarvis.

    A non-professional making her screen debut, Jarvis is unable to attend the festival, having just given birth to her first child in her Essex hometown. But even in her absence, the young lady is generating enough to buzz to plant her as a strong contender for the Best Actress  award. IndieWire’s Eugene Hernandez calls her “the first major acting discovery” of the festival, while Screen International’s Allan Hunter gushes:

    Following in the wake of Kate Dickie’s extraordinary performance in Red Road, newcomer Katie Jarvis is every bit as impressive as Mia, finding the vulnerability of the teenager without recourse to sentimentality or surrendering any of her anger or sarcasm. It is a performance that should win her a lot of attention and add profile to a film that will have to fight for its audience.

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  • Cannes soup

    Palme d'OrThere’s a bewildering wealth of quality Cannes coverage out there, and it tests the realms of possibility to mention it all. In the interests of economy, however, here’s a selection of the more interesting festival-related nuggets I found today:

    Eugene Hernandez at IndieWire has a superb piece up in which he approaches a broad selection of industry figures and bloggerfolk with the question of whether Cannes matters much these days. The response of many is sad yet predictable: that the festival does indeed matter from the purist’s perspective of showcasing artistically nourishing films, but that with the commercial window for foreign and/or arthouse fare increasingly narrowing, it has less bearing on the U.S. market than it should. Still, I liked the succinctly idealistic take of one interviewee: “When Cannes no longer matters, film will no longer matter.”

    Back to the films themselves, the New York Times’ Joan Dupont offers her own rundown of the key titles in the mix, picking up, as others have,on the prevalence of controversial auteurs in this year’s lineup. She also provokes this soundbite from the fest’s executive director Thierry Frémaux, explaining why this year’s Competition line-up is so heavy on previous winners and established names:

    “Yes, the big names are back, and with big films … The selection reflects our concern for auteurs — that’s our job. You need to be strong to be in competition; everybody’s watching you. That’s why we think that many films are better off in Un Certain Regard. The filmmakers don’t always agree.”

    I can’t say I agree, either. It’s precisely two decades since a miniature character study from a 26 year-old first-time director walked off the Palme d’Or and changed the face of American independent filmmaking in the process — would Steven Soderbergh have been relegated to the Un Certain Regard sidebar today? I suspect so, and that demonstrates a cautiousness that can only curb Cannes’ capacity for trend-setting.

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  • 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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