In Contention

Tag: Jean Dujardin

  • TELLURIDE: ‘The Artist,’ ‘Pina’

    Today began, as already conveyed, with the first-ever screening of Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants.” I managed two more films, one of them capsuled here. I’ll get to “Albert Nobbs” separately, but just to clean my plate a little…

    Hazanavicius’s ‘Artist’ doesn’t quite reach the hype

    There is very little doubt in my mind that we’ll all be talking about Michel Hazanavicius’s Cannes sensation “The Artist” over the next six months. The film will generate a lot of respect from Academy members who understand that getting a silent film made in this day and age, let alone a popular one, is an amazing feat. As is well-documented, the film speaks to the industry’s history with reverence and passion, is impeccably crafted (which will generate support across the branches) and features a lead performance that is easy to root for.

    (more…)

  • CANNES: ‘Tree of Life’ wins Palme d’Or, Dunst takes Best Actress

    And so it came to pass that the pre-festival bookies’ odds were on the money. The most talked-about film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” was handed the Palme d’Or by Robert De Niro’s jury — a major vindication for a film that has been labelled both a masterpiece and a failure by duelling factions of critics on the Croisette.

    Malick, to the surprise of precisely nobody, did not pitch up to the ceremony, though I imagine he’s feeling somewhat relieved. However it performs outside the insular festival environment, his film’s cultural landmark status has been sealed: armed with this prestigious bit of hardware, Fox Searchlight can set about readying the film for the US awards season, though approval from more mainstream bodies could yet be an uphill battle.

    “The Tree of Life” isn’t the film I would have picked for the Palme by a long shot — as I wrote in my review, I think it’s an intermittently stunning work that ultimately overreaches, never marrying its three disparate sections — but it’s not an unintelligent pick: De Niro and his fellow jurors have opted for the title that looks likely to have the longest shelf-life in popular culture. In that respect, it’s a preferable choice to the film widely viewed as the favorite going into the awards tonight, Aki Kaurismäki’s charming but wafer-thin comedy “Le Havre” — which, in the evening’s most surprising turn, won not a single prize.

    (more…)

  • CANNES: What will win… and what should

    It’s a funny thing. For 10 days at Cannes, the Croisette hums with stimulating discussion and debate about movies; for the final two, all that chatter dissolves into a single blunt question: “What will win the Palme d’Or?” It’s a little like the Oscars, except without the initial stage of stimulating discussion and debate about movies. Let’s do it.

    On the one hand, I kind of want the beautiful, punishing 160-minute anti-procedural epic of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” to win, since there’s £140 waiting for me in London if it does. (Gamble responsibly, kids.) On the other, I can make more convincing cases for a number of titles. Unlike last year, when it was easy to single out “Uncle Boonmee” and “Of Gods and Men” for the top two spots, this year’s lineup has been higher in terms of median quality, as well as more contentious — which allows for a wider range of hypothetical jury-room arguments.

    (more…)

  • SHORT TAKE: “The Artist” (***1/2)

    Cannes Film Festival

    “Please be silent behind the screen,” requests a sign in the cinema where silent movie star Georges Valentin’s latest work is screening, near the beginning of “The Artist,” Michel Hazanavicius’ semi-sweet paean to pre-talkie cinema.

    It’s a witty clue as to how Hazanavicius is going to run the ship in his own not-quite-silent movie: swooping strings accompany the film-within-a-film’s finale as Valentin (Jean Dujardin) waits confidently in the wings, only for sound to cut out just as the audience bursts into thunderous applause. It’s a neat trick, one the director pulls and reverses a few times in 100-odd minutes that follow, and one that cunningly aims to replicate in negative the disorientation 1920s picturegoers might have felt when films suddenly started speaking.

    If “The Artist” never quite becomes the ingeniously self-reflexive cinematic essay this scene promises, it succeeds on several warmer, more immediate levels: as an infectiously affectionate reminder of a lost art form’s joys, as a lushly imagined exercise in style, and most crucially, as a funny, emotionally connected entertainment in its own right. As in his pair of hit “OSS 117” films — droll spoofs of 1960s spy cinema, the casual pleasures of which his latest considerably builds upon — Hazanavicius’ approach to pastiche is exacting but not academic: story remains the top priority here, and he has settled on one that is snugly predicated on the film’s very own formal conceits.

    (more…)

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘The Artist’

    After the announcement of 19 Competition titles at last month’s Cannes press conference, some insiders suggested that as many as three films could be added to the lineup before the festival kicks off — and through a kind of online Chinese-whispers game, that number became accepted as truth, without any such promise from Thierry Frémaux himself.

    As it turns out, we should have been wary. Just one film was added to the Competition this afternoon, bringing the total to a nice round 20, and that’s all she wrote. Forget any lingering hopes you had for Yorgos Lanthimos or Brillante Mendoza: the latecomer to the party is “The Artist.”

    The director: Michel Hazanavicius (France)

    The talent: Ever thought you’d see Missi Pyle ascending the Palais steps at a Cannes Competition premiere? Me neither, but she’s just one of the unexpected names attached to French farceur Hazanavicius’ fourth feature film.

    (more…)