Cannes 2010 Daily Report

23 May 2010

CANNES 2010 - THE AWARDS

Palme d'Or:
LUNG BOONMEE RALUEK CHAT (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) directed by Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL
Grand Prix:
DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX (OF GODS AND MEN) directed by Xavier BEAUVOIS

Award for Best Director:
Mathieu AMALRIC for TOURNÉE (ON TOUR)
Award for Best Screenplay:
LEE Chang-dong for POETRY
Award for Best Actress:
Juliette BINOCHE in COPIE CONFORME (CERTIFIED COPY) directed by Abbas KIAROSTAMI
Award for Best Actor Ex-aequo:
Javier BARDEM in BIUTIFUL directed by Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU
Elio GERMANO in LA NOSTRA VITA (OUR LIFE) directed by Daniele LUCHETTI
Jury Prize:
UN HOMME QUI CRIE (A screaming man) directed by Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN

With a score of films of fairly consistent quaiity, but no earth-shattering masterworks, the Jury decisions were predictably uncontroversial. There was no doubt that the Palme d’or winner, UNCLE BOONME WHO COULD RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, with the vivid surreal imagery of its Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (who made his first impact on Cannes in 2004 with his magical TROPICAL MALADY) must appeal to the special visual sensibilities of the Jury President, Tim Burton.
Some complained that the Best Actress prize to Juliet Binoche looked like an award to the 2010 festival poster, designed by and featuring Binoche herself, rather than to her likeable but unremarkable performance in Kiarostami’s time-marking French two-hander COPIE CONFORME. Conversely Lambert Wilson, with outstanding performances in both Bertrand Tavernier’s LA PRINCESSE DE MONTPENSIER and Xavier Beauvois’ DES DIEUX ET DES HOMMES, would have seemed a more likely candidate for Best Actor than the nonetheless worthy ex-aequo Javier Bardem and Elio Germano.
The three English-language films in competition were totally ignored by the jury, though the overall critical view was that the two English veterans Ken Loach, with ROUTE IRISH, and Mike Leigh, with ANOTHER YEAR (including a strong Best Actress contender in Ruth Sheen) were in top form. Ironically this was the second successive year that Loach was snubbed: last year his excellent comedy WAITING FOR ERIC was a major popular and critical success, but overlooked by the jury and confirming the principle that festivals never reward comedy.

18 May 2010

CANNES 2010: Day 7

Xavier Beauvois’s fine DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX is inspired, rather than directly based upon a 1996 incident in the Algerian civil conflict, when seven Christian monks from the little monastery of Tibhirine were taken hostage by the Groupe Islamiste Armee and subsequently murdered and beheaded. Only in recent months has new information been released to indicate some responsibility by the state military for the atrocity. Beauvois’ script (with Etienne Comars) is concerned with the months leading up to the fatal incident, as the monks persist in their work of supporting the village with communal and medical work; while pondering and praying, to decide if they should follow the French government’s instruction to return home, following the Islamic extremists’ order that all foreigners should leave Algeria. Beauvois, with the seven gentle monks vividly cast and distinctive characters, makes their faith to their religion and their community tangible. There are outstanding performances by Lambert Wilson as the prior, as unshakeable faced with terrorists as with the army, and Michael Lonsdale as the octogenarian doctor.

Stephen Frears is a singular figure among the dozen or so major international septuagenarian directors, in that his singular talent lies in his gift for interpreting the scripts and ideas of others. The only moment when his career conveyed a sense of authorial style was in his early years of extensive collaboration with the writer Alan Bennett , which seemed to bring out a particular sympathy, perhaps rooted in both artists’ regional (though socially very different) origins. The hazard of this is that in a sense he is as good as his script, as occasional failures have testified. In TAMARA DREWE he has the good fortune of one of his best scripts, skilfully developed by Moira Buffini from a “graphic novel” by Posy Simmonds, in turn distantly inspired by Thomas Hardy’s “Far From the Madding Crowd”. The setting is the Dorset countryside and a farmstead whose owners – a successful crime novelist and his devoted but ever-deceived wife – have transformed into an idyllic retreat for writers of all kinds. The place and the surrounding community are turned upside down by the return of Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), who left the village years ago as a plain, gawky and spurned young woman, but now reappears as a successful London journalist, glamourised by a clever nose-job. Officially there to prepare her late mother’s home for sale, she turns the heads and hearts of the writers and her old rustic flame now employed as handyman, while getting momentarily engaged to (and enthusiastically rutted by) a passing pop drummer.
The already complex and ever-shifting relationships are further confused by the tricks,machinations and e-mailing of two lecherous early teenagers with a fixation on the drummer. Frears turns all this into a fast-moving entertainment, rich in over-done characters and fast one-liners, and keeps the laughs going right through the very dark ending, involving sudden death (both human and canine) and the promise of paedophilia. Only occasionally does narrative wooliness indicate an over-long script cut down a shade too late in the editing phase of the film.

With his protégé and fellow Iranian director Janar Panahi languishing in a Tehran gaol, it is a matter of speculation why Abbas Kiarostami has chosen this moment to make his first film outside his native country – a virtual two-hander, shot in Tuscany, with a French film star (Juliet Binoche) and a British opera singer, William Shimell. The story is a tease. This middle-aged couple meet, as it seems, by chance and as strangers at a book presentation (he is a writer). They take off together in her car into the countryside; and their conversation turns into that of a bickering married couple, with fifteen years of memories (or forgetfulness). What is reality and what is their invented fantasy? Unfortunately it does not seem to matter very much

16 May 2010

Day Five

LA PRINCESSE DE MONTPENSIER shows the French director Bertrand Tavernier well back on form (after Berlin’s disappointing In the Electric Mist) in a genre in which he is one of the few masters, costume drama. His film is based on a 17th century novel by Madame de la Fayette, set in the late 16th century and the merciless religious wars of the ascendency of Catherine de Medici. The Princess is the unwilling bride of an arranged political marriage; her true passion is reserved for the opportunist Duc de Guise, while the heir to the throne, the Duc d’Anjou lusts after her. Meanwhile she is secretly adored by the pacifist (and therefore virtually exiled) Comte de Chabannes, whom the Prince de Montpensier leaves as her tutor while he goes off to war. The complexities of this story of lust and romance are compounded by the political complexities of court life; but Tavernier constantly compels interest with the careful splendour of the mise en scene and the finely handled performances. Most of the actors – including the personable and spunky Melanie Thierry in the title role – are new names. The exception is Lambert Wilson, who gives Chabannes an innate nobility that finally reveals him as the hero and strong centre of the story
The Chad director Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s L’HOMME QUI CRIE, dominated by the noble performance of Youssouf Djaoro, is certainly one of the best films the Festival has seen so far, though it is one of those quiet works which rarely carry off top prizes. It captures at once the tragic folly of Chad’s brutal civil conflict and the personal tragedy of Adam, whom we first meet as the pool attendant at a ritzy international hotel. Adam is a handsome, powerful 55-year-old and a former swimming champion, but is demoted by the down-sizing new Chinese management, and replaced by his 18-year-old son Abdel. In a moment of jealous weakness, called upon to make his citizen’s contribution to the government’s war effort, Adam lets Abdel be press-ganged for the army. He has his job back, but soon the war closes the hotel. Meanwhile Abdel’s pregnant girl-friend moves in, lovingly adopted by Adam and his wife. News arrives of Abdel’s serious injuries; and Adam sets off with his motor-cycle and side-car to retrieve his son from the military hospital. From that point the film rises to a tough yet lyrical tragic close, which gives it a place with the best films on the folly and human waste of war.
One of two Hungarian films on show (this one in the side-bar section “Un Certain Regard”) PAL ADRIENN is directed by Agnes Kocsis, who made the excellent 2006 Fresh Air. Piroska, the heroine of this new film is a massively overweight, fortyish nurse, who munches contentedly on starchy buns as she patiently wheels away her passed-on patients from the Terminal Ward. The arrival and death of a patient called Adrienn Pal sets off an eventually obsessive concern to find the woman’s namesake who (as she possibly mistakenly recalls) was Piroska’s best friend until they separated at ten. The ambiance of the hospital wards and of Piroska’s cheerless home, shared, till be walks out on her, by her older boyfriend, are vividly established, but the quest for Adrienn never becomes very gripping, while no reason is ever established for making Piroska this booted heavyweight.
A Dutch entry in “Un Certain Regard, David Verbeek’s inconsequential R U THERE is at least a delight for video-gamesters. The youngish hero is a professional player, who lands up with his team in Taipei. An injury to his shoulder leads to his being dropped by the team, and hiring a beautiful but unobliging hooker to massage him. And then they both turn into video-game cartoons . . .

15 May 2010

Day Four

The 2010 festival is unlikely to see a better day than this, with two consecutive films showing the veterans Mike Leigh and Woody Allen at the very peak of their form. Allowing for their dramatically different styles, approaches and social canvas, Allen and Leigh share very much the same curiosity in humankind, the way that ordinary people cope with the problems of simply living with themselves and others , and each one’s needs, neuroses, fears and desires. Leigh’s ANOTHER YEAR is structured in four seasonal acts, as it follows the fortunes of the little group of friends and relations who surround Tom and Jerry (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen) a modestly successful professional couple, who love each other, cook enthusiastically, drink a drop too much wine and care diligently for their allotment, which supplies them with vegetables. They bravely support their neurotic friend Janet, whose loneliness, insecurity and uncontrolled drinking leads to nymphomaniac outbreaks. Although his central figures have rarely been as totally fulfilled and well-balanced as they are here, this is familiar Leigh country – but no less welcome for that, for his people, collaboratively structured by the acting ensemble and Leigh himself (credited as writer) are always new and always solidly true. A single reservation would be that, within the ensemble, Imelda Staunton, as Janet, is more visibly acting than the rest.
ANOTHER YEAR is mostly set in suburban London, where the main characters seem to have migrated from the Midlands and North of England. Woody Allen’s YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER is set in the capital’s smarter western postal districts, with money not a pressing problem since Helena (Gemma Jones) collects enough alimony from her rich ex-husband, Alfie (Antony Hopkins) to pay the rent for her daughter and non-selling novelist son-in-law (Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin). But things go no more smoothly in Allen’s world than in Leigh’s. Alfie squanders his fortune on marriage to a gold-digging hooker; the novelist walks out; and everyone is driven crazy by the guidance Helena gets from a clairvoyant .... The characters and their situations are comic, extravagant and absurd; but in their different ways these people are as human and tortured as Leigh’s.

13 May 2010

Day Two

It was perhaps one of the most memorable and thrilling moments of Cannes’ sixty-three years when the 101-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira strode – virtually ran, indeed – onto the stage to introduce his new and just completed film THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA. He carried a walking stick but did not use it: its purpose was most likely to deter anyone who had the nerve to stretch out an unnecessary steadying hand as he mounted the stairs. He spoke fast and wittily, introducing a film which if anything showed a still-ripening mastery, confidence and wit.
The story is from a project he planned almost sixty years ago, but which is now radically updated to confront the spiritual realities of the 21st century with Oliveira’s metaphysical views of life, death and humankind. The story involoves a young Jewish photographer (played by Oliveira’s grandson Ricardo Trepa) who is called out in the small hours by a rich family and asked to photograph their dead daughter before she is placed in her coffin. The photographer is startled when the dead but beautiful Angelica, seen through his view-finder, opens her eyes and flashes a dazzling smile. Developing the pictures, he becomes more fascinated and ultimately overwhelmed by the presence of Angelica.
Oliveira still directs with verve and originality, always the master of composition and pace, and here introducing effects quite novel in his work, as the spirits of Isaac and Angelica, released from their earthly bodies, soar through the sky. The funereal and spiritual aspect of the film is always wittily offset by the subtle comedy of scenes in the lodging house where Isaac lives. Significantly, in an interview, this phenomenal director , who made his first film - still a silent - eighty years ago, has said. “Cinema is the same as it was for Lumiere, for Max Linder, tor Melies. There you have realism, the fantastic and the comic. There’s nothing more to add to that, absolutely nothing”.
Oliveira’s film was chosen to open the festival’s parallel event “Un Certain Regard”. The somewhat unlikely competition entry of the day was the Korean woman director Im Sangsoo’s THE HOUSEMAID, a remake of a 50-year-old genre movie. The house-maid of the title is taken on by a very rich upper-class family, whose handsome young head quickly seduces the willing girl. But nothing escapes the eyes of the manipulative old house-keeper, and when she informs the master’s wife and mother-in-law of what is going on the situation turns eerily dangerous. The structure and screenplay fall very much behind the stylish design and interesting performances as well as (in the view of cognoscenti) the 1960-ish original.

10 May 2010

CANNES 2010 - The Line-up

The last film to join the Cannes 2010 competition – announced only two days before the opening of the festival – is Ken Loach’s ROUTE IRISH. This brings the number of competing films to 19, and re-unites Cannes’ favourite British directors, Loach and Mike Leigh, who competes with ANOTHER YEAR.

Other major names familiar to Cannes are the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami, with CERTIFIED COPY , Daniele Lucchetti with LA NOSTRA VITA and Takeshi Kitano with a characteristic yakuza thriller OUTRAGE. The veteran Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov returns to the screen, as both director and leading actor, in the sequel to his Academy Award-winning BURNT BY THE SUN.

Significantly – given the imprisonment in Iran of his former disciple and one of Iran’s finest directors, Jafar Panahi - Kiarostami’s film was made in France, starring Juliette Binoche and the writer Jean-Claude Carrière. This further strengthens the impressive French entry, which also includes Rachid Bouchareb’s HORS LA LOI, tracing the fortunes of three brothers separated after losing their home in Algeria, and Bertrand Tavernier’s costume drama LA PRINCESSE DE MONTPENSIER. A frequent competitor in Cannes, Mathieu Alamric made a major mark in 2007 with LE SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON, and now returns as writer-director and main actor of TOURNÉE (ON TOUR), about a small time strip show impresario. Xavier Beauvois’ DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX is a metaphor of intolerance, set in the Maghreb, where Christian monks and Muslins formerly long lived in harmony.

The Thai director of the remarkable 2002 Jury Prize-winner TROPICAL MALADY, Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns with UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES. Also from Korea are Lee Chang-Dong’s POETRY and IM Sangsoo’s debut THE HOUSEMAID.. Mainland China shows Wang Xiaoshuai’s story of a father’s regretted lost opportunities to have known his dead son, CHONGQUING BLUES.

Sean Penn is the star of the only competing film from the United States, Doug Liman’s FAIR GAME, a story centred on the WMS fictions of the Bush regime.
From the Ukraine, comes a debutant director Sergei Loznitsa with MY JOY. The talented Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczó plays a leading (type-cast) role in his own TENDER SON – THE FRANKENSTEIN PROJECT, as a film director who rediscovers the monstrous son he once fathered.

The opening film is ROBIN HOOD, Ridley Scott’s 21st century revisit to a story which has inspired close to a hundred film-makers since 1908, when rival American and British versions came out at the same time. Other major directors whose films are shown out of competition or in the section “Un Certain Regard” include Woody Allen, Oliver Stone and Stephen Frears, though one of the most awaited films will be THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA, directed by the tireless Manuel de Oliveira, now in his 102nd year and still fruitfully at work.

The President of the 2010 Jury is Tim Burton. His appointment was announced in January last, when he declared that this was “a dream come true”. His fellow members are two other directors, the Spanish Victor Erice and the Indian Shekhar Kapur, the actors Benicio del Toro, Kate Beckinsale and Giovanna Mezzogiorno, the writer Emmanuel Carrère, the composer Alexandre Desplat and the director of Turin’s Museo del Cinema, Alberto Barbera, who brings a touch of classic film scholarship to the group.