CANNES

Celebrities cavort at otherwise serious Cannes Film Festival

By Charles Ealy
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, May 23, 2008

For the past week, American-Statesman assistant business editor Charles Ealy — formerly an entertainment editor for another publication — has been filing updates from the Cannes Film Festival, which he has covered for various publications and National Public Radio for years. His complete reports can be found at austin360.com/cannes, but here's a sampling of the news from the celebrity-slogged event.

May 13

The Nice airport is jam-packed, the crowds are already strolling the Croisette, hundreds of journalists are lining up for credentials outside the Palais, and the Cannes Film Festival is getting ready to kick off May 14. The screening schedule is always withheld from journalists until you get here, and it always causes a few moans. Then there are the inevitable conflicts. But that's par for the course in Cannes. ...

May 14

The annual news conference of the Cannes jury, which will decide the top prizes at the end of the 61st festival this year, is usually a dull affair. But jury president Sean Penn spiced things up. As usual, the media raised questions about whether favoritism, personal politics and cultural biases would play a role in this year's jury deliberations. Penn, of course, has been the target of bloggers who contend that he has a conflict of interest because his friend, director Clint Eastwood, has "Changeling" in competition for the Palme d'Or this year. Penn won a best actor Oscar for his role in the Eastwood-directed "Mystic River." ...

Director Fernando Meirelles' "Blindness" has broken the traditional opening-day jinx in Cannes. Usually, the first movie of the fest is a real stinker. But "Blindness" got the show off to a good start, with redemption emerging from an apocalypse. Julianne Moore stars as the wife of a doctor who's the only person in an unnamed city who escapes the mysterious ailment of sudden blindness. ... Meirelles said he was drawn to the script because it shows "the fragility of our civilization" and strips the veneer off of our niceties. Because of the subject matter, which includes a revolting mass rape scene, Meirelles said he was surprised that "Blindness" was chosen to lead off the festival. "I still don't think this is the best film to open the festival," he said.

May 15

When so many great movies are screening, it's mildly irritating to spend time focusing on the personal lives of celebrities. But hey, that's part of the gig. So, without further ado, Angelina Jolie confirmed that she is carrying twins and that she was feeling fine. "I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't," she said. At a news conference for the new animated DreamWorks flick "Kung Fu Panda," Jolie said she was thrilled to be in Cannes to promote two movies, the other being "Changeling."

Jolie, who managed to keep a smile on her face for most of the conference, said she would walk up the red carpet with Brad Pitt for the "Kung Fu Panda" premiere. "He's taking care of the kids right now." (They already have four.) She also said the two would attend the "Changeling" premiere. When questioned about the workload, Jolie replied: "It's not such hard work. I sit and talk and everyone is being very nice to me. ... And it's part of the job." She said she'd be wearing sensibly low-heeled Cole Haan shoes with special Nike soles for the red-carpet appearances. As for the movie, it's a throwback to the old Disney animated features. "It doesn't talk down to kids," said co-director John Stevenson. "It's going to scare you, but it's going to be OK in the end. ... It's the classic Disney formula." ...

The "Kung Fu Panda" screening was the second animated feature premiere — as part of the official selections — in two days in Cannes, a rarity. Israeli director Ari Folman showed "Waltz with Bashir," a serious but nontraditional documentary looking back 25 years when Israel was involved in a war in Lebanon. Folman said he didn't want to do the documentary with a middle-aged guy looking into the camera, so he went with animation. But he didn't use the Richard Linklater technique of rotoscoping, employed in the Austinite's "A Scanner Darkly" and "Waking Life." The story revolves around a former Israeli soldier who questions what happened — and his involvement in — the massacre of Arabs in refugee camps in the early 1980s. . . .

Argentine director Pablo Trapero planted a Latin American flag in the race for the Palme d'Or with "The Lion's Den," or "Leonera" in Spanish. The movie focuses on a young woman who wakes up in her apartment next to the bloody bodies of two men, one of whom is still alive. Both have been her lovers, and both men have been each other's lover. And one has made her pregnant. Martina Gusman has the starring role, and she's phenomenal. The movie has a bright future on the American arthouse circuit and is just the latest in a string of groundbreaking Latin American works ...

2929 Entertainment, owned by Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, is having a high-profile year in Cannes. It wasn't too long ago that the duo behind broadcast.com were newbies along the Croisette, ready to spend some of the billions of dollars they made by selling their Dallas-based company to Yahoo. This week, 2929 picked up the international sales rights to John Waters' new movie, "Fruitcake," starring Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey. The Cuban/Wagner team also is handling international sales for Barry Levinson's "What Just Happened?"; James Gray's "Two Lovers" and Guillermo Arriaga's "The Burning Plain." ...

May 16

Daredevil archaeologist Indiana Jones might face the challenge of a lifetime when the latest movie in the blockbuster franchise is unearthed at the Cannes Film Festival. But director George Lucas didn't appear too worried. "When you do a film that is this anticipated, some people think it's going to be the Second Coming," Lucas told a group of U.S. and Canadian reporters in advance of the world premiere. There's always an increased "danger of disappointment," he said. "But anyone who loves the old Indiana Jones movies will love this one." ...

At the 61st annual festival, the first new star has to be Michael Fassbender, who plays an IRA rebel who goes on a hunger strike in a British prison in the early 1980s. The movie is director Steve McQueen's "Hunger," and no, this McQueen is not related to the late actor Steve McQueen. Fassbender leads a group of imprisoned men against a series of brutalities, and by the end of the movie, he's an emaciated shell of a man. Even though "Hunger" will have a hard time drawing large audiences in the States, it has a raw power, much of it derived from Fassbender's performance ...

Sunday

Woody Allen and two of his stars, Penélope Cruz and Rebecca Hall, in the fluffy, fun "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" met the media at the Martinez Hotel to promote the movie. Cruz is a knockout in person. She's petite and dazzling, even after having stayed at a Vanity Fair party until the wee hours of the morning. She arrived early in a white Chanel dress, beating stragglers Allen and Hall. Cruz said she had wanted to do a "Woody" for a long time. And when Allen heard this, he wrote the script specifically for Cruz. Allen said he was stunned by Cruz's performance in Pedro Almodóvar's "Volver" and was eager to work with the star. Looking at bit lecherous, he grinned and said he had one of the greatest jobs in the world, having to spend hours and hours with Cruz and co-star Scarlett Johansson. "This is a very good way to make a living," he said. ...

Monday

Attending the Cannes Film Festival to promote a movie is expensive, especially for Americans, because 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 Johansson of Woody Allen's "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.

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," 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. ...

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 Meirelles. Latin American cinema is at its highest point ever, with several movies selected for the official competition in Cannes. And Cannes jury president 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." ...

Tuesday

Hollwood's Old Master of cinema unveiled his latest portrait in Cannes, with a highly nuanced portrayal of a mother under siege by Jolie. Eastwood's "Changeling," or "L'echange" in French, tells the true story of Christine Collins, a 1920s Los Angeles single mother who comes home from work to find her 9-year-old son has disappeared. When asked why he allowed his film to be entered in the official competition, rather than screen more safely out of competition like many Hollywood movies here, Eastwood said simply: "It seems like if you're going to go to a film festival that has a competition, you might as well be in it. . . . Playing out of competition is playing it safe."