Barbara Scharres from Cannes

"The Tree of Life" takes the Palme d'Or

2011-05-22T21:31:24Z

The Closing Ceremony of the 64th Cannes International Film Festival took place today in the Grand Theatre Lumiere in the Festival Palais at 7:15 pm French time.

Since I had already left the festival on Friday, I was watching online as Jane Fonda slithered up to the microphone to present the Palme d'Or, looking like a

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beige mermaid in a stunningly unflattering skintight gown covered in iridescent fish-scale sequins.
Giving a rousing short speech in French, Fonda finished in English with, "Let's cut to the chase, OK," turning to jury president Robert De Niro for their decision. Judging by press gossip and speculation around the Palais this past week, the choice is not unexpected. This year's Palme d'Or goes to "The Tree of Life" by Terrence Malick.

"The Tree of Life" was far from my favorite film of the festival, and reaction to this tale of metaphysical angst and prayer-like praise has been so mixed that I can only imagine the reaction to the announcement in the other half of the Palais, where much of the international press watch the ceremony in the Debussy Theatre via live video feed. That's the fun place to be for the ceremony, and those in attendance generally let their real opinions of the jury decisions fly in the form of cheers and boos. I suspect that "Tree of Life" got a hearty helping of both, just as it did at the press premiere earlier in the festival

Unlike the Oscars, the awards ceremony at Cannes is short and to the point. It's free of standup comedy, production numbers, and songs. The mere handful of prestigious awards is bestowed with a minimum of pomp. Filmmakers who have been advised to attend the ceremony know in advance that they've won something, but they don't have a hint whether it's the Palm d'Or or a lesser prize.

I remember hanging out with members of the Taiwanese press the afternoon of festival closing day in 1995, in an apartment on the Croisette where director Hou Hsiao-hsien paced the floor and chain-smoked, waiting for a call about his film "Good Men, Good Women," that never came. This afternoon, I could imagine directors including Aki Kaurismaki ("Le Havre") and Nanni Moretti ("We Have a Pope"), who have triumphed at Cannes in the past, sitting by the phone as the realization dawned that it wasn't going to happen for them this year.

The Grand Jury Prize is split between two films that couldn't be more distinctly opposite each other: "The Kid With a Bike" by the Dardenne brothers, and "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. "The Kid With a Bike" has the Dardenne brothers moving into happy ending territory with a film that, while less complex emotionally than previous films, will likely found more appealing to a wider audience. "Once Upon A Time in Anatolia" is both challenging and mesmerizing, a 150-minute long film in which the first hour takes place entirely on dark country roads. It was shaping up to be one of my favorite films of the festival.

Best Director went to "Drive" an American production by Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. There's a Chicago connection to this dark, violent action film: one of the producers is Chicagoan Gigi Pritzker. With ingredients that will appeal especially to the under-30 male portion of the mainstream audience, I'm guessing that of all this year's Cannes winners, "Drive" may be the box office champ.

"Best Screenplay" went to Israeli director Joseph Cedar for "Footnote," a film with the kind of intellectual dialogue and emotional heat that gave his actors a chance to shine in their role. Cedar dedicated his award to New York film distributor Don Krim of Kino International, who died of leukemia on Friday.

I'd like to add my own note on Don. He was a daring distributor who took chances on a great range of foreign and domestic films, as well as on restorations of classics including "Metropolis." I would run into Don often at Cannes over the years. He'd be dapper in his tuxedo, heading for an evening screening at the Palais but always eager to stop and talk about the day's premieres.

In other Cannes awards, the Jury Prize went to "Polisse" by Maiwenn. Best actor went to Jean Dujardin, who plays a has-been silent film star in "The Artist." Best Actress went to Kirsten Dunst for her role as the unhappy bride in Lars von Trier's "Melancholia." No doubt von Trier was watching the ceremony on TV too, since his controversial remarks at the press conference for "Melancholia" caused him to be banned from the festival premises as "persona non grata."

Hanging it up: Rock stars, Nazis,stunt drivers and the Palm de Whiskers

2011-05-20T21:21:29Z

The 64th Festival de Cannes is winding down, and the signs are everywhere. The hand-laundry of festival-goers hangs from the shutters of the windows opposite my hotel (somebody is running out of clean clothes). The streets seem emptier in the early morning, and the area around the press mailboxes in the Palais is starting to have a vacant feeling.

Just five minutes before Sean Penn's scheduled arrival at the press conference to discuss Paolo Sorrentino's competition film "This Must Be the Place," the room still had dozens of empty seats. The number of photographers gathered expectantly in front of Penn's place at the table onstage was only a meager 23, unlike the mob for Brad Pitt just a few days earlier. It only meant that many journalists have already gone home or were playing hooky today.

Accompanied by the director and producers of "This Must Be the Place," and Irish actress Eve Hewson, Penn strolled in looking pleased with himself. He's deeply tanned and nonchalantly chewing gum, his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans. He credits director Sorrentino with "a magic hand" in shaping his performance as an eccentric American rock star living in retirement in Ireland. About the film, Sorrentino said, "The idea of the story came from a Nazi criminal. I wanted to write a story about a 50-year-old rock star who remains a child, and have these two confront each other.

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A rock star confronting a Nazi: there's a concept I haven't come across before. Penn plays Cheyenne, an aging rocker apparently modeled on Robert Smith of The Cure. His wrinkled face is caked with makeup, including thick eyeliner and lipstick. He walks with the stiff, impaired gait of an old man when he goes shopping in the mall near his mansion, where he's the local celebrity as well as a bit of a figure of fun. He's been happily married to firefighter Jane (Frances McDormand) for 35 years, and their relationship could be described as cute.

In fact, the whole setup for this plot is obnoxiously cute. Penn is a caricature of a sad clown who speaks in a high-pitched monotone and has a shrill girlish laugh. Much of the dialogue in the early scenes is in the cute-stupid vein. "This Must Be the Place" proceeds to shift tone radically several times in the course of the story, and the first big shift occurs when Cheyenne is informed of the death of his father, with whom he hasn't been in touch for 30 years.

It is revealed that Cheyenne sprang from a wealthy Orthodox Jewish family, and that his father was a Holocaust survivor. The farcical tone of the first part of the film is now history, as Cheyenne is charged with continuing his father's work of tracking down the Nazi guard who had humiliated him in Auschwitz. Before that can happen, the film takes a stylistic break with a tribute to David Byrne (who also composed the soundtrack music). There's a concert number, which functions like a music video in the middle of the film, followed by what comes off like Sorrentino's admiring words of praise for Byrne, put in the mouth of Penn's character.

Shifting tone again, "This Must Be the Place" becomes a road movie when Cheyenne agrees to drive a stranger's pickup truck to Texas. Director Sorrentino's vision of iconic American places and types unfolds through encounters in bars and restaurants. Cheyenne finds time for some soul-searching and Nazi-hunting along the way.

This is rather obviously intended to be a coming-of-age film, with all the trappings of a Nazi hunt as window dressing. Early in the film, another character remarks to non-smoker Cheyenne that only children don't feel the urge to smoke. After he has reached the end of the road with his quest, a stranger at the airport offers him a cigarette, and he oh-so-significantly lights up.

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, who has made films in Denmark, the U.K. and the U.S., would seem hell-bent on becoming an American action director if his competition entry "Drive" is any indication. Refn has made extreme sadistic violence and edgy stories of mysterious marginal heroes his trademark in films including "The Pusher Trilogy," "Bronson," and "Valhalla Rising." In "Valhalla Rising," his tattooed and pierced Viking anti-hero is virtually invincible, able to rip his enemies from limb to limb no matter how many times he's been tortured, wounded, or left for dead.

"Drive," in the same vein (and there are veins, literally) but a different era, has Refn reaching for new heights of excess, not only in his use of violence, but in the flash and speed of the story. Ryan Gosling plays a Hollywood stunt driver who also works as a mechanic and moonlights as a getaway car driver for robberies. Comedian Albert Brooks is oddly but effectively cast as an arch-villain. There's a star-crossed romance (the kind where two people fall in love at first sight), an adorable kid, and a jealous husband who's in a jam, but "Drive" is all about the high-octane car chases and the mayhem.

The driver, who isn't given a name in the film, is unnaturally mild-mannered and unflappable in any situation. Contrary to what his sweet, boyish appearance might suggest, he has a preternatural ability to kill ruthlessly and often without ever changing his calm, earnest expression. He can straddle a bloodied man in a roomful of naked strippers and threaten to pound a spike through an eye with a hammer, then walk away unfazed.

"Drive" serves up sights like that and more. The driver and his love interest (a vastly under-utilized Carey Mulligan) share a first kiss in slow-motion in an elevator. The driver then whirls around to take down the other passenger in the elevator, stomping his head to a bloody mush on the floor. More heads are blown off, throats ripped out, and guts shot full of holes.

Having some familiarity with Refn's past work, I was expecting him to keep an ironic distance from the romantic and family-oriented aspects of the plot. That doesn't seem to be the case and the unconsummated love story especially, comes off as downright sappy. For all the film's edginess, I was puzzled by some of Refn's choices, including the soundtrack's string of pounding rock ballads that comment on the action with lyrics like, "He's a real human being, and to me a hero."

The Cannes jury won't announce the Palme d'Or winner until Sunday, but the competition for the Palme de Whiskers, my just-pretend prize for Best Feline Performance at Cannes is now over. This year's nominees are:

From "Stopped on Track" by Andreas Dresen: Tammy, the black cat who gets caught in a tree.

From "House of Tolerance" by Bertrand Bonello: Ninon, the sinister black panther who lounges nightly among the courtesans.

From "Arirang" by Kim Ki-duk: the sturdy and very vocal and very handsome orange-and-white tomcat who whines insistently for his supper. He doesn't have a name in the film, so I've named him Kimbo.

From "The Tree of Life" by Terrence Malick: the black-and tan charmer that sits on Jessica Chastain's lap. I've named her Calico.

From "Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai" by Tahashi Miike: The tough, battle-scarred white male who lives in the samurai clan enclave and cuddles with the head honcho. I've named him Big Boy.

And now, let's go to the imaginary awards ceremony at the Palais de Kittycats, a brand new edifice along the glamorous Croisette. In collars sparkling with a fortune in cubic zirconia, the feline elite of the film world gather on velvet cushions. I've designated my own Miss Kitty to do the honors. She pads up to the microphone, resplendent in her sleek coat of many subtle colors.

The room falls silent as Miss Kitty shreds the envelope with her claws and trills, "The Palme de Whiskers goes to Kimbo, who had not only a major supporting role but a speaking part!" Every bit a matinee idol, the husky tom slinks up to the stage in his dark-orange evening jacket with white trim. He gives Miss Kitty a token lick on the cheek, and in the distinctive voice that made him a star, he thanks director Kim for casting him in "Arirang." As an afterthought, he publicly forgives Kim for not giving him a name. The kitties go wild; a chorus of approving purrs fills the room. Kimbo pads back to his cushion, the coveted golden whisker Palme held delicately between his teeth like a trophy mouse.

(Top of page: Laundry photography by Barbara Scharres)

Almodovar's limp noodle, Panahi's home movie

2011-05-19T20:59:33Z

This morning, Pedro Almodovar, Spain's biggest big-cheese filmmaker, handed us a limp noodle with "The Skin I Live In," his entry in the Cannes competition. The film stars Antonio Banderas (who began his career in Almodovar's early films) and Elena Anaya, who looks like a cross between Penelope Cruz and Audrey Hepburn. Even a second-best Almodovar film has its delicious moments, but "The Skin I Live In" is flat compared with his best work, including "Broken Embraces," "Volver," and his Oscar winner "All about My Mother."

Typical of Almodovar, the film is a melodramatic farce. Although it's based on the novel "Mygale" ("Tarantula" in English) by Thierry Jonquet, the story is also strongly reminiscent of the 1960 French horror classic "Eyes without a Face" by Georges Franju. In the Franju film, a surgeon kidnaps women in order to graft their faces onto the head of his disfigured daughter. In "The Skin I Live In," a plastic surgeon is engaged in highly experimental work in order to create synthetic skin as a tribute to his dead wife, who was burned to death in a car crash. He subsequently uses the results of his research in service of a unique punishment for his daughter's rapist.

This story has a lot of twists, and the element of surprise is important. I don't want to give away too much, especially since it's due to open in the U.S. in the fall. I haven't read "Mygale," but I understand that the narrative is fragmented into sections that all come together in the end. In this, Almodovar appears to have followed the structure of the book, perhaps too closely. One of the principle weaknesses of "The Skin I Live In" is that the story is scattered in pieces. Characters and subplots are introduced then dropped. They are loosely but not completely tied together in the end.

]]> Dr. Robert Ledgard (Banderas) is a control freak who lives in a mansion with his tough, protective housekeeper Marilia. Robert's advanced work is highly respected in his profession, but there are whispers about his methods. Due to the fact that some of his experimentation involves unapproved techniques, he maintains a laboratory and private operating room in his home, where special clandestine procedures are carried out on patients who don't go by their real names.

Marilia has a few secrets too, and one of them involves a wild man of a robber, who shows up at the door in a tiger costume. This particular subplot, which appears early in the film, is soon dropped without a trace. Central to the story is Almodovar's trademark gender-bending, involving a lovely but suicidal patient who is required to wear a flesh-colored bodysuit to protect her new skin. There are flashes of the director's wit and flamboyant fashion sense, and one or two laugh-out-loud moments, but I missed cohesion and the genuine poignancy.

Speaking of control freaks, the guards in the Palais manage to fill that role daily. The seating in the two main theaters is strictly segregated by level of pass. Audience members are channeled to their designated areas, and heaven forbid that anyone would try to cross the lines of the Cannes hierarchy. Viewers in the balcony, where the blue passes sit, frequently attempt to sneak down one of the staircases at the side of the main floor where the white and pink passes sit. Each and every time they are driven back by the guards, who remind me of lion-tamers with imaginary whips and chairs.

Power is the subject of the French film "The Minister" by Pierre Schoeller, a political drama in Un Certain Regard that centers on a man who is in the process of having his soul re-shaped by the pressures of holding public office. Bertrand Saint-John, the Minister of Transportation and would-be reformer, is put in the spotlight by a horrific bus accident that kills many children, and by a host of hot-button national issues. His has yet to make a misstep and is considered a rising star in government except for one flaw--no one is sure where his true political loyalties lie.

"The Minister" is a fast-paced film, whether set at a chaotic accident site or behind closed doors. It portrays the business of governing as largely one of manipulating the media and managing public opinion. Government officials are seen as no less ruthless than the media sharks that go after them. The film opens with its most arresting and metaphorical image, which is Saint-John's nightmare: a naked woman crawls across the oriental carpet of an opulent office and into the open jaws of an alligator.

There are no lion-tamers, alligators, sharks or other symbolic references in "This Is Not a Film" by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, a film that needed no embellishment to expose one filmmaker's brave stand against ruthless power. Panahi ("Offside," "The Circle," The White Balloon") is the Iranian filmmaker who, along with Mohammad Rasoulof ("Goodbye," "White Meadows") has been sentenced by the Iranian government to serve six years in prison, and is banned from directing films for twenty years. Despite that ban, he has submitted "This Is Not a Film" to Cannes.

"This Is Not a Film" is a documentary, a home movie, really, filmed in March of this year, recording one day in Panahi's life. The director is confined to his home under house arrest, pending the outcome of his appeal. The day happens to be the holiday Fireworks Wednesday, a kind of Persian New Year's eve, when bonfires are lit in the streets and the sound of fireworks makes the city sound like a war zone. His family is away for the day, and Panahi is alone except for Mirtahmasb with the camera.

The film begins by following Panahi in a daily routine: breakfast; getting dressed; feeding his daughter's pet iguana Igi; and taking a call from his lawyer (who is hopeful that the ban on working will be lifted following the appeal, but not so hopeful about a significant reduction of the prison sentence). In the background on TV, a newscaster reports that Iran's supreme leader has denounced Fireworks Wednesday as "unreligious."

In the middle section of the film, Panahi gets out his most recent banned script and proceeds to block out scenes in his living room while describing the story of a young woman whose religious family locks her up to prevent her from registering for the university. He points out that the ban prevents him from directing, but not from reading a script out loud or acting. He can't resist calling out "Cut" at points, but Mirtahmasb mildly reminds him, "You are not directing; it's an offense."

In the final section of "This Is Not a Film," night has fallen and Mirtahmasb departs, but only after leaving the camera turned on. In the film's significant gesture of defiance, Panahi becomes a filmmaker once again, taking the camera to follow and film his extended conversation with a young janitor's assistant as they ride the elevator from floor to floor collecting trash. It's a funny and halting conversation with a triumphantly defiant conclusion. Panahi steps outdoors with the camera and shoots the holiday night scene, where a massive bonfire burns like a torch just outside the gate to his condo building.

Apocalypse von Trier; Miike in 3-D

2011-05-18T21:47:53Z

Another much-anticipated film by one of the big names in this year's Cannes competition premiered this morning -- "Melancholia" by Lars von Trier. It's no secret that this apocalyptic science fiction drama ends with the destruction of the earth, since that is revealed in the first few minutes of the film. The character played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, neatly summarizes von Trier's dark pessimism with the line, "The earth is evil; we don't need to mourn for it." What is rather amazing is that a film about the destruction of all life (and von Trier posits that we are alone in the universe) could be so turgid.

That said, I think I rather prefer von Trier's wacko view of the cosmos in "Melancholia" to Terrence Malick's in "The Tree of Life." With the ingredients von Trier had to work with, it's surprising that he didn't make a better film. Following the various forms of desecration and transgression that are the hallmarks of "Antichrist," it's as if he felt the need to top himself with an even more outrageous concept, but forgot to figure out what the outrageous part would be.

"Melancholia" examines the relationship of two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in the final days before the planet named Melancholia is due to collide with the earth. The story falls into two parts. The first is named for Justine, who is blonde, conventionally pretty, and mentally unstable. The second is named for Claire, who is Justine's opposite in every way, not only in her lean, dark-haired appearance, but in her down-to-earth competence in managing the stuff of life.

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Von Trier presents his vision of the last moments of human life in a poetic nutshell in his prologue. This includes some of the most beautiful slow-motion sequences I've ever seen. The film's very first image is a close-up of Dunst's immobile face as a profusion of birds fall from the sky in slow-motion behind her. The finale of the prologue depicts the collision of the planets. The tiny earth is absorbed violently into larger Melancholia as if it were a spermatozoa penetrating an egg.

The first section of the film is set during at the lavish wedding reception of Justine, who has just married Michael. The event is hosted at the palatial mansion of Claire and her wealthy husband John. Justine seems blissfully happy at first, but the event soon deteriorates, along with her mental state. There are funny, crude, and/or loopy characterizations by Charlotte Rampling as the divorced mother of the sisters, Stellan Skarsgard as Justine's boss, and Udo Kier as "the most expensive wedding planner on the planet."

It must be mentioned that von Trier's fellow Dane Thomas Vinterberg did a bitingly satirical rendition of the family party gone wrong in his 1998 "The Celebration." Comparisons are inevitable, and not necessarily in von Trier's favor. Part one is very much like a separate film, barely related to part two. In the course of the wedding reception, the impending disaster is only a nagging worry for Claire, who has followed scientific predictions online, although John, an amateur astronomer, imperiously dismisses the doomsday scenario.

Part two follows chronologically, and Melancholia is now an enormous sphere that rises nightly on the horizon, dwarfing the terrace and formal gardens of Claire's home. Justine managed to shed both husband and boss for good on her wedding night, and has joined Claire, John, and their young son as a morose guest. Von Trier contrasts his stately and ominous shots of the approaching planet with the intimacy of the hand-held camerawork with which he depicts the human drama.

As the planet approaches and panic rises, Justine becomes the competent one, taking strength from her hard-edged pessimism, while Claire starts to fall apart, wallowing in sentimentality. The end is indeed the end, as predicted.

In a statement in the press notes, von Trier mentions being influenced by German Romanticism, and states with mock horror that he has made a woman's film, which he dismisses as "cream." Straining to retain his maverick crown, he says: "I cling to the hope that there may be a bone splinter amid all the cream that may, after all, crack a fragile tooth... I close my eyes and hope!"

Two films by young directors premiered in Un Certain Regard today: "Oslo, August 31st" by Joachim Trier (son of Lars von Trier), and "Loverboy" by Catalin Mitulescu. In each case, by choosing to tell stories that have been told many times before, neither off these directors quite lived up to his potential this time around..

"Oslo, August 31st" is a junkie relapse story, and no matter how that story is dressed up in new clothes, it's always going to begin with a clean start and end with a needle in somebody's arm. I like the way the film opened with a home movie-like montage of Oslo scenes while a variety of voices describe favorite things about the city. This list-making strategy is one that Trier returns to later in the film for more impactful underlining, notably when his main character Anders eavesdrops on the conversations of other patrons in a coffee shop, and when he recites the things he remembers about his father.

Anders is allowed out of his drug rehab facility on day leave to have a job interview. With every encounter, from the interview itself to the successive meetings with old friends, the impossibility of leaving his notorious past behind becomes more evident. I felt like the lead actor Anders Danielsen (who is very good) didn't have free reign to make the story jell until the midpoint of the film. Trier has a unique way of advancing the plot through conversations that comment on each other, but again, this took some time to work. I don't doubt he's a director to keep an eye on in the future.

The Romanian cinema has been having an impact at Cannes for some years now, and the award of the Palme d'Or in 2007 to Cristian Mungiu's "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" was a turning point. "Loverboy" is the only Romanian film in the official selection this year. Director Mitulescu made a sensational feature debut in 2006 with the whimsical comedy/drama "How I Spent the End of the World."

"Loverboy" is a heavily researched realistic drama about a young guy who recruits women to sell to sex-slavers. With his dark wavy hair, enigmatic smile, and ripped physique, Luca doesn't have a problem getting girls to like him; in fact, they throw themselves at him. One day, one of his routine conquests becomes a girl he falls for. He's ready to call the old life quits, but she's ready and willing to become a prostitute in order to pay his debts. In fact, she appears to really get off on the idea of becoming a prostitute to support her man.

Mitulescu, also, is a director to watch in the future. I know from the press notes that he was eager to make a powerful social statement with "Loverboy" and had spent long hours getting to know just such men and their women in backwater Danube ports. Unfortunately, it's the kind of story that has been told so many times that it's almost a sub-genre. The trajectory of these two lives is quite predictable from the start. The film is well made and the milieu is painstakingly created, but there doesn't seem to be anything new here.

My day ended with the premiere of "Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai" by Takashi Miike ("Audition," "Ichi the Killer"). It's the first 3-D film ever selected for the Cannes competition, and I had been looking forward to it, but not to the 3-D aspect. 3-D is one of my pet peeves because I find it's hardly ever used effectively, and it's uncomfortable to watch. The glasses provided were presumably state of the art, but they're so clunky that I often took them off and put up with the lack of 3-D for minutes at a time. As it turns out, it often didn't make much difference.

"Hara Kiri" is a relatively low-key samurai film set in the 1600s, about an aging and impoverished samurai who undertakes a unique revenge for the unjust death of his son-in-law. A great part of it involves a story told in flashback, and that story within a story is almost a chamber drama taking place in the main room of a small house, and another great part involves dialogue around the finer points of samurai honor.

Here's where my 3-D irritations kick in. There's nothing about this drama that is naturally enhanced by 3-D, but tree trunks, pillars, large rocks, or actors' backs are often placed in the foreground of a shot specifically to emphasize the effect. Looks like cheap tricks to me, and bad composition to boot.

Welcome laughs, courtesy Aki Kaurismaki

2011-05-17T20:58:59Z

Finally Cannes delivers some real laughs! This morning I saw "Le Havre" by Finnish director Aki Kaurismki, screening in competition. After several days of grim and serious films about people who lead grim and twisted lives, I wanted to cry for joy at this funny and good-hearted film. I would normally be wary of a film that anyone describes as heart-warming but this is the real deal.

Kaurismaki ("Lights in the Dusk," "The Man without a Past" "Drifting Clouds," "The Match Factory Girl") is a master of deadpan comedy. His central characters are often glum, non-verbal types and naive innocents duped by tricksters or beaten down by a world they don't understand. The humor in his films is rooted in the deepest irony. "Le Havre" blithely portrays life as we might wish it to be, and that is the funniest irony of all.

The shoeshine man Marcel Marx is seen plying his trade at the Le Havre train station in the opening scenes of "Le Havre." He makes very little money, and the routine of his daily walk home establishes the fact that he has an overdue tab running everywhere he stops--the bakery, the grocery store, and the corner bistro. He can be a bit of a charmer with the ladies, but his long-suffering wife Arletty (Kati Outinen, a longtime Kaurismaki regular) describes him as "a big child" when she cautions her doctor not to reveal that she is about to die.

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Meanwhile, on the Le Havre waterfront, authorities open a suspicious freight container to find a group of African refugees huddled inside. Before they can take the illegal immigrants into custody, a boy, Idrissa, about 13 years-old, escapes. By coincidence and fate, he ends up going home with Marcel just as Arletty is sent to the hospital for an extended stay.

Here's where things really get interesting. It's an open secret in the neighborhood that there's a young African illegal at Marcel's place. All but one of his neighbors are thrilled (the nasty neighbor is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud). The baker, who had begrudged Marcel one baguette on credit the day before, hands him an armload. The grocer, who had rumbled down the security gate at his appearance, hustles up a big box of provisions. The bistro owner is more than happy to help deflect the immigration police. Even inspector Monet, a mysterious police commander in black fedora and trench coat, offers off-the-record advice.

With wonderful absurdity and some droll characterizations, Kaurismaki constructs his ideal world. Marcel is revealed to be a take-charge kind of guy who tracks down Idrissa's grandfather in an immigration detention center, and subsequently forms a plan to smuggle the boy across the English Channel to his mother in London. The neighborhood pitches in to raise the cash for the payoff to the boat captain with "a trendy charity concert," featuring the comeback of Little Bob a.k.a. Robert Piazza, known as the Elvis of Le Havre.

"Le Havre" is fun, it's touching, and it's not sappy or gratuitous. Typical of much of Kaurismaki's more recent work, it has a tongue-in-cheek air of soap opera melodrama, but with homages to French directors including Bresson, Melville, and Tati. Best of all, the film has a wonderful surprise ending. Goodness has its rewards, and Marcel gets his in due time.

There was a canine actor in "Le Havre" too, Kaurismaki's dog Laika; she gets star billing in the press notes. I had never thought about how many dog boutiques there are in Cannes, but I passed three within a few blocks of each other yesterday. There's a mind-boggling array of canine accessories, adornments, and outfits available here. Especially popular in Cannes I suppose, are the little evening gowns and tuxedos (sorry Doberman owners, they don't seem to come in large sizes). It's also possible to dress your pooch as a sailor boy, a princess, or a pirate. See what I'm up against in looking for feline performances in this festival? Dogs are king in France.

Following the Brazilian film "The Silver Cliff," that screened way down at the Quinzaine (Directors Fortnight) venue, I took side streets back toward the Palais in order to avoid the crowded Croisette. There's an outdoor farmers market in a square along the way, and I walked down an aisle of vegetable stalls, marveling at bounty of Provence: bundles of thick white asparagus, beautiful zucchini with the blossoms still attached, lovely lettuces, and big plastic buckets filled with many varieties of olives. There was homemade mustard and jam, local honey, and an open tub of pale, pickled lemons. I wish I could take it all home.

Food was important in my last film of the day, Alain Cavalier's "Pater," screening in competition, and featuring the director himself with actor Vincent Lindon. In the opening sequence, hands prepare two plates of food while the two men converse. The white plates are heaped with delicacies that include sliced truffles, shredded tuna in olive oil, and whole hot peppers on delicate stems. A pan of asparagus is put on the stove to simmer.

Cavalier and Lindon discuss a film project in which they will play elected officials and cabinet ministers. They begin improvising their roles. At this point it becomes evident that "Pater" is a film steeped in French politics. As the two expound upon the imaginary legislation they will enact, the white-collar crooks they will apprehend, and the corruption they will shut down, the French contingent of the audience was in stitches. I was clueless, but duck sausage, pan-fried leeks, and creamed artichokes were served up at a picnic in the woods, along with capitalism and globalization. I could go for some now (the creamed artichokes, I mean).

(Dog fashion photography above by Barbara Scharres)

(Above: From the French press kit for "Le Havre.")

Tree of Life: Lyrical, spiritual, kitsch

2011-05-16T21:35:10Z

Terence Malick's long-awaited "The Tree of Life" premiered in competition today, with an 8:30 am press screening. I anticipated seething crowds, so headed off to the Palais a little early. Entrance areas were jammed, and the Grand Theatre Lumiere was nearly full at only 7:55 am. A friend who had been holding a seat for me estimated that he had been about 200th in line when arriving at 7:30 am.

"The Tree of Life" was announced for last year's Cannes festival, but withdrawn when it wasn't completed in time. Although Malick has directed only four features in his more than 40-year career as writer/producer/director ("Badlands," "Days of Heaven," "The Thin Red Line," and "The New World), his cult reputation is such that many here were itching to declare "The Tree of Life" a masterpiece before the first frame ever hit the screen.

I think at least a few hopes were dashed this morning. As the film reached its conclusion there was a fadeout that turned out to be a false ending. People immediately jumped to their feet to exit in the dark, as always happens here, and a few dozen loud boos erupted from points all over the theater. Another image came on and those leaving stopped in their tracks and fell silent until Malick's director credit appeared. Applause followed, along with an equal amount of booing.

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I have mixed reactions to Malick's body of work, so I try to take each film as it comes without being predisposed to love it or hate it."The Tree of Life" is gorgeous to look at, lyrical, mystical, conspicuously spiritual in its message, and appears to have autobiographical elements. It's also, in part, profoundly kitsch.

A text from the "Book of Job" is the first image on the screen, followed by a voiceover by Jessica Chastain, who plays the mother in the film: "There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one to follow."

There are two parallel stories. As Brad Pitt described them at the press conference, they are the "micro" story of a family in a small town in Texas in the 1950s, and the "macro" story of the birth of the cosmos. The film opens with a mother, father (Brad Pitt), and adult son (Sean Penn) enveloped in all-consuming grief over the death of their son/younger brother. This opening has a jumpy, unsettled feeling that effectively conveys the state of loss.

Malick segues into an extended section representing the story of creation, following the sequence of events outlined in Genesis. From an almost abstract visual tone poem composed of swirling clouds, brilliantly colored exploding sunspots, seas, volcanoes and swimming and creeping creatures, this progression leads to a tropical forest where dinosaurs reign, and where the domination of the strong over the weak is established.

The Genesis story is presented with a poetic bombast that some future viewers will find reverent, but others will find almost laughable. It has the appearance of an extremely well-crafted, high-budget National Geographic nature film. I regret to say that I was most reminded of the programming on one of those TV stations that presents soothing landscape shots accompanied by hymns and Biblical passages.

The traditional creation story culminates in man, and in "The Tree of Life," man is a family of five: mother, father, and their three young boys. The father (Brad Pitt), a former military man, is deeply religious, a harsh disciplinarian, and possessed of a fiery temper. His wife is a gentle woman who seldom speaks, and defers to her husband in all things. The boys are typically lively and rambunctious, but Jack, the eldest, is destined to be on a lifelong collision course with his father.

The story of the O'Brien family appears to be autobiographical, although no one knows for sure, seeing as Malick isn't talking. The small town neighborhood milieu and all the details of family life are crafted with loving care. The conflict between father and son feels intensely personal, although this "micro" story has its own larger framework as a coming of age story that is full of boyish pranks lovely and lyrical moments. In one of these, Jack sneaks into a neighbor's home and rifles through a woman's lingerie drawer, holding up a transparent slip with an air of curiosity and wonder.

The death of one of the sons at the age of 19 hangs over the past and the present of "The Tree of Life." Jack's metaphoric search through the cosmos for his brother, a theme heavy with spiritual meaning, dominates the film. It strikes me that this theme is one that would only be treated in this particular way by an artist of a certain age, one who has lost loved ones and is acutely feeling the impermanence of life. Malick even conjures up a version of heaven, as families are reunited upon wading into a body of water. God is addressed directly; the soundtrack soars with sacred music. The river Styx? The river Jordan?

I decided to attend the press conference, which followed a half hour after the screening. The stampede of journalists began. Thousands want in when major stars will attend, but the room only holds a couple hundred. Nothing gets people with cameras excited like the presence of Brad Pitt, and they were clustered five and six deep in front of the discussion table in the minute or so that the festival allows flash photos before the start of the press conference.

Terrence Malick, a notorious recluse, did not come to Cannes. According to his producer Judith Green,"Mr. Malick is very shy. I believe his work speaks for itself." It was announced that Sean Penn was engaged in humanitarian work in Haiti, and would only arrive at the festival in a few days. In Malick's absence, most of the questions went to Brad Pitt anyway. He was almost unrecognizable in large horn-rimmed glasses, slicked-back long hair, and a mustache and goatee.

Pitt described working with Malick as "a leap of faith." On the subject of religion, he described the director as "more of a spiritualist" than a traditional follower of any faith."We had a lot of theological debates throughout," he said. Questioned by one journalist about his own religious upbringing, Pitt professed to being raised a Christian, but said,"I've got my issues, man; don't get me started. I myself found it very stifling as an individual."

Chaz Ebert revisited the question of why Malick chose not to attend the press conference. The stars and producers really circled the wagons at that point. Malick evidently inspires tremendous loyalty in those with whom he chooses to work. Pitt, Chastain, and the four producers present were clear that the director's privacy is sacrosanct. Pitt said,"He wants to focus on the making, not the selling of the real estate."

At events like this, there's always someone who decides to ask a personal question. A woman journalist asked Pitt to comment on his own parenting style. With a straight face and a hint of disdain, he replied: "I beat my kids regularly; seems to do the trick. And I deprive them of meals."

In an entirely different spiritual vein, today's lineup included French director Bruno Dumont's Un Certain Regard selection "Outside Satan." Dumont is a director whose previous films including "Hadewijch," "Flanders," "Humanity" and "The Life of Jesus," have often raised controversy. His films are set in rural regions that might best be described as portraying redneck France. His characters are close to the land, uneducated, and frequently brutish. His method of storytelling involves shots of long duration with very little dialogue.

"Outside Satan" is set in a northeastern province of France that Dumont calls home. A mysterious loner camps out amid the grassy dunes and marshes on the shores of the English Channel. He lives on handouts, and has formed an almost wordless bond with a nearby farm girl, his constant companion. Their relationship is not sexual, although she wishes it were. At least one neighbor woman regards him as a kind of shaman, and turns to him when her daughter suffers fits.

The stranger manifests a violent side, and yet it's ambiguous whether he's a murderer or a healer. He frequently falls to his knees in private, cryptic ritual of prayer, with his eyes fixed on the horizon. The girl has begun to follow him in this. She prays with her hands cupped and her arms outstretched. It's unclear to whom or what they are praying. One day the girl is overtaken by evil, and the man performs a miracle.

The sound is an extremely important element in this story. In the press notes, Dumont explains that he recorded the sound in mono, and retained all the ambient sounds, whether intended or accidental. The frequently occurring sound of breath on the soundtrack is a spooky, unsettling, transcendent presence. It may be interpreted in many ways, but for me it became at various points the presence of a vigilant evil.

Dumont posits good and evil purely in physical forms. There are no abstract spiritual concepts in this film, no discussions of faith or God. There is only life, be it human, animal, or plant, and there is death, which is an end that can come through swift, brutal actions. Dumont says,"I don't believe in God, and my film doesn't demand any faith from the public besides the faith in cinema."

(Red carpet photo above: Lionel Cironneau, Associated Press)

Sex, death, rape, murder:Just another day at the movies

2011-05-15T22:37:49Z

Following a heavy rain in the late afternoon yesterday, this morning in Cannes was gloriously sunny, the sky becoming more perfect and cloudless as the day progressed. I was hoping for a group of films to blow away yesterday's prevailing images of poverty, oppression, and child abuse. "The Artist" by Michel Hazanavicius, screening in competition, seemed like it could do the trick. It's a romance set in Hollywood; and strangely enough, it's conceived as a silent film.

"The Artist" has the most self-congratulatory press kit I've ever seen--55 glossy illustrated pages of in-depth interviews with all the key figures involved with the production, everyone congratulating and complimenting everyone else for their fabulous work. Could the film measure up to this? Not hardly. It is indeed a black-and-white silent film with musical accompaniment. Director Hazanavicius has attempted to revive the techniques of the silent cinema to tell a story entirely through acting, with text intertitles replacing spoken dialogue.

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The story opens in 1927, when George Valentin (seemingly modeled on Douglas Fairbanks) is the world's biggest movie star. His roles as a romantic leading man and swashbuckling hero make him untouchable at the box office. Strikingly pretty, energetic extra Peppy Miller (she most reminded me of Paulette Goddard) worships him from afar. As luck would have it, from bit parts like "the maid," she rapidly advances toward stardom and the advent of sound seals the deal. Peppy becomes a megastar, while George, who has staked his reputation and fortune on the assumption that the silents will prevail, loses everything. Meanwhile, Peppy hasn't forgotten that dashing man she once idolized.

"The Artist" is part "A Star Is Born," part "Singin' in the Rain," and part dozen or more other movies that are referenced, parodied or suggested. The problem with this pastiche is that the genuine silent cinema was so much better. Silent-era actors were more than talking figures with the sound turned off, and silent cinema developed a whole visual language of communication that "The Artist" lacks. The novelty of its silence wears off quickly.

To the surprise of festival veterans, there were oddly-phrased signs posted all around the line-up area for "Code Blue" by Urszula Antoniak, playing in the Quinzaine (Directors Fortnight). They read: "Some scenes in the film 'Code Blue' may hurt the audience feelings." Films here don't usually come with warnings. I had very much liked the director's previous film "Nothing Personal," and was certainly curious to find out how my feelings would be hurt.

It turns out that "Code Blue" is the film to which I have had the strongest negative reaction of any film I've seen at the festival so far, but I wasn't alone in that. There were walkouts throughout, but about ten minutes from the end, a large part of the audience simply decided that they'd had enough and started streaming out. I've never seen anything to match it at Cannes. So many people were leaving that the guards had to prop open the exit doors although the film wasn't over.

"Code Blue" is about a nurse who works in a nursing home. She cares for the infirm and elderly charges, some of whom are suffering, and she sometimes acts as angel of death, dispatching them according to her own judgment. Her private life is depicted as an empty, solitary existence in a stark Euro-modern apartment. There is little there of personal meaning to her except for cabinet holding her collection of mementos of the deaths for which she has been the catalyst. The most recent addition is a comb holding a few grey hairs.

One night, from her high-rise window she observes a woman being violently raped by two men on the beach below. A male neighbor is watching too. The next day she visits the beach and discovers a used condom and the gag that had been in the woman's mouth. If you guess that her next move was to call the police you would be wrong. She takes the condom home and rubs the rapist's semen into her vagina. She subsequently initiates a sexual encounter with the voyeur neighbor, who beats her to death.

I ponder what life experience, if any, this film came out of. I don't have a problem with violence, death, or any form of sexuality as content in art, but I do have a problem with a film that seems like an arty, empty, beautifully-composed facade for half-baked ideas.

It's strange how days at this festival seem to fall into themes, and "Stopped on Track" by Andreas Dresen offered a contrasting view of infirmity and death. Dresen got a lot of international festival play with his 2008 film "Cloud 9." Its a drama about marriage, sex, and infidelity. What made "Cloud 9" unusual was that all of the characters were elderly. Dresen's work tends to be low key, naturalistic and highly perceptive.

"Stopped on Track" is about a family man who learns that he has an inoperable brain tumor, and has at most, three months to live. Frank and his wife tell their two kids the hard facts and the family adjusts to the new normal. The two consult with an array of counselors and are advised things like: enjoy life; be good to yourself; think of the illness as your friend. They take the kids to a water park, and confess to each other that they never wanted to go to Thailand or the Maldives anyway. Frank begins a video diary on his iPhone.

The audience was in tears for this one, as the painful yet rewarding experience of living through a family member's progression toward an inevitable death played out. There is no high drama at any point in this film. The simple, true reality of it, and the extraordinary loving nature of it are the things that grab your heart.

My final film of the day, "House of Tolerance" by Bertrand Bonello, was screening in competition. It was a treat for the eyes in terms of lavish costumes and production design, but somewhat less satisfying in its mixed message. Set in a high-class Parisian brothel from 1899 to 1900, the story spins off from two events: the face of one of the women is horrifyingly disfigured by one of her regular clients; and, a new girl, only 16 years old, arrives at the house from the countryside.

The areas of the house used for entertaining men are sumptuously decorated in the height of late 19th-century style, with an emphasis on velvets, brocade and gilt. The living areas where the women spend their few off hours are bare and mean like servants quarters. Director Bonello emphasizes the difference as he concentrates on the relationships of the women with each other. Having no one else to care, the women care for each other. This is typified in scenes like a jolly family-style dinner as they gossip and tease each other like schoolgirls.

Bonello does some odd things with this film. First of all, despite the obvious amount of research that has gone into creating the entire milieu with historical accuracy, he injects contemporary music ranging from blues to rock at various points. I know he has stated a complex rationale having to do with slavery in the press kit, but the ploy doesn't work on the screen.

Secondly, Bonello's point about enslavement, underlined by the additional bad things that occur--one woman becomes addicted to opium; another dies of syphilis--seems to me to be undercut by the evident nostalgia he also demonstrates for this brothel system. The house is forced to close for financial reasons, and through a half-dozen different false endings the film mourns the loss. Music from "La Boheme" swells; a single petal falls meaningfully from a white rose; a red light is turned off for the last time; a beautifully costumed courtesan disappears down a hallway for the last time.

Goodnight "House of Tolerance;" goodnight Bertrand Bonello; goodnight Cannes; tomorrow's another day.

Pirates of the Riviera

2011-05-14T22:38:19Z

It's another cool and overcast day in Cannes, but one that promises to be dominated by pirates and outlaws in the morning, and kids in the afternoon. The out-of-competition premiere European screening of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" was scheduled for the Grand Theatre Lumiere at 8:30 am. This meant that European critics would flock, but Americans like me were freed up to roam elsewhere for our viewing. For my first film I opted to walk down the Croisette to see a pirate of a very different kind in "Porfirio," a Colombian film by Alejandro Landes, in the Quinzaine (Directors Fortnight) section of the festival.

"Porfirio" is a scripted and lightly fictionalized account of the life of a man the Latin American press had dubbed "the air pirate." Actual events reenacted in the film by non-professional actors, including the original central figure in the story, Porfirio Ramirez Aldana. Porfirio made headlines in 2005 for hijacking a plane to Bogota.

What attracted Landes to the case after reading a sensationalized newspaper account was the fact that the hijacker is paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair, and was wearing diapers at the time. The director spent five years working with his subject and his family to develop their trust, and only revealed to the man a few days before shooting began that he would play himself.

]]> This is a film that demands patience because it is in large part a study of the life that was the catalyst for such an extreme action. The circumstances of the hijacking are revealed only in the final ten minutes. This is not a heist film, but a realistic look at a man whose outsized personality is at odds with the disability that was caused by a policeman's stray bullet. It's a study in what Landes refers to in the press notes as "the notion of the body as prison to the soul. There's a coda in which Porfirio faces the camera and sings a lively improvised song about his daring exploit and the duplicity of Colombian authorities. It's the film's big payoff, but it's a long time coming.

My next film of the day was "Goodbye" or "Be Omid e Didar" by Mohammad Rasoulof ("White Meadows," "Iron Island"), the Iranian director who, along with Jafar Panahi, has been sentenced to six years in prison for allegedly "propagandizing against the regime." Panahi also has a film in the festival, which will screen on May 20. The festival has announced that a press conference will follow that screening in order to clarify the current situation of these two directors, who have been made outlaws by their own government for the act of making art.

In the meantime, updated information regarding their plight is slight. No press notes have been made available for "Goodbye," and I'm not completely clear on whether the director is now in jail, out on bail, or allowed to work at all. I've been told by Iranian friends that some of the details of his sentence are not as harsh as Panahi's. In any case, the content of "Goodbye" would suggest that he is taking a very great risk to send this film to Cannes.

A woman's increasingly difficult and desperate attempt to leave Iran is the focus of Goodbye." Noora, a young lawyer, has been disbarred. It is hinted that this was due to some form of activism. Her husband, a journalist, lost two jobs in succession when the newspapers he worked for were shut down. He has since gone underground and broken off contact with her. Noora's pregnancy is a factor in her complex dealings with a man who specializes in devising immigration schemes for hire. When her doctor suspects that she may be carrying a Down syndrome child, Noora begins to consider an abortion, but this too is a problem.

Through the routine of Noora's life, Rasoulof details the abundant threats to freedom that plague the average citizen--her satellite dish is taken away because satellite TV is illegal in Iran; as a woman, she cannot undertake a whole range of medical procedures, or even check into a hotel, without her husband's permission. Rasoulof also depicts the specific terrors that attend anyone who is seen by the regime as a dissident. The scene in which two plain-clothes police ambush Noora in the tiny elevator of her apartment building and interrogate her as they keep the car in motion is a standout example.

"Goodbye" is filmed in muted colors. Rasoulof's frame compositions are elegant but convey a deadly, sleepwalking calm. A pet turtle becomes a metaphor for Nora's situation as it circles and paws the slippery sides of a plastic tray, unable to get a foothold to get out. One day the turtle disappears.

For some unknown reason, the festival scheduled no press screening for Markus Schleinzer's "Michael," one of only two films by a first-time director in the competition ("Sleeping Beauty" is the other). Press was allowed to attend the official screening in the late afternoon, which created one of those typical madhouse situations that can be frequent here. Guards blocked off access to the front of the Palais and closed nearby intersections. This meant a walk many blocks down the Croisette through a maze of stanchions in order to reach the lane that led to the designated entrance. Security was extra tight today, and my bag was inspected three times before I got a seat in the theater.

Although Schleinzer is a first-time director, he was the casting director for films including Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," "Time of the Wolf," and "The White Ribbon," for which he also coached the children. "Michael" is about a pedophile who is keeping a 10-year-old boy in a prison chamber in his suburban basement.

The character Michael leads a double life. He's a diligent employee; he has friends; he's on good terms with his family. He often treats his victim as if he were a stern foster parent, making him help with chores, monitoring his TV time, and even taking him on the occasional outing, albeit with a firm hand at the back of the boy's neck. The first time Schleinzer provides a glimpse of the chilling reality, Michael is seen entering the prison room and closing the door behind him. In the next shot, he's upstairs at his bathroom sink, casually washing his penis.

There's an all-pervasive coldness to this film. The boy is treated like a pet. When he becomes seriously ill with flu, Michael takes the precaution of having a grave in the woods ready. When he goes on a skiing trip with male pals, he simply stocks the little prison with an extra supply of instant noodle cups and locks up.

Michael's emotionless precision is given no counterpoint in the larger milieu in which he operates. Schleinzer may or may not be making a larger statement about contemporary society, but at least half of his audience wasn't buying it. The director and cast were present, and when the film ended, a smattering of polite applause was followed by boos, catcalls, and whistles, the first I've heard this festival.

The flip side of "Michael" was apparent in "The Kid with a Bike" by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Two-time Palme d'Or winners, the Dardenne brothers have made treating stories of children at risk the specialty of their careers. If "Michael" is essentially about a boy lost to a life and a future, "The Kid with A Bike" is about a boy of similar age redeemed by love.

A tow-headed pre-teen, Cyril has been abandoned to the care of a children's home by his father, who has disappeared without a trace. The boy refuses to believe his dad has moved away and left him despite all indications to the contrary. Blind faith, irrational impulses, and magnetic attraction all figure in this story as Cyril impulsively finds a foster mother who begins to pull him into the normalcy of family life.

Samantha, a single hairdresser, is drawn to Cyril just as he is drawn to trust her, and yet there's no denying that he gravitates to father figures, no matter how unwisely chosen. Samantha tracks down his real father, now a prep chef in a small-town restaurant, and takes the boy to see him. The dad crisscrosses the kitchen while working, Cyril following his steps back and forth. In scenes like this, the directors make the emotion of longing for family very palpable. Ultimately, every single male in the film will betray Cyril's trust. Even the two men he victimizes in his brief foray into crime prove prone to evil when the tables are turned.

It's hard not to like "The Kid with a Bike," and yet I missed some of the edge that the Dardennes brothers usually bring to a film. This one is a bit too much like a fairy tale, not that you don't want to believe it. Samantha is so good, patient, understanding, and forgiving, she's the mom nobody in this world ever had. I think of the cautious relationship between the carpenter and the boy in "The Son," and it seems so much more grounded in the realities of human interaction.

The reaction in the Palais to "The Kid with a Bike" was extended applause. It will take a week to find out what the jury thinks, and whether the Dardennes brothers can pull off a Cannes threepeat.

Of popes and poissons and Kim Ki-duk

2011-05-13T22:20:43Z

It's Friday the 13th in Cannes, and that has got to mean something good. An overcast sky threatening rain means that there couldn't be a more perfect day to stay inside and watch movies.

The morning began with the 8:30 am press screening of Nanni Moretti's "We Have a Pope." Hmm...a comedy/drama about the Vatican by a self-professed Italian atheist? Moretti is known primarily for his wry, intellectual, and largely autobiographical approach to comedy in films including "My Diary" and "April, " but also for serious drama in films including his 2001 Palme d'Or winner "The Son's Room." Subjects he has often lampooned include leftist politics, psychoanalysis, water-polo, and the cinema itself.

In "We Have a Pope," the funeral of a dead pope has just taken place and the College of Cardinals is convening to elect the new pontiff from among their number. Moretti goes to great lengths to represent this ritual gathering with great accuracy, but injecting an escalating number of comic moments as the film traverses from the ceremonial pomp of its opening scenes to take on a lighter tone.

As if the voting for a pope were an elementary school spelling test, the prelates cross out names on their ballots, look to heaven for guidance, and even cheat, some slyly spying on what a neighbor seated to the left or right is writing. After a few rounds of voting, the winner is revealed to be a candidate who was not even in the running, a stunned Cardinal Melville (surely Moretti's tip of the hat to iconic French director Jean-Pierre Melville), played by veteran French star Michel Piccoli.

]]> Robed in his regalia, the moment comes for the new pope to greet the world from his balcony. He instead lets out a scream of terror and refuses. The film soon breaks into two parallel stories. When all efforts to calm the man's fears fail, and a medical exam reveals no physical ailments, a psychotherapist (Moretti himself) is brought in to address the problem. In the course of events, the pope manages to slip away from his keepers, but the doctor is forced to remain sequestered with the cardinals because he is privy to the secret proceedings, and the convocation cannot be officially closed until the pope is announced to the world.

Moretti is the comic center of "We Have a Pope." His comic persona has remained consistent from film to film--he's the neurotic, highly opinionated know-it-all who likes to be the center of attention. The cardinals attempt to fill their time relaxing and working puzzles, but the doctor, whom they address as Professor, undertakes to instruct and entertain them, giving a deadpan lecture on the difference between sleeping pills and mood stabilizers, providing his non-believer's psychoanalytic interpretation of Biblical passages, explaining how bookmakers' odds work, and organizing the elderly clerics in a complex volleyball tournament pitting the cardinals from different continents against each other.

Meanwhile, the pope, who has long suppressed his ambition to become an actor, wanders the city anonymously, and falls in with the members of a theater company. Moretti creates a very funny scene near the film's conclusion in which the cardinals and the Swiss Guards, all in full ceremonial dress, converge on the theater company's performance of Chekhov's "The Seagull" in order to kidnap the pope from the balcony.

"We Have a Pope" has scores of droll comic moments, but a great deal of poignancy as well. Its characterizations are wonderfully acute and always nicely underplayed. The film is likely to make it to a few North American festivals, I won't reveal the ending. I found it to be a bit of a cop-out, but suffice it to say that Moretti leaves it open to interpretation.

In a film that hinges on a contest of another kind, "Miss Bala" by Gerardo Naranja, premiered representing Mexico in the "A Certain Regard" section of the festival. The story lays a deadly trap for a 23-year-old Tijuana woman who aspires to compete in a regional beauty pageant, and makes her fate as seemingly inescapable as that of Moretti's pope. There are no good guys on either side in this grim film, which portrays the borderland drug wars as the stuff of daily life in Mexico.

Aiming to celebrate with her best friend at a club after the two have aced the pre-selection for the pageant, Laura is caught in the crossfire of a gang ambush. She escapes, but there's no sign of the other girl. Flagging down a cop the next day in an effort to discover the whereabouts of her friend, Laura is delivered into the hands of the very gangsters who shot up the club.

Against her will she's made complicit in the disposal of bodies, only the first of a chain of events that not only trap Laura and her family, but drag her deeper into a scenario that includes brutal murders and chaotic firefights. In the plot's darkest twist, the gang leader who holds her prisoner has already purchased her win of the pageant with threats and bribes.

I was anticipating that "Arirang" by Korean Kim Ki-duk would involve a significant amount of violence. Eccentric director of films including "Dream," "3-Iron," and "Bad Guy," he is prone to create characters with an amoral some-live-some-die approach to life. The credits in the press kit for this new film seemed a little strange: written and directed by Kim Ki-duk; starring Kim Ki-duk; produced by Kim Ki-duk; cinematography by Kim Ki-duk, and on and on.

At the screening, festival director Thierry Fremaux introduced Kim onstage. [Lest you think I'm being familiar, the last name comes first in Korea, as in much of Asia, so Kim is his last name.] My French is limited to about 50 words, so when I caught the phrase "poisson de Pusan" (fish of Pusan), for a silly moment I wondered if Fremaux was making a punning joke in French. (Try it to the tune of La Plume de Ma Tante.) James Quandt, senior programmer at Cinematheque Ontario in Toronto, who was sitting next to me, assured me that he was actually referring to a seafood restaurant in which he'd eaten with Kim while attending the Pusan Film Festival.

Kim's remarks were translated into English. He said, "I was asleep but Cannes woke me up," a statement that only made complete sense after seeing the film. "Arirang" is a feature-length self-portrait that evolves into a confessional ritual and an exorcism of the filmmaker's equivalent of writer's block.

The camera records Kim's daily life living in a tent inside a primitive cottage on a mountainside overlooking a town. He collects water, bathes from a plastic container, chops wood, eats, drinks heavily, and performs the basic functions with only the most basic means at his disposal. When he trains the camera on himself in earnest, it is to act as judge, jury, and accused through the intercutting of video images.

Kim's career came to a halt in 2008, when during the production of "Dream," an actress nearly died accidentally in a scene in which her character was being hanged. Shocked and badly shaken, the director relates that he suddenly lost his nerve and the will to work. In one of his tearful close-ups he confesses, "I had thought of death as a mystical dream, a door to pass through. After 'Dream,' I realized that death could be a crime cutting short someone's expectations."

"Arirang" is film that will likely have specialized appeal to those who are familiar with Kim's work, but it is gripping stuff. His terror, self-accusation, and remorse provide and intimate look at a soul turned inside out. The invitation to Cannes brings Kim out of his self-imposed exile, so in a very real way provided the wake-up call he noted in his introduction.

The screening of Israeli competition film "Footnote" by Joseph Cedar ("Beaufort") provided a bookend experience to a day that began with "We Have a Pope." Like Moretti's film, "Footnote" is a comedy/drama which also touches on religious institutions, and the film has an ending that is similarly open to the viewer's speculation.

In "Footnote," Eliezer Shkolnik, a curmudgeonly professor, and his son Uziel are both well-known Talmudic scholars and researchers. Uziel, however, reaps awards and honors galore, while his jealous father has suffered a career of being overlooked.

Uziel wins a major academic award in their mutual field, but through the mistake of an office assistant, Eliezer is informed that he is the winner. When the awards committee attempts to solicit the Uziel's help in rectifying the situation, he pleads his father's case and demands that they honor the mistake. Instead of glorying in the prize he has long sought, Eliezer uses it as a platform to publicly denigrate his son's career, widening the gap between them.

The film starts out with a jaunty air, advancing the back-stories of both characters briskly through the use of parallel images and amusing graphics and animation. As the rivalry heats up, the plot is occasionally stalled in long scenes of argumentative dialogue. There were times when it seemed this otherwise flawlessly slick film couldn't decide whether it was a comedy or a drama. Fortunately, the strong performances of Shlomo Bar Aba and Lior Ashkenazi as father and son manage to bridge the gap.

Getting antsy for amazement

2011-05-12T23:11:00Z

As I approached the Festival Palais early this morning, a light breeze wafted down the fabric of the immense billboard-size banner of this year's festival poster over the facade. The glamorous photo of a leggy Faye Dunaway, by director Jerry Schatzberg from his 1970 film "Puzzle of a Downfall Child," was rippling and creasing in a way that made the sleek legs appear to be covered by a pair of ill-fitting tights. Little did I suspect that Faye's wardrobe malfunction was a bad omen for a seemingly promising day on which three out of the only four films by women selected for this year's Cannes competition were scheduled to screen.

British actress Tilda Swinton, who gravitates to daring roles, plays Eva, a conflicted New York mother "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, based on the novel by Lionel Shriver. Eva's son Kevin is portrayed as having a deep animosity toward his mother, virtually from the moment of his birth. As an infant, he shrieks hour after hour when alone with her. As he grows, he exhibits a fierce, focused inclination to evil, and that bent will ultimately make him a Columbine-style killer. Kevin might have been a demon child in another kind of movie, but this is not a supernatural story. "We Need to Talk About Kevin," is a psychological drama centered on Eva's guilt.

For me, this was a one-note film. Kevin is thoroughly bad; Eva is thoroughly angry, self-hating and stoic. I longed for some shades of subtlety, but this is a story that relies on blood-red coding in dreams and flashbacks, and a soundtrack that emphasizes grating irritants. Ramsay, who acquitted herself very well with films including "Ratcatcher" and "Movern Callar," seems an ill match for an American setting, letting raucous bluegrass numbers and stereotyped characterizations of Eva's small town neighbors and co-workers stand in for insight.

]]> Judging from the text in the press kit, Australian novelist-turned-filmmaker Julia Leigh seemed to have everything lining up in her favor with her first film "Sleeping Beauty." Based on the unmade script, Filmmaker Magazine had named her one of "25 New Faces of Independent Cinema" back in 2008. She had director Jane Campion as a mentor, and her film was not only selected for the Cannes competition, but is a contender for the Camera d'Or, the prize for first or second feature.

Leigh is by no means the first director to tackle a variation on the fairy tale, and not even the first female director to work with this theme. French filmmaker Catherine Breillat created her own unique "The Sleeping Beauty" in 2010. In plot, Leigh's adaptation closely resembles a little known 2006 German film, "The House of the Sleeping Beauties" by Vadim Glowna, which was based on a novella by Yasunari Kawabata. In both films, a student desperate for cash takes a job in a very private and pricey brothel catering to men of a certain age. The young woman agrees to be drugged into a deep sleep so that the clients may keep company with her unconscious body. She is assured that there will be no penetration, but pretty much anything else is allowed, from gentle caresses to a man stubbing out his cigarette on her neck..

Leigh's visuals call up many other references in this foray into transgressive territory. I was reminded of the stilted, antiseptic approach to erotic content of Atom Egoyan's "Speaking Parts," and of the fetishism, particularly with regard to production design, of Peter Greenaway's "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover." Leigh's story is fleshed out with a host of details and circumstances that would in part explain the choices that her character Lucy makes--including a dependent alcoholic mother, and a dependent suicidal boyfriend--but the core of the story is the spectacle of a beautiful young woman being used and abused while unable to either participate or resist.

I subsequently pinned some hopes on "Poliss," a third competition film of the day, by French director/actress Maiwenn. It's a story of cops who work with the Child Protection Unit of the Paris police to investigate cases of child abuse. A low-key sensitively staged scene of a female cop interviewing a very small girl about the ways her daddy allegedly touched her opened the film. It was followed by a musical credit sequence so crass and obnoxious that it seemed lifted from a music video aimed at pre-teens.

On the whole, "Poliss" is a well-acted, well-crafted French-style equivalent of a couple episodes of "Law and Order: SVU." Police partners bicker and bond in the course of their work; the work takes its toll and families fall apart; and the stress drives some to personal extremes. Compelling stuff to watch for a couple hours of entertainment, but again, nothing I couldn't have seen on TV.

It's only the second day and I'm getting antsy for a film to amaze me, but tomorrow is another day.

"Midnight in Paris" but Cannes has just begun

2011-05-11T20:59:13Z

Arriving in Cannes by bus from the Nice airport provides a thumbnail tour of the town, from the more seedy homes on the outskirts to the swanky hotels on the waterfront. The palms lining the Croisette, the festival's de facto main drag, may be the ubiquitous symbol of city, but a few blocks away the plane trees, cypresses, and the prolific climbing roses of Provence are a more common sight. Walk a short distance from the Festival Palais and there are conspicuously un-chic restaurants where local cops congregate for dinner in the back room and retired couples hang out for a smoke and an evening beer, more often than not, with a fluffy mutt under the table.

In a way, my first reminders yesterday of everyday life in everyday France were a bracing counterpoint to this morning's press screening of Woody Allen's romantic fantasy "Midnight in Paris." The festival's opening night film is a colorful valentine to Paris, indulging and gorgeously illustrating the director's every memory and cherished illusion of the city. I've never been a big Woody Allen fan, but "Midnight in Paris" is loads of fun.

The film opens with a morning-to-night sequence of views of the city's most iconic sights: Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge, the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees, the narrow streets of the Left Bank, and the Eiffel Tower. That opening alone is a tourist board's dream. At the press conference later, a journalist asked Allen, who mentioned that he thought of the title long before he had a story, whether these postcard-worthy views were his own impressions of Paris, or were meant to represent the point of view of his characters. Perhaps the French questioner was hoping for the latter, but Allen replied, "I learned about Paris the way all Americans do--from the movies. I wanted to show the city emotionally, not realistically, but through my eyes.

]]> Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a successful but unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter on vacation in Paris with his finacee Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. Allen has the ugly American tourist thing down pat, fashioning Inez as a nagging, albeit sexy, materialistic airhead, and her parents as boorish conservatives with a major sense of entitlement. By contrast, Gil is a somewhat loony innocent whose dream of becoming a serious writer involves a vision of wandering the streets of Paris with a baguette under his arm.

Gil and the ugly Americans are soon parted when, lost, tipsy, and alone one night, he's picked up at the stroke of midnight by a pair of revelers in an antique car. This is where the film really cuts loose, because it develops that the car is a time machine that whisks him to a party in 1920s' Paris, where Cole Porter is at the piano, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald become his new pals. Soon he's exchanging confidences with longtime idol Ernest Hemingway, meeting the likes of Gertrude Stein, Dali, along with Picasso and his alluring, self-assured mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard).

Allen didn't need much research for these characterizations, as he explained later; "These were all the icons of my young adulthood." Adrian Brody, who plays a very over-the-top Dali, remarked that Allen urged him to portray both the genius and the madman, dispelling the prevailing opinion that Allen gives his actors no direction. Judging by the enthusiastic performances all around, the actors in these key cameos evidently relished their roles, from Corey Stoll as a pompous Hemingway and Kathy Bates as a nurturing Stein, who readily agrees to critique Gil's novel, to France's first lady Carla Bruni, who plays a tour guide at the Rodin museum.

The film's underlying theme of nostalgia is mediated by the lesson of learning to appreciate the value and the imperfection of your own time. Trite as that may sound, it's satisfyingly delivered within the context of the story. Allen makes it resonate in a very funny and beautifully staged sequence in which Gil and Adriana are taken back to a yet earlier time in Paris--the Belle Epoque of the 1890s, where they meet Toulouse Lautrec and Gauguin. Despite his own well-known obsession with earlier eras, at the press conference Allen said, "It's a big trap to think that living in another time would be better. I wouldn't really like to go back to another time."

I later checked out the jury press conference because it's the thing to do on opening day. It's also a chance to eyeball the luminaries on this year's jury. They are: jury president Robert De Niro; actors Martina Gusman from Argentina, Uma Thurman, and Jude Law; Hong Kong producer Nansun Shi, wife of popular director Tsui Hark; directors Olivier Assayas of France, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun of Chad, and Johnnie To of Hong Kong; plus novelist Linn Ullman, daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullman.

Since the jury has not yet seen a single film, these affairs are much the same from year to year. Every juror is honored to be chosen, inspired by the company of their fellow jurors, and swears to be an impartial arbiter of art. Yawn. I check out the fashion statements, my secret interest.

Thurman puts on her oversized shades. The place is stifling, but she pulls a fluffy angora cardigan over her white A-line dress and stretches the sleeves down over her hands. Some major diamonds dangle from her ears, and they're flashing all the way to the back of the room. Nansun Shi, in a striking forest-green silk shift, also sports big-time sparklers. Loaned by Chopard or some other festival sponsor, I wonder? In a sharply conservative dark suit, white shirt and tie, Jude Law looks like stopped off on his way to a wedding.

This press conference's only of excitement came with a startling pair of questions from one of the journalists. Addressing De Niro and referencing two movies, "Taxi Driver," and "Raging Bull," he said, "Are you talking to me" and "Did you fuck my wife?" At the second question, the room went silent except for a few nervous titters. De Niro's face reddened up noticeably and moderator Henri Behar snapped, "I don't see the relevance of the question." Then the moment was over, and this convocation soon was too, with Behar's closing remark, "The fun is over; now the work begins."

The work begins indeed; tomorrow is the first full day of the festival, and that day begins at 8:30 am.

Press conference photos above by Associated Press

Cannes 2011: All eyes forward

2011-05-03T00:32:33Z

As the opening night of the Cannes International Film Festival approaches, a host of Riviera amenities and services hope to lure my business via solicitous e-mails. Would Madame perhaps like to hire a helicopter for the journey from the Nice airport to the Festival Palais? Rent a limousine with a multilingual driver? Charter a yacht or rent a fully staffed villa with swimming pool (photos handily attached)?

Me, I'm just in the market to rent a no-frills mobile phone with a European SIM card, and I'll be taking an inter-city bus from the airport, but you get the picture. The sparkling goodies of this playground of millionaires are dangled before the thousands of accredited journalists, theater programmers, film buyers, and filmmakers soon to be heading for the legendary festival. Most of us will be pinching the Euros until they scream, but nonetheless enjoying the nonstop spectacle provided by those who get to ride around in helicopters.

The festival opens the night of Wednesday, May 11 with Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris." "Monsieur Woodee," as the French are wont to call him, made his first visit ever to Cannes in 2002, when his "Hollywood Endings" opened the festival. Although the film was disappointingly lackluster, it certainly made no difference to his French fans, who hailed him like an emperor. I watched Allen on that occasion from a seat among the hyper-excited audience, marveling at his frail stature, almost inaudible voice, and the shrinking body language that made him seem an incongruous god of cinema.

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"Midnight in Paris," Allen's 46th film, appears to be following the Eurocentric trend of other recent films including "Match Point," "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," and "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger." A romantic comedy, it seems the theme comes down to exploring whether the grass is greener on the other side of the fence--if the fence is in Paris. The cast, which includes three Oscar winners, is another intriguing international mix: Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Cathy Bates.

Danish maverick director Lars von Trier ("Antichrist") returns to the festival with "Melancholia," an apocalyptic science fiction film about the relationship of two sisters as a planet threatens to collide with the earth. It stars Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who won Best Actress at Cannes in 2009 for her role in "Antichrist."

At his best, von Trier unleashes in his films a very unsettling and indelible sort of myth-making. From "Antichrist," I remember not the notorious scenes of torture, but the image of the talking fox that eerily intones the line "Chaos reigns," and the creepy, vague aura of the supernatural. At least at a distance, "Melancholia" sounds like ripe material for him.

But this festival is not only about the movies; it's a capsule view of the whole world movie scene from high to low. Just as an Oscar show is a disappointment without an unforeseen incident or two, Cannes wouldn't be Cannes without the major and minor scandals that people talk about for years. Lars von Trier is the guy who called Roman Polanski a midget upon receiving an award for "Europa," (aka "Zentropa,") back in 1991. That night he set fire to his award scrolls on the beach for the benefit of a Danish TV crew. Can this perpetual bad boy be counted on for some bad behavior? It remains to be seen whether he'll dare to take on tough-guy jury president Robert De Niro.

The Cannes competition selection includes films that promise to be formidable awards contenders, judging by the reputations and past records of the directors alone. Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, has been hotly anticipated for more than a year, and it the only American film in competition. This father-son story about a family with three boys was speculated to be in 2010 Cannes, then didn't appear, and was later rumored to be making its appearance at a number of other major festivals but didn't appear. Malick has the cultiest of cult reputations, and this is only his fifth feature. For better or for worse, "The Tree of Life" is likely to be the feeding frenzy film of the festival.

Just based on track record, the Belgian Dardenne brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre will be the ones to beat. Two-time Palme d'Or winners with "Rosetta" in 1999 and "The Child" in 2005, they're back in competition with "Boy with a Bike." Like all of the Dardenne films, it's guaranteed to be a chronicle of working class life, and as the title suggests, centered on a child.

I'm especially looking forward to the new Aki Kaurismaki film "Le Havre," starring Truffaut's iconic actor Jean-Pierre Leaud and the director's frequent leading lady Kati Outinen ("The Match Factory Girl," "Man without a Past"). Finland's master of dark deadpan comedy can always be counted on for pathos to the max. I'm also anticipating "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" by Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose three previous haunting and visually stunning films "Three Monkeys," "Climates," and "Distant," were all Cannes award winners.

Of special interest among the festivals' Asian selection is "Hara Kiri: Death of a Samurai" by Takashi Miike, renowned for his quirky approach to sex and violence. This is the first 3-D film selected for Cannes competition, and it will be interesting to see how Miike handles the 3-D format. In the words of the film's publicist Richard Lormand: "Pull out your hankies, it's a tearjerker."

The "Un Certain Regard" section of the festival, which usually features a more adventurous and wide-ranging selection, opens with "Restless" by Gus Van Sant. It sounds like something of a ghost story with teenage protagonists. Provocation of one kind or another is virtually guaranteed by the presence of "Hors Satan" by Bruno Dumont, "The Day He Arrives" by School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumnus Hong Sangsoo, and "Arirang" by Kim Ki-duk in this section. Each of these directors brings such a strikingly individual world view to his films that I am always eager to see any of their new work.

Over ten days, the Riviera may be flaunting its loveliest of attractions for the benefit of high-rollers, but the greatest riches will most definitely be on the screen. And, as in past years, I'll be keeping an eye out for the presence of cats on the screen, in order to bestow my pretend Palme d'Whiskers for best feline performance. As a cat person, I feel obliged to uphold the honor of the feline species, seeing as dogs have been unfairly favored as movie stars over the entire history of cinema. This year's Cannes festival won't be going to the dogs if I can help it!

Images (from top): Lars von Trier's "Melancholia"; Owen Wilson and Carla Bruni with Woody Allen shooting "Midnight in Paris"; Brad Pitt and son in Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life"; Bruno Dumont's "Hors Satan"; Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in Gus Van Sant's "Restless."

And the Palme d'Whiskers goes to...

2010-05-21T21:13:41Z

Entry to the Grande Theatre Lumiere for the press premiere of Rachid Bouchareb's "Outside of the Law" was considerably delayed on Friday morning by heightened security. Heavily-armed members of the French National Guard were stationed in the street and on the red carpet. Water bottles were confiscated by guards; men got full-body pat-downs from head to toe; and women had bags exhaustively inspected at two different points. This was in addition to the usual electronic wanding that we are all subject to upon entering any part of the Palais.

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As the festival winds down, images of armed conflict seem to be everywhere on the screen and in front of the Palais. The war in Iraq loomed large in Doug Liman's "Fair Game" and in Ken Loach's "Route Irish." "Outside of the Law," set in Algeria and Paris during the 1950s struggle for Algerian independence, brought with it some rather obvious reminders that this topic is a sensitive and inflammatory one in France. After the struggle for entry, the film itself proved to be anti-climactic. Although well-acted and likely to remain controversial in France for political reasons, it tells the kind of schematic story that has been treated many times before in many different films.

Three brothers of an Arab family that lost its land under French colonial rule end up in Paris, taking different paths in life. Messaoud, a former soldier, becomes a hardened organizer for the resistance. After serving a long prison term Abdelkader spearheads terrorist activities although increasingly wracked with guilt over the murders he's committed. Said eschews political involvement and becomes a boxing entrepreneur and Pigalle nightclub owner. With plodding predictability, differing ideologies bring the brothers into conflict with each other.

Perhaps authorities thought the press would attempt to bomb the Palais from the opposite side of the building, for security measures proved to be equally tight for entry to Hong Sangsoo's "Ha Ha Ha" in the Debussy Theatre a little later on Friday morning. For Hong, a School of the Art Institute of Chicago graduate, conflicts generally play out in the arena of personal relationships. His male characters in particular, are subject to lovesick blunders, miscalculated attractions, and clueless self-serving maneuvers that often backfire.

"Ha Ha Ha" is poignant and low-key, less overtly comic than Hong's 2009 "Like You Know It All," and more similar in tone to his 2006 "Woman on the Beach." The story is told in flashback as two male buddies share drinks and trade stories about their separate summer holidays in the same seaside town. In their present encounter, the two friends are seen only in black-and-white photos with voiceover, while the past is seen in live-action sequences. On vacation, each falls in with some locals, and parallel tales of sexual longing, romantic one-upmanship, and secrets take shape. Personally, I still consider "Woman on the Beach" to exemplify Hong's best work, but "Ha Ha Ha" is an entertaining farce with some endearingly goofy moments.

Hong's fellow School of the Art Institute graduate Apichatpong Weerasethakul aka "Joe" to his Chicago friends, premiered his film "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" for the press on Thursday night. This is a haunting and haunted film, quite literally about ghosts. Uncle Boonmee, a man in the terminal stage of kidney disease, is being cared for by relatives in a remote and beautiful forest cottage. One evening at dinner, the family is visited by the ghosts of Boonmee's dead wife and son.

This is a film composed of stunningly imaginative scenes, and of some that come close to endangering the delicate spell of the story. Boonmee's wife enters the tale as a transparent shade and solidifies into a concrete character, but his son is a black, furry figure with light-up red eyes, one of a tribe of spirit-animals that inhabit the woods. Ghosts dressed in what are rather obviously gorilla costumes with light-bulb eyes might be hard to pull off in any film, and Weerasethakul walks a fine line: sometimes this image works, and sometimes it's just plain ludicrous.

On the other hand, "Uncle Bonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" has shown me some of the most lovely and memorable images to be found in all this year's festival. Most awe-inspiring is a sequence in which one of the female characters is seated by the side of a waterfall dressed as a princess. Looking at her own reflection in the water, she is seduced by a catfish. The princess wades deeply into the pool against a backdrop of falling water, divesting herself of the elaborate trappings of her royal garb one piece at a time. She then mates with her seducer, and although it may be hard to envision a sex act between a woman and a fish, this is carried out in a spell-binding way under an aura of folkloric magic.

After the chaotic conditions surrounding a press screening of Ken Loach's "Route Irish" on Thursday, I finally succeeded in seeing the film at another screening. There's an oft-repeated line in that film, "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time." At Cannes, sometimes you're in the wrong film at the wrong time. I felt that way half an hour into Fabrice Gobert's "Lights Out," a superficial French confection larded with sappy pop songs, about teenagers being picked off by a psycho killer. I took off, and instead ducked in to a market screening of the Bulgarian comedy "Mission London" by Dimitar Mitovski.

"Mission London" isn't a great film, but it provided a rocking good time and a perfect antidote to an overdose of the artistic pretension that characterizes a few films in the official selection. This film doesn't pretend to be anything but popular entertainment, and in that it succeeds quite well. The Bulgarian ambassador to London plans to celebrate Bulgaria's acceptance into the EU with a lavish historical pageant presented at the embassy. His nation's imperious first lady has demanded that he guarantee the presence of Queen Elizabeth as a guest or his job is on the line.

There are pole dancers and celebrity impersonators, rare ducks missing from a London park that end up in a freezer at the embassy, the Russian mafia, a chorus line of Bulgarian spear-bearers, pyrotechnics, and more. I had a few good laughs and left "Mission London" thinking happy thoughts about the diversity of world cinema.

The empty film market.(Photo by Barbara Scharres)

A stroll through the film market on Friday afternoon revealed that that most of the marketeers have already packed up and departed. Market stands are empty, literature racks are bare, and packing cases await pickup. Laborers wheel away video monitors on carts and hand-trucks are piled high with shipping cases full of 35mm film prints. Barely more than a week ago the scene was the same, but it was all being set up.

One thing left to do, and that's to attend the press screening of the closing night film, Kornel Mundruczo's "Tender Son--The Frankensten Project." The title in Hungarian is "Szelid Teremtes," and I've dubbed it "Squalid Termites." I wish I could say that the festival closed with a masterpiece, but that's not the case.

"Tender Son" is loosely based (very loosely indeed) on Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," and it's like a bad parody of a European art film. It sounds more interesting than it actually is. A film director conducting a screen test with a hostile but expressionless 17-year-old boy puts him in a compromising situation with an over-eager teen girl, and tragedy results. The seemingly orphaned boy soon discovers who he is and where he came from, with even more tragic results.

There is no resemblance to real human emotions or relationships. Characters interact by staring at each other blankly, and speak only in terse sentences with l-o-n-g silences in between. To me, this film was contrived and pointless. If the real point in presenting "Tender Son" as the closing film was to make everyone relieved that the festival is over, I guess it did the job.

Another journalist asked me yesterday for my award predictions, and I asked whether she meant my predictions or my preferences. I'm not very good at predicting what the jury will choose, so I won't even speculate in that area. I can only say what I would give awards to if I were voting.

Im Sangsoo's "The Housemaid."

My top choices for the Palme d'Or would include the two Korean films, "The Housemaid" by Im Sangsoo and "Poetry" by Lee Chang-dong. One or both of these would also get Best Actress. Unfortunately, "Carlos" by Olivier Assayas screened out of competition, because I would give that film some kind of prize, including Best Actor to star Edgar Ramirez. My choices would also include "Another Year" by Mike Leigh, and "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I'd give the Camera'd'Or for best first film to "October" by Daniel and Diego Vega. But I'm not on the jury, so who knows?

Now, for some fun: it's time to name the winner of the second annual Palme d'Whiskers, my imaginary award for Best Feline Performance at this year's Cannes film festival. The jury was small again this year, just me. These kitties don't have names in their roles, so I'm taking the liberty of naming them. The nominees are:

1. The persistent tabby stalking a caged bird in Manuel de Oliveira's "The Strange Case of Angelica." I'll call him "Manny."

2. The majestic gray cat that was ready for his close-up in Xavier Dolan's "Heartbeat." I'll call him "Puff."

3. The lively ensemble of hungry cats gracing a living room in Agnes Kocsis's "Adrienn Pal." I'll call them "The Budapest Quintet."

4. The chortling pair of striped-and-white kitties in Jean-Luc Godard's "Film Socialism." I've named them "Jean" and "Luc."

5. The black-and-white tuxedo tom in Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy." His big scene involved being cuddled by Juliette Binoche. There's even a hint in the movie that this handsome boy has a name: "Professor Meow."

Second place goes to "Manny" of "The Strange Case of Angelica," for his intense performance in a supporting role.

And this year's Palme d'Whiskers goes to (ta-da): "Jean" and "Luc" of "Film Socialism" for their sustained and witty chirping dialogue that won the hearts of cat-lovers and cat-haters alike, creating goodwill for felines worldwide.

That's all for this year, folks!

Jean and Luc, or possibly the other way around.

Shadows on the screen: The angel and the devil

2010-05-20T17:34:04Z

There's a slide that appears on the big screen in the Debussy Theatre while audiences file in for screenings for the A Certain Regard section of the festival. Two figures in profile, one of them with horns on his head, are shown in silhouette against a light background. It's actually a photo of this year's Cannes jury president Tim Burton with Batman, but I continue to see it as an angel and a devil. ]]>
I'd rather think of this image as a something mysterious, signifying the light and dark of cinema perhaps, or in a more mundane vein, as a reminder that the movies we're about to see here may be good or bad. That movie devil must be hard at work this week, because questions of light and dark in the moral sense are very much factors in films I'm seeing in the second half of the festival.

Based on real events, "Of Gods and Men" by Xavier Beauvois is a fictionalized drama of seven French monks in an Algerian Trappist monastery, whose placid life of service is threatened by the rise of Islamic extremism in their region. We see the way the monastery has existed for decades in a symbiotic relationship with its Muslim neighbors, sharing the poverty and hard labor of nearby villagers, offering rudimentary medical care in the most basic of clinics, its monks sharing in local celebrations and sorrows. When the monks are threatened by terrorists, their plight is no worse than the other locals. The difference is that they have the option to flee and save themselves.

"Of Gods and Men" is not really about whether the monks live or die. That aspect of the story has already been determined by historical fact. Director Beauvois is more interested in portraying what it means to live a spiritual life in concrete terms, to honor what the men believe to be a commitment to the mission of care assigned by a higher power. Communal song and prayer are integral to this life, and we see each man struggle individually with accepting their communal decision to stay and continue their work with the villagers.

There is a very beautiful scene in which the monks, who normally eat their spare meals in silence, are allowed to open the two bottles of wine brought by a visitor. One of the older monks surprises his brothers by putting on a record of "Swan Lake." The camera slowly pans around the long table as each man with his small glass of wine in front of him, perhaps the first in a long time, reacts with emotion to the music.

"Carlos" by Olivier Assayas ("Summer Hours," "Clean," "Irma Vep"), takes on the epic story of international terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos Martinez, now residing in prison, whose career exploits ranged from leading the 1975 hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers, to selling himself to the highest bidder as a freelance mercenary. This is some of Assayas' best work in years: provocative, tightly scripted despite its length, and somber yet exciting.

Seeing "Carlos," I can forgive Assayas for comic-book dreck like "Demonlover" and "Boarding Gate." The politically complex plot is laid out succinctly, making the alliances and the place of its many characters clear without sacrificing nuance. Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez is marvelously cast as Carlos, bringing a contemptuous charisma to the role of a man who claims that weapons are an extension of his body, values the lives of others cheaply, and uses the many women who are drawn to him as pawns.

"Carlos" is a TV drama in three parts, totaling five hours and 33 minutes. I saw Part One and left at the first break, although the film had me completely in its grip. This too, is the reality of Cannes. There are too many other films to see, too few hours in the day, to justify devoting almost six hours to one film, no matter how much I like it. I hope to catch up with the remaining two parts another time, and I have no doubt that "Carlos" will soon be heading for some North American festival before the year is out.

If I hadn't left "Carlos," I would have missed the incredible Peruvian film "October" by brothers Daniel and Diego Vega, a film so gentle and so beautifully rendered that it seems to have benefited from an angel's touch. Clemente, a taciturn pawnbroker, operates his business out of a decrepit apartment in a Lima slum. He keeps his money and the small items he takes as security in a cashbox in his broken oven. He's something of an unfeeling jerk. He visits the local prostitutes to take care of his sexual needs, and otherwise lives for his business.

One night he comes home to find that someone has broken into his place and left a baby girl in a frayed basket. Although he will tell people that he rescued the abandoned baby on the street, he's clearly not the kind of man to rescue a baby. He knows quite well that she's his own child, dumped by the hooker he impregnated. He proceeds too ignore the hungry, crying infant for a day, reluctant to even touch her. When efforts to leave her with social services fail, he hires a neighbor, Sofia, to take care of her.

With Sofia's arrival, life begins to change around Clemente, and that life begins to pass him by. Despite obstacles thrown in her way, Sofia creates a home. Before long, an elderly couple is staying in the apartment too. Clemente doesn't exactly protest, but instead of opening up, he redoubles his efforts to close himself off. Eventually, Sofia takes definitive action, but it may be too late for the pawnbroker to appreciate what life could offer.

"October" has little dialogue, and so the visuals convey much of the meaning of the story and reveal the faintest undercurrent of deadpan humor. For instance, Clemente conducts transactions with his clients at an old dinette table, where he sits in a normal chair while they sit opposite him on a low stool at about nose height to the table, an almost laughable image underlining the balance of power in the relationship. "October" is set during an annual religious feast in Lima, in which magnificent street processions are a normal sight, and this too flavors the story with the hope that miraculous transformations are possible.

Korean cinema triumphs once again in this festival in my book, with the premiere of Lee Changdong's "Poetry." Like Im Sang-soo's "The Housemaid," this is a film that features a stunning performance by a veteran Korean actress. Yun Junghee, who has made more than 300 films in her career and was voted the greatest actress of all time by the Korean public. She came out of retirement to play Mija, a 65-year-old grandmother raising her belligerent grandson alone.

Although Mija lives hand-to-mouth by means of a small government subsidy and a part-time job as a maid, she is an old-fashioned lady who dresses in colorful suits, lacy scarves, and always a hat. She is becoming forgetful, and one day decides to take a class in poetry writing at her local cultural center.

"Poetry" opens with a scene of the body of a young girl, a suicide, floating down a wide, swift river. Before long, it turns out that there's a connection between that body and Mija's grandson and his school friends. This is a case in which I don't want to give too much away, except to say that Mija is greatly troubled by what she learns from the assembled fathers of her grandson's friends.

Meanwhile, Mija takes the poetry classes to heart, looking at the world with new eyes. She struggles with the need to find inspiration, not knowing what that would be like, even as she lets the newfound beauty of objects become her buffer against pain. At a meeting in which unwelcome news is revealed, Mija rushes from the room to take notes on a flower she has spied outside the window. She becomes absorbed in the sounds of rustling trees and birds while observing her grandson and his friends playing soccer.

Yun Junghee perfectly balances Mija's deceptively ditzy aspect as a forgetful old lady with her inner beauty as someone who is truly more awake to the world than many of those around her. She still knows right from wrong, and ultimately, her newfound recognition of poetry in ordinary things will lead her to what's right. This is a lovely performance, and one that I feel sure will make Yun an award contender here at Cannes.

Wednesday's adventures included the futile exercise of trying to get into the press screening of Ken Loach's "Route Irish," where a melee erupted at the theater entrance. Some version of this plays out so often that you'd swear that little demons with pitchforks have plotted this scenario in a festival office: a film everyone wants to see is scheduled for a theater far too small to accommodate more than a fraction of the press.

In this instance, the theater was full, and only the white Press Soiree pass (the highest level) was being honored. Suddenly panic set in and the shoving and shouting started. Two men tried to rush the front of the crowd from behind, knocking over stanchions. They were immediately grabbed and ejected from the area by guards. A woman was admitted for one of the last six seats, and an outcry went up from those who claimed she had punched and jabbed them to reach the front. A British woman yelled that she wanted compensation from the festival.

On Wednesday night, Brit Derek Malcolm, wise, seasoned critic for the Evening Standard, remarked that this hierarchical approach in which only the "top people" were allowed in was the last thing Loach himself would want for his film. I asked Derek if I could quote him, and in the best business-savvy spirit of Cannes, he replied, "That will be five Euros, my girl."

* * * *

The red staircase:

Iranian filmmakers take center stage

2010-05-18T19:19:01Z

May 18 -- Some Cannes traditions never die. In the years I've been coming to the festival, the same music has been playing in the Grand Theatre Lumiere before the early morning press screening. It's always jazz, and it always seems to be the same selection every morning, every year. I've started to imagine that there's some ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder in a distant control booth, and that a guard is assigned to rewind and start the old tape at 8:00 am each day.

Sound or more specifically, language is central to Jean-Luc Godard's "Film Socialism." Roger has commented so thoroughly on that film that I'm not going to add much, except to say that Godard remains one of the grand tricksters of world cinema. With his French dialogue, minimal and cryptic subtitles in so-called "Navajo English" (this in itself seems a tongue-in-cheek fiction on his part), and bits of a few other languages thrown in, he creates a Babel that I believe was made to baffle and intrigue one and all, no matter what your native tongue. It's a kind of rarefied fun to try to decipher, and maddening at the same time. Meanwhile, Godard the magician, like the wizard in "The Wizard of Oz," gets to hide behind his screen, sending out big ideas and big images.

Above: Abbas Kiarostami (AP photo)

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Iranian Abbas Kiarostami would not be the first director to be tripped up by making a film in a language other than his own. His "Certified Copy," starring Juliette Binoche and British opera singer William Shimell making his screen debut, is in English, French and Italian, and shot in Tuscany. This is the story of a man and a woman, who meet, spend an afternoon in each other's company, flirt in a jagged, contentious sort of way, and for a few hours fall into the relationship pattern of an unhappily-married couple of fifteen years. According to synopsis in the press kit, this is "a common story that could happen to anyone, anywhere."

Some of the hallmark motifs of a Kiarostami film appear quite early. The affectionate way in which a lively young boy is filmed harks back to the director's early films with children. It would hardly seem to be a Kiarostami film without some scenes in a car, and the first major conversation between the man and the woman, in which they argue about art theory, takes place in her car while they traverse the kind of winding roads that will be familiar images to Kiarostami devotees.

I so much wanted to like this film; my hope was that it would be good, if not great. "Certified Copy" has many fans here in Cannes, even those who tout it as a potential Palme winner, but I regret that I'm not one of them. The idea, that two strangers could become a couple, if only briefly, is universal and full of possibilities. The setting is extraordinary. The dialogue is pretentious, the acting shrill and strained.

The characters are not particularly likeable, and they become less so as the plot unreels. Binoche's character, a French woman who owns an art gallery in a small Italian town, is played as a harridan who never stops taking, never stops finding fault with the opinions and the actions of the man to whom she's allegedly attracted. The man, a famous author in the midst of a book tour, is first sullen but curious. He braves the mercurial ways of his companion for the afternoon, eventually becoming boorish and loud. Binoche portrays her character as unpredictable, possibly even unstable; she's in a perpetual state of annoyance motivated by unrealistic expectations. In real life, the man would have begged a ride out of town and escaped this fruitcake as fast as possible.

At the woman's prompting, the two fall into role-playing as they walk around a village famous as a site for weddings. In the context of this fiction, they argue about their child, about their wedding night, about their anniversary, and about his behavior the previous night. Finally, with full-blown hostility, they argue angrily and vehemently about the wine in a restaurant. The performances are so stilted, and the two stars seem so out of sync with each other, that we need to take it on faith that there's some shred of attraction there.

It seems to me that several major problems contribute to this situation. William Shimell is simply not a very good actor for the screen. He has a handsome and sympathetic face, and for all I know, he may be great on the opera stage, but he's a stagey and unsubtle actor in this film, proclaiming his lines as if to a theater of thousands. There's little attenuation in his delivery, especially when he's called upon to argue.

The interaction between Shimell and Binoche, especially in the most critical scenes of confrontation, is histrionic to the extreme, and rings false, undercutting the story rather than supporting it. I can't help but credit this to a cultural disconnect on Kiarostami's part. The rhythms of the languages are unfamiliar to him. As much as he understands human nature, he has not been able to bring emotional veracity to "Certified Copy."

Fatemah Motamed-Aria (photo by Barbara Scharres)

I wanted to know what Kiarostami would have to say about "Certified Copy," and whether the questions from press would be positive or negative, so I attended the press conference on Tuesday afternoon. I immediately ran into Fatemah Motamed-Aria, known in real life as Simin. Award-winning star of Iranian films including "Gilaneh," "Banoo," and "The Blue-Veiled," she's one of Iran's greatest and most beloved actresses, someone I call the Meryl Streep of Iran.

A few months ago, Motamed-Aria was one of several major film figures who had their passports confiscated by the Iranian government as punishment for alleged protest activities. I was very happy to learn that she now has her passport back and is able to travel. Her last film was banned, and has not been seen outside of Iran. For the time being, she has chosen not to work under current conditions.

Little did I know that the subject of dissident filmmakers would become central to Kiarostami's press conference, largely overshadowing the discussion of "Certified Copy." As rarely happens in a Cannes press conference, politics impinged upon art. The moderator announced that Kiarostami would like to begin by making a special statement to the press.

Imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi.

Kiarostami proceeded to relate that he had within the past few minutes received a message to call the wife of imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. He believed that this was a possible indication of hopeful news, "If he could be freed today, it would be an excellent sign," he said, "I believe what we can say for sure is the fact that a filmmaker has been imprisoned is intolerable. . . I believe one cannot remain indifferent in the face of the situation, but one must not give up hope either."

As Kiarostami continued to speak (in Persian through a French interpreter, who was translated into English by means of headphones worn by those of us English-speakers), there was late-breaking news. A note was handed up to the podium and it was announced, although unconfirmed, that Jafar Panahi had just begun a hunger strike.

Juliette Binoche at the Kiarostami press conference. (AP photo)

Binoche, sitting next to Kiarostami, began to cry, and sat with tears running down her face for some minutes until a festival assistant handed her a tissue. The director continued to address the difficulties faced by filmmakers in Iran. "The [Iranian] government finds it difficult to accept independence in filmmakers. This is the situation we have lived with for 40 years now...The arrest of Jafar Panahi is a sign that things have been taken to a new level in Iran."

Kiarostami begged the European press to take and publish printed copies of his public statement in protest of Panahi's arrest that was published in the New York Times on March 9, 2010. A large stack of the two-page letter was made available on the press conference podium. He said that although the statement was published in the U.S., it had been largely ignored in Europe. In part, it reads "Filmmaking is not a crime...My heartfelt wish is that artists no longer be imprisoned in this country because of their art and that independent and young Iranian cinema no longer face obstacles, lack of support, attention, and prejudice."

I left the press conference with a heartfelt wish that, among other things, I thought that "Certified Copy" was a far better film.