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Monday, May 19, 2008
Our Man in Cannes: “Two Lovers” and more
CANNES, France — It’s shaping up to be quite a race for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
U.S. director James Gray premiered “Two Lovers” Monday night, and it’s one of the most sensitive portrayals of the vagaries of love to hit the screen in recent years.
Much of the credit goes to Joaquin Phoenix, who stars as a depressed young man who moves back in with his parents after a failed engagement and becomes romantically involved with two women.
Gwyneth Paltrow portrays a confused woman who lives nearby and is involved in an affair with a married man. Vinessa Shaw stars as the daughter of family friends who is considered a nice match for him by his parents.
It may be predictable that Phoenix’s character, Leonard, would fall for the least available of the two. But Phoenix gives such a heartbreaking, thoughtful, understated performance that any predictability seems not to matter.
While the movie was excellent, the Cannes Film Festival should be chastened by the way it treated the premiere. Members of the press lined up outside the Salle Debussy before the 10 p.m. screening, only to find that it had been delayed. And when 10:30 rolled around, another unscheduled movie was still playing in the Debussy theater.
Unsuspecting critics were herded into yet another line and ushered into a much smaller venue, Salle Bazin. And as the delays dragged on, critics from major publications around the world were stomping around the theater, uttering profanities. The publicist, meanwhile, was glued to her Blackberry, trying to sort things out.
(As you may have gathered by now, critics in Cannes are not the most patient, pleasant bunch.)
By the end of the movie, however, it’s unlikey that even the most jaded critics were unmoved by Phoenix’s performance. He seems like a leading contender for best actor.
Two other movies that debuted in the last couple of days are getting high marks. The most notable is “Lorna’s Silence,” from the Dardenne brothers of Belgium. It revolves around a young Albanian woman who becomes an accomplice with a mobster in a sham marriage. The wedding will allow her to get citizenship. Then she and her mobster friend can kill the husband, get married and be married, giving the mafios citizenship as well.
There are lots of twists and turns, which won’t be revealed here. But the Dardenne brothers are Cannes favorites, having won two previous Palme d’Ors. So they can’t be counted out.
The other standout is “Gomorrah,” which is based on a highly popular novel about the Mafia in Naples. The movie, directed by Matteo Garrone, weaves five stories together, and some critics have complained about the confusing storyline. But it’s gaining a strong following in Cannes and seems like a contender.
With three such movies in recent days, the Cannes festival is shaping up to being one of the best of the last decade.
Still to come are Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling.” (The press kit for the movie arrived in the mail Monday night, and its name has mysteriously been changed to “The Exchange.” We’ll find out Tuesday when the movie premieres whether the name change is real.) Also ahead are such highly anticipated films as Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration,” Wim Wenders’ “The Palermo Shooting,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.”
Fasten your seatbelts.
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Our Man in Cannes: Latin American movie bonanza
CANNES, France — Few directors are as verbally eloquent as Brazil’s Walter Salles, whose “Linha de Passe” premiered at Cannes.
If there were awards given out for best director interview, he would win hands down. A close second would be Brazil’s Fernando Meirelles, director of “Blindness.”
Latin American cinema is at its highest point ever, with several movies selected for the official competition in Cannes.
And Cannes jury president Sean Penn acknowledged the trend in a press conference on the first full day of the festival. Every once in a while, a “warm breeze of creativity” settles over a certain part of the world, he said, and “that’s what’s happening in Latin America.”
Traditionally, Cannes juries have unjustly slighted Latin American movies. But perhaps this year, it will be different.
Salles’ movie focuses on a family living in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Sao Paolo, which has doubled in population over the past decade to about 22 million. While Austin may fret and moan over growth, Sao Paolo has seen sprawl like few cities in the world.
As co-director Daniela Thomas said, “There is no planning, no protection, no health insurance, little or no educational system, poor housing.” But she added that Brazil has an “incredible capacity for reinvention” and that hope and humor are always at the center of the country’s psyche.
That’s the heart of the idea behind “Linha de Passe.” The title is virtually untranslatable, Salles said, but it’s basically a children’s soccer game, where four kids start kicking or passing a ball to one another, with elimination coming if the ball ever hits the ground. Each character in the movie is basically trying to avoid dropping an allegorical ball, keeping their lives intact amid great odds.
The key characters involve a mother and her four sons, all of whom take different paths in trying to crack into a society that seems trying to keep them on the margins. One dreams of becoming a minor-league soccer star; another is a motorcycle courier; another has joined a Protestant evangelical group; and the youngest dreams of being a bus driver.
Salles said he chose to portray a fatherless family because recent statistics show that 28 to 30 percent of households in Brazil are headed by the mother alone. The large-scale absence of father figures in Brazil is no accident, Thomas said. “Brazil was born wrong, out of destruction and rape, and it still suffers from it,” she said.
And both Thomas and Salles said recent reports of a Brazilian economic miracle are far overrated, especially when seen from the perspective of regular citizens.
“Hopefully, these cold statistics about a low inflation rate and rising prosperity will have an effect on the daily life of people in the coming decades, but we haven’t seen it yet,” Salles said.
Both Salles and Thomas see themselves as outsiders, despite privileged backgrounds. Salles’ father was a diplomat, so he saw different cultures at a different ages and gained respect for diversity.
Thomas’ father, meanwhile, was a famed cartoonist who was imprisoned by a past military dictatorship for his outspoken opinions.
Salles sees the current trend in Latin American cinema as akin to what happened in disillusioned Italy after World War II.
“This is our version of Neo-realism,” he said, referring to the postwar cinematic movement in Italy. “Brazilian cinema is getting out of the studio and into the streets, creating a new aesthectic,” Salles said. “In the last 10 years, we’ve tried to give voice to people who have previously not been represented,” mainly those in the lower classes.
“The challenge is to move the cameras into other areas, to show the whole range of society,” he said.
Meanwhile, Salles revealed that he’s working on a cinematic version of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” He plans to film the movie in the U.S., and says he was drawn to the topic because it’s about people “trying to break into a society that’s impermeable.”
Salles added that “On the Road” is also a product of a culture where fear permeates, and he sees modern-day comparisons to the Bush administration and its attitudes toward the rest of the world. “We want to deal with a generation that collides with its society. That always fascinates me,” he said.
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Our Man in Cannes: Film with Smithville roots inks distribution deals
Summit Entertainment is having success is marketing Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” in Cannes.
The movie, which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn and was filmed in Smithville, Texas, has sold well to such distributors as EuropaCorp in France, Screen International reported Monday.
Icon has bought the rights in Britain and Australia, while Tele Munchen Group has the rights for Germany. Rights in Italy and Scandinavia have also been sold.
The movie is scheduled to be complete in November 2009. U.S. distribution rights are still undecided.
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Our Man in Cannes: Where’s Scarlett?
Attending the Cannes Film Festival to promote a movie is extremely expensive, especially for Americans, where the dollar is near all-time lows against the Euro.
So it’s no surprise that some of the smaller productions cut back this year and didn’t trot out all the stars.
One of the most noticeable absences this year is Scarlett Johansson of Woody Allen’s witty “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.”
Word on the street (primarily publicists in the know) is that Scarlett wanted to bring nine people in her entourage, including specialists in makeup and hair.
Not gonna happen, the backers of Woody’s film reportedly told Scarlett. Such an entourage would have cost well more than $100,000, and that’s probably a low estimate.
A compromise was offered, according to the buzz among publicists. But Scarlett did not relent; hence, no Scarlett.
Allen, meanwhile, was looking quite relaxed during interviews, wearing khakis and his trademark black glasses. He is getting a bit hard of hearing, which was evident at the press conference in Cannes. But he still has his dry wit.
When asked about whether the proposed menage a trois in his new movie was a fantasy, he responded: “It’s tough enough to get just one person in bed.”
He said he felt very lucky to be able to get Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem together for the film. “Who else could have played the role like Javier? And there is certainly not another Penelope.”
In many interviews with American directors, the subject of the U.S. presidential race has popped up.
Allen said he “would be thrilled with Hillary or Obama, and I would campaign for either one.”
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Our Man in Cannes: Indy reviews largely favorable
CANNES, France — The biggest premiere of the festival is over, and critical opinion for “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” is generally favorable, despite a few pans.
That was especially apparent in the three biggest daily industry publications here in Cannes: London-based Screen International, and America’s Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
Allan Hunter of Screen International gave Indy the best review. “The world can reast easy — the old magic still works. … The first Indy adventure in almost 20 years is like a fond reunion with an old friend and will not disappoint diehard fans, or indeed a new generation, from embracing it as a summer blockbuster ride.”
Todd McCarthy of Daily Variety gave it a thumbs up, but with qualifications. “One of the most eagerly and long-awaited series follow-ups in screen history delivers the goods — not those of the still first-rate original … but those of its uneven two successors.”
Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter agreed with bloggers who have been worried that special effects would overtake the story. “Whatever story there is … gets swamped in a sea of stunts and CGI that are as relentless as the scenes and character relationships are charmless,” he wrote.
That last comment might make Paramount executives wince, but there has to be some relief in the studio that the movie wasn’t critically savaged, as was “The Da Vinci Code” several years ago after its world premiere here.
The good reviews could give Indy a boost, and the negative ones are unlikely to keep many diehard fans away. Those two factors will probably help make Indy the big box-office success of the summer.
Cannes certainly got into the spirit. Street-wise entrepreneurs flooded the Croisette with imitations of Indy’s famed fedora, and by the end of the evening, hundreds of people from all parts of the world were sporting the look.
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