The train journey from Paris was not a short one (5 hours) but I entertained myself with Frost/Nixon and various magazines about Cannes, both trade (Screen International) and consumer (The Inrockuptibles). All talk appeared to centre around Pedro Almodovar – it surely being his year for the Palme - which is interesting because that certainly wasn’t the word on the Croisette when I got there.
On arrival my colleague met me at the station and said I had 15 minutes to get ready to go and see a film. Knowing absolutely nothing about how Cannes works, apart from having begged people for tickets for my previous boss from our London office, the possibility of me getting to see any film without a struggle seemed magical. But when she told me it was the evening performance of von Trier’s Antichrist, and that I should dress for the red carpet immediately I was pretty flabbergasted. I know that Cannes should really be about the films, but even the most hardened industry professional can surely not help be excited by the glamour.
So, sure enough I got the dress and heels on and we rushed down to the Palais which is where everything goes on. I was a bit startled to have my photograph taken about 50 times by different photographers – alas it was not for my fame and beauty, but rather so they could give me a card in the hope that I’d pop to their boutique to next day and purchase the photo at an obscene price.
Amidst all the photographing and queuing a British voice caught my attention – an older guy with a younger girl asked me if I’d like to go to the Slumdog Millionaire party. Just as I was picking my jaw up off the floor he said that he’d been invited and asked to bring three girls with him (perhaps an eyebrow raising moment). As such that ruled us out because I was with 2 friends of my own. Plus, I was damn excited about seeing Antichrist and I didn’t know how many more chances I’d get.
In retrospect I’m sure I made the right choice. I’d read little about the film but seen the notorious still. The opening was blinding: we see a naked Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe going for it in the shower, in exquisitely lit black and white and dazzling slow motion. We do indeed see a penis thrust (although all the intimate scenes were substituted with shots of porn actors, or plastic models, the importance of which will become apparent) but it’s entirely appropriate for how heated this scene is. Amid the multiple close-ups of her face (indeed the main characters don’t get names) we see their little boy wandering from his playpen, eventually climbing up onto a windowsill from which he falls – again in slowmotion – to his death. This is our prologue – the rest of the film deals with the three phases of grief his parents pass through.
While watching this I momentarily forgot that I was watching a feature film. It felt either like a short (cf this) or an advert. My first thought was whether Lars was scouting for some work in commercials in case his features wouldn’t pay the bills. In fact the debate about whether anyone would make any sales of Antichrist raged throughout the rest of the festival.
Back to the grief, it is more appropriate to refer to them as phases which his mother passes through. Dafoe plays the father who is in fact a therapist. His wife then becomes his patient, while he appears, sporadically to her frustration, to be rather immune to the grieving process. She, meanwhile, essentially starts to lose her mind. Under interrogation, she explains that the forest where she spent some time with their lost son is the place that creates the most fear in her. Consequently, in the tradition of exposure therapy, her husband suggests they both return there to face her fear.
I was with the narrative all the way until we met the talking fox, which couldn’t help but provoke laughs from the audience. This seemed to be the catalyst for the increasingly bizarre series of events which ensue, each one upping the shock factor one level. As a sample (*spoilers) between one of their recurrent sexual acts, she reaches for a brick and smashes it into his groin, presenting us with a rather morbid view of him ejaculating blood. While he lies prostate she takes the opportunity to drill through his calf and clamp a concrete weight to his leg. A mere five minutes after this we have a graphic view of her performing a self-cliterectomy. I think you can tell that von Trier wrote this when he was depressed.
Gainsbourg gives us everything in this role – physically and emotionally – and I can see why she walked off with the Best Actress prize. That said, I do still find her, or at least her English accent, immensely irritating. I wasn’t really convinced by the union of her and Dafoe – they seemed to be from 2 completely different worlds and I couldn’t ever imagine how they got together or sustained a happy relationship. Although it was a largely enjoyable rollercoaster – a true cinematic experience – if not really a film I’d rush back to watch again. It felt longer than its 1h44m. I’m sure the film will do well thanks to the controversy – if not due to the film’s content, then at least due to Von Trier’s own antics, e.g. pronouncing himself the best director in the world at the press conference the following day. However how far he believes this, and how much of this is clever PR on his part, remains questionable – the big man was actually nowhere to be seen at the end of the screening at Cannes, having disappeared allegedly amid a fit of nerves, without telling anyone where he had gone.
We wrapped up the first night by popping next door to one of the festival’s official party venues – the dodgy-sounding ‘Jimmyz’ – which is also a casino. We wangled our way in through one of our party knowing someone on the door – my first taste of guest list blagging. I later found out that it was at (well, outside) Jimmyz that Vincent Cassel and Matthieu Kassovitz had a nasty spat last year when the latter couldn’t get in to join his supposed friend. I don’t know all the details but apparently it got very messy and included Kassovitz proclaiming ‘Qui t’as fait? Qui t’as fait?’ – asking Cassell who had ‘made him’, in a reference to the film ‘La Haine’, directed by Kassovitz which did indeed catapult his actor into the limelight. Apparently they haven’t spoken since.
Jimmyz certainly looked like Cannes as I’d imagined it. Free champagne was in full flow at the bar, everyone was beautiful in black tie, the lights were dimmed and frankly I couldn’t believe my luck. Regrettably my girlfriends were rather Cannes-weary after partying hardcore for nearly a week already, so I had to take to the dancefloor on my own before we left after about an hour.
I awoke at my friend’s the next morning and after some faffing and moving of apartments (over to my boss’s apartment on the other side of town) I headed down to the festival to collect the cherished festival bag (a rather disappointing grey design this year) and programmes, and take a tour of the market. I’ve seen film markets before, in my previous role at a short film festival/distributor I even stood on a stand at the largest short film festival, Clermont-Ferrand. But I didn’t expect the feature market to be so similar. The first thing that strikes you is just how global it is, with stands form every corner of the world, and how many films are being promoted that you would never ever get the chance to see (luckily, in many cases I think). It makes you realise that just because you read your Screen International and other trades, and you keep up to date on the latest releases perhaps in Europe and the US, it doesn’t mean that you understand the global market. There is a huge industry operating beyond your viewpoint. There is also a huge straight-to-DVD market whose titles I look at and wonder who on earth buys them without the PR to convince them. There is something a bit desperate about the market. It’s mostly distributors standing on stands waiting for the elusive buyers to come round and look at their wares. But I suspect that a large proportion of their visits are from people who would be completely useless to them, but to whom they have to give the time of day nonetheless. Also, most medium-to-big players are not located in the market, but in hotels elsewhere along the Croisette. I would have loved to visit the Weinstein’s suite but frankly didn’t have the guts to go there without a good reason. I already popped into that of Celluloid Dreams, having provisionally arranged a meeting with one of their staff who works on The Auteurs, only to be looked down at and told there was no remaining room in his schedule. Note to self – grow a thicker skin.
I popped in to see a friend who was also enjoying his first Cannes, with 95% of it spent in the press office. He too had been there since the beginning and despite not having seen a single film he was visibly exhausted. He was looking after a really interesting catalogue of films and remembering that I write the odd bit of film criticism for an online magazine, I suggested he throw any screenings my way if he wanted some extra exposure. Hence he arranged for me to see one of the films he was representing that afternoon, to be followed by an interview with the director the following day. The film was to be ‘A Brand New Life’, a Franco-Korean production directed by Ourie Lecomte.
Before the screening I popped into the UK Film Council stand – most countries have an individual stand and I found myself undecided about whether I belonged in the French or British one. Eventually practicality won over since the latter was closer to the centre. You can buy disgusting overpriced sandwiches in your stand (I did it only once) and there is a steady programme of events. At the UKFC I met up with my friend Steve and his business partner Tom. Steve is a former BBC producer who has recently joined the freelance ranks although he’s been developing projects for some time, and subject to getting some sponsorship, should be starting a course in directing actors at the CSSD this year. A former colleague and good friend is his housemate and from the tales I’ve heard through her, this is one dynamic guy. It did not surprise me therefore to find that he had signed up to a pitching competition that was due to take place shortly, where they would pitch to industry professionals in 3 minutes with the possibility of getting some funding, as I recall. They have a project in the pipeline with Les Dennis signed up to play a failed comedian. Alas I couldn’t watch the pitch as I had to go to a screening, but although they didn’t win they generated a lot of interest. I think these boys are a team to watch out for – this is their website.
A Brand New Life was a special screening – out of competition, presented by Les Chang-Dong. It’s a quasi-autobiographical tale from an ex-Femis graduate who was taken to an orphanage by her father at a young age, and eventually resettled with a French family. The film follows a young girl – an outstanding performance from first time actress Ah-sung Ko - as she adjusts to orphanage life, making and losing friends, until she eventually embarks on her own new life. I found it very touching and it was clearly a very personal project, which made me wonder what scope it would have to be seen outside festivals. It will be interesting to see.
Tuesday’s evening began with drinks on the balcony of friend Romain who rented an apartment every year on the Croisette with a fantastic view of the sea. A quick glass of wine steeled me for a ridiculously long walk (why didn’t we take a taxi?) to the Palais, in heels (I would pay for that later), to catch the late screening of the Italian ‘Vincere’ (‘To Win’). I was very interested to see what this Celluloid Dreams co-production would offer and as I expected, it was a heavyweight high production value European big hitter. The story centres on Ida Dalser – mistress of Mussolini and mother of his son – who he tries to cut out of his life after his rise to power. Despite his best efforts, including locking her up in an asylum, she fights back all the way. Her suffering is very moving – this is a woman who sold all her possessions at the beginning of their relationship so he could put the money into launching a newspaper to propound his ideas. You can see that she loves him until the very end and that tension between love and anger is terrible. Both the lead performances are very strong – Filippo Timi bears a striking resemblance to Mussolini and plays up to this strength.
Following Antichrist, this was another film with an inordinate amount of sex in it. I don’t think I’m being hypersensitive but I couldn’t help but notice how much the presentation focussed on the orgasmic face of the woman certainly more than 50% of the time. This applied to both Antichrist and Vinchere. Our male leads were capable of bringing their partners extraordinary amounts of pleasure with incredible ease. But it certainly made me wonder to what extent this was an extension of the power of the director. It’s not an original theory – Laura Mulvey started it back in the 70s – but I think it’s interesting to look at again since the boundaries of explicitness have relaxed somewhat since then, and to consider what is respectable and what is gratuitous. The arthouse is often given ‘carte blanche’ with regards to its presentation of sex, but it doesn’t mean that it’s just. Put it this way, I came out of Vinchere convinced that my next short film will film a couple having sex, with my camera’s gaze never diverting from the male’s face.
After Vincere we popped over to catch the end of the CNC party (the Centre National Cinematographique, the French national film funding body). Just as we entered I caught sight of my first ever employer in the film world (I use the word employer lightly since I was an unpaid intern). I can’t name him but I will say that he was a pretty big prick to me, although I’ve crossed paths with him in Soho on a number of occasions and have always emailed to congratulate him when I saw any of his films do well. He was about to leave when I grabbed him to say hi and he looked more than a little surprised to see me. He introduced me to a woman who was draped on his arm who drunkenly said hello, before shuffling off rather sheepishly, much to my amusement. C’est Cannes ça!
Wednesday brought me another meeting with my most recent former employer which was somewhat less drunken over a couple of soft drinks in the market café. This was nice as we haven’t really chatted properly since I left last summer and he was very honest about how the business is going (I already know a lot through a very close friend who still works there). My replacement recently bit the dust, for example. He also asked if I’d be interested in doing some work with them for the French franchise, which I’m mulling over. This was a role that I was immensely passionate about until very circumstances led me to resign, so it feels a bit like I’m considering getting back with an old boyfriend – which 9 times out of 10 is a bad idea. I spent at least another hour in the market café poring over the market brochures and plotting an assault on US distributors which the feature film I’m working on in Paris. We already have a Canadian distributor which is great – before you have any distributor you are really in the wilderness – but we obviously want as many as possible. My boss had already emailed a large number of NYC based distributors earlier in the year – our feature is an ‘anthology’ made up of short films à la Paris je t’aime, although these weren’t commissioned, and hence it’s definitely on the independent side of things which is much more an East Coast project than a West Coast one. In cross-referencing her list with the market guide, I found that only 2 distributors had a presence at Cannes. That’s the recession for you. I looked through the rest of the US distributors and handpicked some that I thought had an international and/or independent profile, and proceeded to visit their stands and try and flog our wares. It really feels like I could have been selling double glazing – it’s all cold pitching – but I did get at least one promising lead, which if it works out, is all I needed.
My press office friend recommended I see another of his films ‘Daniel y Ana’ which is supposed to be pretty shocking but very good. He sent me to a cinema in the middle of nowhere for it, which took me an hour to find by foot, with a couple of accidental diversions. When I finally got there, it had already started and was full. I implored the guy to let me sit on the steps and he agreed. All I knew was that Daniel y Ana involved the kidnapping of a child. As I sat down, the story showed a gypsy woman who found a little girl alone in a park and not knowing what else to do, took her in. She then found a note in the girl’s pocket asking for her to be looked after until her mum could collect her – hence our gypsy woman decided not to go to the police. After about half an hour I began to wonder where Daniel was and to wonder whether this was the right film. I was definitely at the right place at the right time, but it turned out that my friend had given me the wrong day! The film I watched was ‘La Pivellina’ ('The Little One') – from the Director’s Fortnight. Fiction with the feel of a documentary, it charted the couple of weeks that the gypsy family look after this little girl until they have to give her back. The dogme approach produced some lvely moments especially with the little girl who seemed entirely oblivious to the camera and crew. It’s another film that must not have a hope of finding a market, although it has won some awards. I found it touching but tedious in parts.
Only 3 days in I was starting to feel somewhat malnourished and was craving a steak Roquefort – cooked food had been a rarity even in Paris ever since our oven and hob had broken a month previously. I treated myself to a steak gorgonzola before rejoining ex-boss who introduced me to Sally Hussey who produced a short in the Critics Week selection, runs the Fall Festival in Australia, and is seriously contemplating a move to Paris. We rejoined her team at a bar, where I also met her ex-con lead actor who was an refreshing, if slightly unnerving breath of fresh air from industry bods. I also caught up with my friend Chris who is a journalist for IGN.com and while Sally and her crew went off to a party which they didn’t have extra invites to, Chris and I joined his journo mates at the Grand hotel. Thus began a ridiculous night of venue hopping to try and get into an interesting party. At one point he saw Eli Roth who is apparently a good friend, who also had an allegedly undesirable girl draped on his arm and was heading home. So much for getting into the Inglorious Basterds party. At one point we went back to Chris’ place before he got a call from his co-renter, Charles, critic for Heat Magazine, who said he was at a party on the top floor of The Baron hotel. At 4am we got up to go to this party, only to engage in a ridiculous game to try and get to the top floor of the Baron. You had to have a pass to use the lift but luckily we got in with someone who had one. However, we got only go up to the penultimate floor and then couldn’t find a way to the top floor. We went back down and tried again but the 3 people who were in the lift were interrogating us about where we were going. They got out at the third floor, as if to swap lifts, suggesting that they were going up to the top and didn’t want to take us freeloaders with them. That was probably the most degrading point of the festival for me although I was entertained when 5 minutes later we came back down and they tried to get back into the lift – it looks like they didn’t have any more access than we did which made me laugh. I was imploring Chris to drop it at this point – he couldn’t reach Charles on his mobile, but finally the latter called him to say that he’d left half an hour before. I ended up spending €20 on a vodka lemonade and an apple juice but luckily the music was quite good so I didn’t feel like we’d entirely wasted our time. We crashed at Chris’ at about 6am and I got up at 8 to go to a short film breakfast…
I don’t know what had happened exactly but it appeared that my boss had RSVPd for the wrong day for the short film breakfast. Consequently they kept me and about 10 others ‘not on the list’ outside the venue in the glaring sun, waiting for over an hour for news on whether there was space. I was absolutely fuming. This was short film for God’s sake, not some super exclusive feature party. Meanwhile, friends etc. who were not on the list were going straight in. While I’m in short film rant mode let’s take a moment to look at the short film scene at Cannes.
For those who don’t know festivals – they are usually composed of two parts, the competition and the market. The competition refers to a certain number of films that have been handpicked from submissions (or found at other festivals) to compete against one another and be judged by an industry jury. There will usually be a number of different competition selections – typically a national and an international one. Cannes has it’s own Official Selection competition, as well as the Un Certain Regard selection, and then it has two parallel selections that run alongside ‘The Director’s Fortnight'and ‘Critics’ Week’. Each section (excluding Un Certain Regard) has a selection of shorts and features. For features there is also the 'out of competition' selection, the special screenings, midnight screenings, Cannes Classics and Cinema de la Plage (on the beach). The shorts also has a selection called the ‘Cinefondation’ where a number of film school films are selected and their directors are invited to a training programme during the festival. It took me about a week to get my head around all this.
Meanwhile, the market is open to anyone and everyone who can pay to put their film in it – again this applies to both shorts and features. Feature market and press screenings run most days and you can often get in to these with your accreditation. A feature market accreditation runs into the hundreds of pounds. A short film one meanwhile costs about €95 I think. This makes it the cheapest possible accreditation you can get – cheaper than a standard festival accreditation. As people have latched onto this, the number of films in the market has rocketed year on year, with many films being complete rubbish, and used as a tool to get an accreditation. Here are the problems this causes:
• The short film market is so vast that it’s impossible to navigate and find good quality films
• Accreditation is promoted to directors as something of privilege – directors can use the Cannes logo on their film’s promotional material etc – but it means absolutely nothing since no-one has verified the quality of their film at any stage.
• The actual film selections are generally done by people experienced in feature programming, which tends to result in a very conformist and dull selection with most films resembling calling cards for feature work rather than being quality short films in their own right.
• Other programmes are available to watch in the short film corner from selected distributors/film schools etc – but these have all been paid for, and again, not verified for quality.
• To be fair, they employ a certain Danny Lennon, founder of Prends ca court!, to plough through all the submissions (all of them, really?) and make some themed selections. From what I observed he opted for rather crowd-pleasing selections, with comedy taking priority over quality.
The 'short film corner’ as it’s called is a big cash cow for the festival, but I can’t help but feel it’s also the elephant in the room. I have absolutely no respect for it and I don’t know how much respect the festival has for it either – their promotional material is dreadful (last year’s identity had captions all over it exclaiming ‘short is cool’, ‘short is more’, ‘short is best’…) and the staff are largely interns (hence a lot of the confusion over the short film breakfast since there were no decision-makers available to resolve the problems).
Of the films in the official competition, only one even made me tick remotely – ‘The 6 dollar fifty man’, which went on to win a key prize, though not the Palme. That went to a South American guy who I’d seen drunk off his face in a corner of a bar two nights previously. I actually have photographic evidence of it! I spent around 3-4 hours watching films in the videothèque they have there – I did one two hour run that very afternoon, and I was given this as a luxury since the girl on the desk had been the one who wouldn’t let me in to the breakfast that morning. She told me that normally you’re only allowed half an hour which seems frankly insane – most Cinefondation films are at least that long.
After a catalogue collecting session where I was surprised to bump into another couple of people I’d crossed passed with in the short film world, from Belgium and Bulgaria respectively, I took a break in the UKFC stand before I would go to interview Ourie about A Brand New Life. Sitting down I was convinced I could see cherished Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw across the room so popped over to say hi and sure enough it was him. He also introduced me to two British friends of his who coincidentally live in Paris. We all swapped emails as I had to rush off and I also left with an invitation to the Palm Dog – the prize for the best dog of the festival as run by Toby Rose. Judged by a selection of pretty important critics this has become something of a cult – you can read about it here. I popped next door to the Korean stand where I interviewed Ourie with a freelance BBC reporter. It was a pretty frustrating interview as she answered in French, which I understood, but my co-interviewer didn’t, so we had to wait for a translation each time. I think I got about two of my ten questions in overall. I quite liked playing at being press for an hour.
Early evening I wandered past a section of the market I’d not yet broached – the boats. Various big hitters (I recall Arte among them) hire out big boats in the port and run their activities from there. Another classic example of the indistinguishable line between business and pleasure at Cannes. After far too much effort I blagged my way into the Unifrance short film party where I met a few interesting people, until many of them left and I went over to the Kodak short film party at the Kodak Pavillion. It turned out that most of the Unifrance attendees had had the same idea and I found them all again here. Frankly I was pretty exhausted by this stage and had acquired a ticket for the Panique au Village screening that started at 1am. I chatted briefly to Elliot Grove, founder of Raindance and the BIFAs, and Rachael Millward, founder of Birds Eye View festival, when really I should have been chatting to people I didn’t yet know (!) before wrapping up to go and get an hour’s sleep.
I’ve been a big fan of the Panique au Village (A Town called Panic) short animated films which chart the antics of cowboy, horse and Indian for some time – we used to show them a lot in our festival which is how I procured an ‘orchestre’ ticket for the screening from the production team (orchestre is the stalls, which is where the most important players tend to sit – vs the balcony/circle). They did a great sendup of the red carpet by having one of the directors arrive on a tractor. The film was everything I expected it to be, and I was gutted that despite my hour’s nap and espresso, I couldn’t help but have a little nap in the middle. I was hoping that the editor’s brother who was sat next to me didn’t notice. On the plus side, I would definitely watch the film again and there will be something new for me to see the second time round… I really hope this gets a decent release and generates interest – it’s 5 years animation work which have made something super entertaining. Pixar have done a lot of work to increase the commercial profile of animation – their latest ‘Up’ was the first animation to ever open the festival – and I hope the Belgians will benefit. That evening was concluded by a fortuitous wangling into the official film after party at the Grand Hotel, followed by another club.
Goodness knows why I insisted on painting the town again that night because I had procured a ticket for the 8.30am screening of Terry Gilliam’s latest, ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’. The buzz about this film has centred on it being Heath Ledger’s last – he died mid-shoot. In fact my aforementioned friend Chris interviewed him on the set a few days before his death, and said that he was clearly rather out of it then. The film itself is like a trip in Gilliam’s own unbounded imagination, fusing cinema and theatre through the performances of Dr Parnassus and his team on their travelling stage. Audience members are invited to participate and then go through a mirror enter the Imaginarium where they will find all sorts of wonderful and weird things which don’t make sense. Lily Cole makes her acting debut as Valentina, the daughter of Parnassus who is longing for the ‘normal’ lifestyle she sees in the Argos catalogue but is distracted from this at least momentarily when they come across Ledger’s character, Tony, who they find hanging from a bridge (a bit too eerie, really). Like many things in the film, I didn’t quite understand the mechanics of this – it seemed to be part of a plot from an old arch enemy of Parnassus (Mr Nick played by Tom Waits) who was coming back to make trouble as Valentina’s 16th birthday approached, when it was planned that he would escort her to hell. Frankly I spent a lot of the film frustrated until I just let go and decide to appreciate the art direction, if nothing else. This is exquisite. Cole especially looked dazzling in a sort of inhuman kind of way. I in fact left the film wondering how different/much better the film might have been if Gilliam had only done the art direction, or had at least been managed more in terms of the narrative (yet another windy epic at 2 hours). The big question of course is how did they finish it without Ledger? With surprisingly little upset is the answer. Gilliam rewrote chunks and recruited three other actors – Johnny Depp, Jude Law (oh why?) and Colin Farrell (why oh why?!) to fill his boots. Since they mostly only appear in the other distorted world of the Imaginarium, the changing face was integrated quite easily into the story. I’m glad I satisfied my curiosity and saw it, but I won’t be rushing to recommend this to everyone.
Sleep finally came that afternoon – since the market was shutting down anyway I decided to get some rest and slept most of the day before preparing for the official short film party that night. It was a fairly fun affair, especially hanging out on the jetty and watching fireworks which you can’t do at many other film festivals, we muttered about trying to get into a party at a villa somewhere before giving that idea up and going back to the same club as the previous night (can’t remember the name). My feet was in so much pain that I had to leave after about 45 minutes and got a taxi home – and a 4am I still felt guilty that I hadn’t made the most of the night!
Up again at a respectable 9am, I went off to catch ‘Map of the Sounds of Tokyo’ by Spanish director Isabel Coixet. Starring Rinko Kikuchi who I’d loved in Babel, in an unlikely romantic pairing with Sergi Lopez who is a well-known Spanish actor who I wasn’t actually familiar with (but I will look forward to seeing in François Ozon's upcoming 'Ricky'), and set in Tokyo, this could have been my surprise favourite film of the festival. Kikuchi plays Ryu, a fish market worker by night and freelancing hitwoman, who is hired to kill the ex-lover (Lopez) of a girl who just committed suicide, by the latter’s father. Unfortunately (*spoilers) she falls in love with him instead and we watch the complications that this causes unfold. The cinematography was beautiful with lost of contrast between the harsh world of meat cleavers in the market and guns, juxtaposed with the tenderness of their encounters and lovemaking in the Parisian themed love motel where different rooms represented different districts of Paris, which I couldn’t help but fall in love with. Their conversations in English had the beautiful delicate and clumsy eloquence that only comes when two people are both communicating in a language that is not their native one. Frankly I thought it was fantastic, so much so that when I came out and my colleague said she had tickets to watch it that evening, I agreed to see it again (she also emotionally blackmailed me with the threat that it would be the last time we could do the red carpet affair, and finally I had nothing else on the agenda). The afternoon subjected me to the official short film selection which depressed the hell out of me and I won’t go into any more.
After this screening, I caught up with Chris and co at the Grand and through his journalist friend Ros, we were able to get into the official after party of the film. It was a bit surreal seeing the director and actors a few feet away and then singing karaoke (a theme in the film itself), so surreal that I didn’t think anything of going over to Isabel to say how much I liked the film, before she got dragged away to sing again. The night concluded back over at The Baron where I was oblivious to the fact that Christoph Waltz squeezed past me at one night. Chris rushed over to ask me if I knew who that was – not having seen inglorious Basterds in which he plays Colonel Hans Landa, I didn’t – and Chris said that this guy was about to become a big star. Sure enough, he took the Best Actor prize the following night and the buzz began.
The festival activity had all but finished by Sunday, apart from the preparations for the closing ceremony that night, and the fact that the competition films were all being repeated throughout the day. I had at least 6 I was dying to see - especially ones I’d been unable to see when I wasn’t there during the first week – so I started proceedings with Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank. I wasn’t surprised to see yet another Arnold film starting on a council estate, after Wasp and Red Road. I also wasn’t surprised that it was UKFC supported since both these things tend to go hand in hand. I think Wasp is a masterpiece but I found Red Road a bit irritating. But I thought she really hit the nail on the head with Fish Tank. The story follows Mia (newcomer Katie Jarvis) whose mother has got herself a new boyfriend, Connor played by Michael Fassbender (despite seeing Hunger relatively recently I managed to fail to recognise him until the credits came up). The sexual tension between Mia and Connor is palpable from the outset and it much of the film revolves around will they won’t they – she is 15 after all… This story runs parallel to her quest to achieve something with her dancing and better herself. As she prepares a demo tape for an audition you cannot help but feel the sense of impending doom. The whole story feels like it’s straight out of Chat magazine but it also feels frighteningly plausible. Arnold’s direction is supreme, there is something rather Loachian about it (Mia’s mother is also played by Kierston Wareing who was the lead in Loach’s ‘It’s a Free World’ where I wondered to what extent she was acting, so believable was she). I loved all her touches on the contrast between reality and aspiration – e.g. the bling bling of MTV as observed by the daughters in their humble abode. The awful way the mum treats her daughters really brings home a sense of desperation that you can see how kids like this get into trouble, and how very difficult it is for them to break that cycle. Everything had a fantastic natural feel to it, from all angles – lighting, dialogue – and it was one of the first films that didn’t drag towards the end. It was a worthy winner of the Cannes jury prize and I am definitely recommending.
I tried to get in to see ‘The Prophet’ which everyone had prophesied would take the Palme, but alas the room got full about ten people before me, then I went to try and get into Gaspar Noe’s much hyped (if not for the worse) ‘Enter the Void’, full again, so I went to queue for ‘Broken Embraces’ (see my note about spotting Almodovar at Cannes two posts before this one). I don’t know whether the fact that I saw it with French subtitles only had something to do with my reduced enjoyment (I don’t think so as I understood everything), but frankly I found the film remarkably tedious. There’s a lot of homage in there – film noir among the strongest contenders – but the film just seemed to lack the vivacity that we’ve come to expect from the legend. I’m not saying that I was waiting for the brightly coloured comedy that made him – already Volver started to show a darker side and I enjoyed that – but Broken Embraces just seemed overlong (again), windy and quite depressing. By the time our blinded director decides to re-edit the film starring his former lover (played by Cruz), which should be an emotional triumphant climax, frankly I couldn’t really care. Almodovar ahs a way of surpring me though – the first time I saw Hable con Ella I was astounded – the second time I couldn’t for the life of me find what I saw in it – but I warmed to it again on a third viewing. I think I will give this one another bash in a few months time.
If I’d had the time I would have caught The White Ribbon, Bright Star and A l’Origine (bizarrely, its lead actress, Soko, is a friend of a friend who I chatted with at event we were all involved in a couple of years back, and is more renowned as a very witty singer), as well as The Prophet. I was strangely drawn to ‘Face’ by Tsai Ming-Liang as the art direction looked phenomenal, but my suspicions about its potentially weak narrative were confirmed by informal reports of many people getting up to leave before its 2h18m was up. Inglorious Basterds was the big letdown, Vengeance, with its rather non-arthouse Johnnie Hallyday starring, was the one that everyone wondered who it had got in. The crowd pleaser was ‘Looking for Eric’ which I should probably catch shortly which there wasn’t much talk about the other films, unless I’d just missed it all during the first week.
So that pretty much wrapped up my Cannes. I stuck around for abut another 36 hours with my boss (a local) who gave me a guided tour on the back of her scooter, and there were several hours spent trying to work out what to do if the impending strike affected my return train (it should have done, but didn’t). I returned to Paris many features wiser, many shorts more unwise, about 10 mosquito bites more irritated, and many, many hours sleep deprived (does that sentence make sense?) And God willing, I’m counting down to my return next year.
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