In Contention

Tag: Giovanna Mezzogiorno

  • García Bernal among names added to Cannes jury

    Just over a week away from the announcement of the official selection for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and any festival-related news is received gratefully by the blogging community. Today, those who deemed Tim Burton too “Hollywood” a choice as this year’s jury president might be appeased by a host of more arthouse-leaning names lined up for jury duty.

    Chief among them are actors Gael García Bernal and Giovanna Mezzogiorno, both worthy selections to join Burton on the competition jury; that announcement surely means Bernal starrer “Even the Rain,” a Spanish-language epic telling parallel stories of Christopher Columbus and Bolivia’s Water Wars, will not appear in competition, as some speculated it might. Thanks to Anne Thompson for passing along the news.

    More exciting to me is the news that Claire Denis, one of the greatest filmmakers at work today, will be presiding over the Un Certain Regard section, where she herself competed with “I Can’t Sleep” in 1994. It’s a nice gesture towards a filmmaker who isn’t quite the Cannes fixture you might expect — she hasn’t been represented at the fest since “Trouble Every Day” played out of competition in 2001. Atom Egoyan, meanwhile, will head up the Cinéfondation jury.

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  • What will take the Palme d’Or?

    Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw in Bright Star It’s all over bar the voting. Tomorrow, Cannes jury president Isabelle Huppert will meet with her formidable, female-dominated team of eight – including the diverse likes of Robin Wright Penn, Asia Argento, James Gray and Hanif Kureishi – to pick over the 20 Competition titles they have seen over the last fortnight and select their collective favorites.

    As I’ve said before, the most surprising thing a Cannes jury can do is not to surprise: to hand the Palme d’Or to the critical and/or popular favorite. It can happen, of course – critics and pundits alike called it for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” the day it screened in 2007, and were proved right – but the list of upsets is long and illustrious.

    As you’ve probably heard by now, if the bookies have their way, French auteur Jacques Audiard will be brandishing the Palme this time tomorrow, his prison drama “A Prophet” having wowed critics and audiences across the Croisette. I’ll be delighted if he does, but I’ve questioned whether a French production can win two years running, after a two-decade drought to boot.

    Of course, such streaks aren’t unheard of: the U.S. held onto the Palme for three years between 1989 and 1991. Other questions running through my mind are whether Frenchwoman Huppert might want to avoid making the festival too much of a local affair, and whether Audiard’s all-male film will resonate as strongly with a mostly female jury.

    If not, there are a number of alternatives. By my count there are six titles seriously in the hunt for top honors. Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” is fancied by many to finally land the director the top prize. Earlier today, the film made its presence felt by claiming the FIPRESCI critics’ prize for best in show, though it should be noted that the jury’s and FIPRESCI’s choices have only lined up three times this decade.

    (More speculation, and my final predictions, after the cut.)

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  • ‘Broken Embraces,’ ‘Vincere’ bow at Cannes

    Penelope Cruz in Broken EmbracesPedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces” has just had its Cannes debut, and the notices emerging so far largely supplement the good-but-not-ecstatic slate of reviews the film garnered upon its Spanish release back in March.

    Kirk Honeycutt, in one of THR’s slightly pointless video reviews, labels it “Almodovar lite” and discusses the film’s allusions to “Peeping Tom” (not “an old 50s movie,” by the way). Wendy Ide at the Times coolly calls it a “mixed bag of smart ideas … rather than a coherent, distinct work of art,” while the Telegraph’s David Gritten loves Penelope Cruz’s performance, saying it excels her recent Oscar-winning work, but thinks the film “treads water rather than breaks new ground.”

    The case for the defence comes from Jeffrey Wells, who deems it by far the festival’s standout film at this stage:

    A romantic noir about writing, directing, damage and healing, it’s easily the most fully realized, thematically satisfying, self-assured and purely entertaining film of the festival so far. Not as fully emotional as Almodovar’s best films, but on a very high station in the second tier. Way in front of anything I’ve seen so far. The only thing that could knock it off is the Tarantino.

    Not sure why or how he’s dismissing the other titles he hasn’t seen yet, but anyway. I have a feeling this is one film whose critical consensus could see-saw between now and its eventual U.S. release in November.

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  • ‘A Prophet’ leads Cannes race at midway point

    A ProphetWith 12 the 20 Cannes Competition titles out of the way (that’s counting the already critically-examined “Broken Embraces”), a clear favorite seems to have emerged — and I’m both pleased and a little surprised that it’s Jacques Audiard’s “A Prophet.”

    Pleased, because Audiard is a brilliant filmmaker who is owed more recognition. Surprised, because on paper, I didn’t expect an all-male, 2.5 hour prison drama to generate this much excitement. In the event, however, the film has inspired repeated comparisons to “GoodFellas,” and ScreenDaily’s critical panel rates it the best of the fest so far (closely followed by “Bright Star”), an endorsement echoed by a range of critics from Manohla Dargis to the Guardian’s Xan Brooks.

    Of the rest already screened, only “Bright Star” and British film “Fish Tank” really sound like viable Palme d’Or alternatives. Meanwhile, those two films’ respective leading ladies, Abbie Cornish and Katie Jarvis, look to be heading a heated Best Actress contest. (“Vincere’s” Giovanna Mezzogiorno and even “Antichrist’s” Charlotte Gainsbourg are also in the mix.) By contrast, the only actor attracting major buzz at this stage appears to be Tahar Rahim, the young Arab discovery of “A Prophet.”

    Of course, nobody has any idea what the jury is thinking, while jurors are apparently discouraged from reading the press about Competition titles. So when awards are dealt out, surprises are the norm. I’ve thought from the beginning that “A Prophet,” and indeed any other French titles in the lineup, were at a disadvantage; following last year’s winner, jury prez Isabelle Huppert might want to avoid showing too much homeland favor. Meanwhile, can Audiard’s entire male cast win over a mostly female jury? And with critical reactions so scattered, who knows what they make of “Antichrist?”

    So many questions. And with several formidable titles still to bow (including the latest from Michael Haneke and Elia Suleiman, my personal, out-of-thin-air bet for the Palme), plenty more to come.

  • 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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