Cannes Film Festival 2018

Festival de Cannes May 8-19, 2018: films in Competition announced.

Franco-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard with Le livre d'imag/The Image Book, Italian Matteo Garrone with Dogman, or the American Spike Lee with BlacKKKlansman will be in competition this year at Cannes, the organizers have announced.
The French Stéphane Brizé with En guerre, Christophe Honoré with Plaire, aimer et courir vite/Sorry Angel and Eva Husson with Les Filles du soleil, the American David Robert Mitchell with Under the Silver Lake, the Chinese Jia Zhang-ke with Ash is Purest White, the Japanese Hirokazu Koreeda with Shoplifters or the Iranian Jafar Panahi with Three Faces will also be in line for the Palme d'Or competition from 8 to 19 May. The whole list is below.

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Official selection
Competition
Everybody Knows/Todos lo saben (dir: Asghar Farhadi) – opening film
At War/En guerre (dir: Stéphane Brizé)
Dogman (dir: Matteo Garrone)
Le Livre d’Image/The Image Book (dir: Jean-Luc Godard)
Asako I & II (dir: Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Sorry Angel/Plaire, aimer, et courir vite (dir: Christophe Honoré)
Girls of the Sun/Les Filles du soleil (dir: Eva Husson)
Ash Is Purest White (Chinese: 江湖儿女) (dir: Jia Zhang-Ke)
Shoplifters/ 万引き家族 Manbiki Kazoku, (dir: Hirokazu Koreeda)
Capernaum/Capharnaüm (dir: Nadine Labaki)
Burning (dir: Lee Chang-Dong)
BlacKkKlansman (dir: Spike Lee)
Under the Silver Lake (dir: David Robert Mitchell)
Three Faces (dir: Jafar Panahi)
Cold War (dir: Pawel Pawlikowski)
Lazzaro Felice/My Bitter Land (dir: Alice Rohrwacher)
Yomeddineيوم الدين (dir: AB Shawky)
Leto (L’Été/Summer) (dir: Kirill Serebrennikov)

Un Certain Regard
Runs 8-19 May 2018.
Opening Night Film: Donbass (dir. Sergei Loznitsa)
Angel Face (dir: Vanessa Filho)
Border/Gräns (dir: Ali Abbasi)
El Angel (dir: Luis Ortega)
Euphoria (dir: Valeria Golino)
Friend (dir: Wanuri Kahiu)
The Gentle Indifference of the World (dir: Adilkhan Yerzhanov)
Girl (dir: Lukas Dhont)
The Harvesters (dir: Etienne Kallos)
In My Room (dir: Ulrich Köhler)
Little Tickles (dir: Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer)
My Favorite Fabric (dir: Gaya Jiji)
On Your Knees, Guys (Sextape) (dir: Antoine Desrosières)
Sofia (dir: Meyem Benm’Barek)

Out of competition
Solo: A Star Wars Story (dir: Ron Howard)
Le Grand Bain/Sink or Swim (dir: Gilles Lellouche)
Little Tickles/Les chatouilles (dir: Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (dir: Bi Gan)

Midnight screenings
Arctic (dir: Joe Penna)
The Spy Gone North/공작 (dir: Yoon Jong-Bing)

Special screenings
10 Years in Thailand (dir: Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng, Chulayarnon Sriphol & Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
The State Against Mandela and the Others (dir: Nicolas Champeaux & Gilles Porte)
O Grande Circo Mistico/The Great Mystical Circus (dir: Carlo Diegues)
Dead Souls (dir: Wang Bing)
To the Four Winds (dir: Michel Toesca)
La Traversée (dir: Romain Goupil)
Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (dir: Wim Wenders)
Closing film
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (dir: Terry Gilliam)

Directors’ Fortnight
Runs 9-19 May 2018.
Pajaros de Verano (Birds of Passage) (dirs: Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego) – opening film
Amin (dir: Philippe Faucon)
Carmen y Lola (dir: Arantxa Echevarria)
Climax (dir: Gaspar Noe)
Comprama un Revolver (Buy Me a Gun) (dir: Julio Hernandez Cordon)
Les Confins du Monde (dir: Guillaume Nicloux)
El Motoarrebatador (The Snatch Thief) (dir: Augustin Toscano)
En Liberte! (dir: Pierre Salvadori)
Joueurs (Treat Me Like Fire) (dir: Marie Monge)
Leave No Trace (dir: Debra Granik)
Los Silencios (dir: Beatriz Seigner)
The Pluto Moment (dir: Ming Zhang)
Mandy (dir: Panos Cosmatos)
Mirai (dir: Mamoru Hosoda)
Le Monde Est a Toi (dir: Romain Gavras)
Petra (dir: Jaime Rosales)
Samouni Road (dir: Stefano Savona)
Teret (The Load) (dir: Ognjen Glavonic)
Weldi (Dear Son) (dir: Mohamed Ben Attia)
Troppa Grazia (dir: Gianni Zanasi) – closing film

Critics Week
Runs 10-18 May 2018.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
FEATURES
Wildlife, dir: Paul Dano (opening film)
Our Struggles, dir: Guillaume Senez
Shéhérazade, dir: Jean-Bernard Marlin
Guy, dir: Alex Lutz (closing film)
SHORT FILMS
La Chute (The Fall), dir: Boris Labbé
Third Kind, dir: Yorgos Zois
Ultra Pulpe (Apocalypse After), dir: Bertrand Mandico
FEATURE COMPETITION
Chris The Swiss, dir: Anja Kofmel
Diamantino, dirs: Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt
Egy Nap (One Day), dir: Zsófia Szilágyi
Fuga (Fugue), dir: Agnieszka Smoczynska
Kona Fer I Stríð (Woman At War), dir: Benedikt Erlingsson
Sauvage, dir: Camille Vidal-Naquet
Sir, dir: Rohena Gera
SHORT FILM COMPETITION
Amor, Avenidas Novas, dir: Duarte Coimbra
Ektoras Malo: I Teleftea Mera Tis Chronias (Hector Malot – The Last Day Of The Year), dir:
Mo-Bum-Shi-Min (Exemplary Citizen), dir: Kim Cheol-Hwi
Pauline Asservie (Pauline, Enslaved), dir: Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
La Persistente, dir: Camille Lugan
Rapaz (Raptor), dir: Felipe Galvez
Schächer, dir: Flurin Giger
Tiikeri (The Tiger), dir: Mikko Myllylahti
Un Jour De Mariage (A Wedding Day), dir: Elias Belkeddar
Ya Normalniy (Normal), dir: Michael Borodin

The 2018 Cannes film festival runs 8-19 May

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Big talk about Cannes 2018: what's in, what's not.

Notable inclusions are works by Jean Luc-Godard, Pawel Pawlikowski, Wim Wenders and Spike Lee, as well as a genuine blockbuster in the form of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

But maybe more notable is what's missing or excluded. Contrary to expectations, there is nothing, so far anyway, by Lars von Trier, Mike Leigh or Terry Gilliam. [Note: the last two were added later.]

Maybe the biggest news is the exclusion of Netflix. Cannes decided this time against allowing in Competition any film by the giant without a theatrical release. And Netflix in reply refused to participate in the festival in any out-of-competition category.

Despite the talk about the underrepresentation of women in the industry - see the SFIFF doc Half the Picture - there is a dearth of films by women directors. Cannes Festival Director Thierry Fremaux is unapologetic about this and says the Festival will never act unilaterally to correct the imbalance.

Godard's film is a photo essay like his other recent pictures. Pawilikowski's Cold War is the story of a romance traced across multiple countries in the Fifties. Spike Lee's Blackkklansman is the story of a black man who infiiltrates a KKK chapter, and will likely be one of the most provocative films of Competition.

Other films in Competition come from Egypt, Japan, Lebanon, South Korea and China. Included are to by dissident directors in serious trouble with their repressive governments. Jaafar Panahi has been banned from leaving Iran, but will debut with Three Faces. The Iranian government has been requested by the Cannes authorities to allow him to attend. Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been under house arrest since 2010 on fraud charges. His Leto is a movie about the underground rock 'n roll scene in Soviet Russia. Russia has been requested to allow him to come to the Riviera for the fest as well.
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Critics Week Cannes 2018.

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The Jury President of Critics Week (La Semaine de la Critique) this year is Norwegian director Joachim Trier.
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Trier is the director of the brilliant debut Reprise (SFIFF 2007), Cannes selections Oslo, August 31st (ND/NF 2012) and Louder than Bombs, and 2017's Thelma (NYFF 2017) which debuted at Toronto. Trier will be joined by American actress and director Chloë Sevigny, Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, a recent César winner for his role in Robin Campillo's 120 Beats Per Minute; Eva Sangiorgi, the new Italian director of the Viennale, the Vienna International Film Festival; and the French culture journalist Augustin Trapenard.

The selection will be announced tomorrow.

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Cannes Classics program announced

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REX/Shutterstock-DeadlineHollywood

Orson Welles will be featured at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, though not his previously unfinished The Other Side of the Wind yet - Netflix is holding onto it due to its tiff with the Cannes directors. But a new doc The Eyes of Orson Welles is coming from Mark Cousins - the series includes tributes and docs about film & filmmakers plus restorations. Included are works involving Martin Scorsese, Jane Fonda, Chris Nolan and John Travolta. And The Golem.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles explores the director's visual process, using drawings, paintings and early works Cousins got access to through Welles' daughter, Beatrice. Beatrice could not prevail on Netflix to release The Other Side of the Wind.

There will be a tribute to Alice Guy, first female director/producer in a new doc by Pamela B. Green. Sundance offers Susan Lac's HBO doc Jane Fonda in Five Acts which Jane will be present for. Chris Nolan will present a new 70mm print of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey on its fiftieth anniversary made from the original camera negative, "a true photochemical film recreation," with a 15 min intermission as when the film was originally shown in spring 1968.

Ingmar Bergman is also to be featured with Searching for Ingmar Bergman, a parallel tracing of her own and his careers b Margarethe von Trotta;Jane Magnusson's Bergman — A Year In A Life tracing 1957, when Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal came out; plus a digital 4K restoration of the original neg of The Seventh Seal presented by the Swedish Film Institute. Other gems: Wilder's The Apartment, De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Besson's The Big Blue (its 39th anniversary) and the musical Grease, which will be screened on the beach. Full program is below.

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Cannes Classics 2018
Beating Heart, dir: Henri Decoin (1939 France)
Bicycle Thieves, dir: Vittorio De Sica (1948 Italy)
Enamorada, dir: Emilio Fernández (1946 Mexico – Martin Scorsese to introduce)
Tokyo Story, dir: Yasujiro Ozu (1953 Japan)
Vertigo, dir: Alfred Hitchcock (1958 U.S.)
The Apartment, dir: Billy Wilder (1960 U.S.)
Diamonds Of The Night, dir: Jan Němec (1964 Czech Republic)
War And Peace. Film I. Andrei Bolkonsky, dir: Sergey Bondarchuk (1965 Russia)
The Nun, dir: Jacques Rivette (1965 France)
Four White Shirts, dir: Rolands Kalnins (1967 Latvia)
The Hour Of The Furnaces, dir: Fernando Solanas (1968 Argentina)
Specialists, dir: Sergio Corbucci (1969 France, Italy, Germany)
João And The Knife, dir: George Sluizer (1971 Netherlands)
Blow For Blow, dir: Marin Karmitz (1972 France)
One Sings The Other Doesn’t, dir: Agnès Varda (1977 France)
Grease, dir: Randal Kleiser (1978 U.S. with John Travolta in attendance)
Fad, Jal, dir: Safi Faye (1979 Senegal, France)
Five And The Skin, dir: Pierre Rissient (1981 France, Philippines)
The Island Of Love, dir: Paulo Rocha (1982 Portugal, Japan)
Bagdad Café, dir: Percy Adlon (1987 Germany)
The Big Blue, dir: Luc Besson (1988 France, U.S., Italy)
Driving Miss Daisy, dir: Bruce Beresford (1989 U.S.)
Cyrano De Bergerac, dir: Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1990 France)
Hyenas, dir: Djibril Diop Mambety (1992 Senegal, France, Switzerland)
Lamb, dir: Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1963 Senegal)
Destiny, dir: Youssef Chahine (1997 Egypt, France)

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- Deadline Hollywood.
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Devika Girish on Tribeca 2018

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MARY KAY PLACE IN KENT JONES'S DIANE

Cannes begins in five days. Tribeca (Apr 18, 2018 – Apr 29, 2018) recently ended. So meanwhile here is a roundup by Devika Girish, whom I met at ND/NF in March, of her 2018 Tribeca favorites in the film review Vague Visages including a succinct rundown on a debut feature by Kent Jones, director of the New York Film Festival.

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SCREENDAILY describes 20 Cannes films to watch for.

Many of these sound good. For the SCREENDAILY article: CLICK. They come from across the categories: Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition/Special screenings, Directors' Fortnight, and Critics Week.

You have to register to read things on Screendaily, but it's free.
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The festival starts tomorrow.

Spile Lee's BlackKKlansman, Lars von Trier back with a serial killer movie

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Adam Driver and John David Washington in BlackKlansman

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BlacKkKlansman (US) - dir. Spike Lee (In Competition)

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The arch provocateur returns to Competition for the first time since Jungle Fever played the Croisette in 1991. Lee’s latest is inspired by the true story of Ron Stallworth, an undercover African-American police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. John David Washington and Adam Driver star, and BlacKkKlansman is produced by the team behind Get Out, among them Jordan Peele and Jason Blum. Focus Features will release in the US on August 10 shortly before the first anniversary of the race-related violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Universal handles international distribution. (Contact: Universal Pictures International) -SCREENDAILY.

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Also starring Topher Grace, Laura Harrier, Ryan Eggold; and Harry Belafonte has a part.

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Return of Lars with a film about a serial killer in the US.

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The Guardian has set up writer Kate Muir, it would appear, to point out how the festival is not measuring up to the requirements of the #MeToo and timesup movements or what a (female) friend of mine has called "The new era of the Feminist Taliban." The director, Thierry Frémaux, has insisted there will be no affirmative action in selecting films with women directors to make up the paucity of them. Muir is angry that Lars von Trier has been welcomed as persona grata again to present his new movie, The House That Jack Built, especially since it was she whose question provoked what she calls von T's "tirade" ending in the words, "O.K., I'm a Nazi."

Muir's article is entitled "Lars von Trier’s Cannes return proves festival is still in thrall to male privilege." (I don't really know if this article is part of any consistent policy by the Guardian.) The House That Jack Built The House That Jack Built (run time 155 mins.) follows an intelligent serial killer played by Matt Dillon over a twelve-year period in the Seventies and Eighties in the state of Washington. Von T. is said to have described the film as [Wikipedia] "celebrating 'the idea that life is evil and soulless.'" Whaa?! I mean really, why quote that, if he really said it? He was excluded from Canned for six years. Somehow one knew the "persona non grata" status, perhaps an action it would have caused very bad publicity not to have carried out, would not last. Uma Thurman is also in the movie as well as Bruno Ganz,Siobhan Fallon Hogan,Sofie Gråbøl,Riley Keough, andJeremy Davies. (Out of Competition, Special Screening.) "Like Roman Polanski and Woody Allen, Von Trier remains a favoured son of the most prestigious film festival in the world," concludes Muir.
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More comments on the 2018 Cannes selections.

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New for 2018: clockwise from top left: Yomeddine; Asako I & II; Girls of the Sun; Under Silver Lake.

There is an excellent Guardian piece by chief UK film critic for Variety Guy Lodge on what is and isn't honored or included in this year's Cannes. CLICK. Some writers have been unhappy with the Competition selections and said they feel like they're "being punished." But in fact there are some new angles and surprises. Here are some descriptions by Lodge of included films:

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Bonjour to the new wave

David Robert Mitchell Under the Silver Lake

The American director, 44,made his debut in 2010 with The Myth of the American Sleepover, a wistful coming-of-age film that played in Cannes’ low-profile critics’ week section, before sharpening his teeth on the rattling indie horror film, It Follows (2014). Now, with his gonzo 140-minute, Under the Silver Lake, he makes an ambitious play for Lynchian status.

Eva Husson Girls of the Sun

One of the wildest cards in this lineup, Husson, 41, split the critics with her stylish, sexually explicit teenage dream Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) in 2015 and now moves on to very different terrain with Girls of the Sun, a study of a Kurdish female battalion reclaiming their its town from extremists. One of the stars is the fabulous Golshifteh Farahani, who has acted in Farsi (Aboug Elly), French (Satrapi's Chicken with Plums, Louis Garrel's Two Friends), and English (Jarmusch's Paterson).

Abu Bakr Shawky Yomeddine

Snagging a Cannes competition slot for your directorial debut remains a rare feat, so critics will be curious to find out what the selection committee saw in Shawky, an Egyptian-Austrian film-maker by way of New York University film school, and his comedy, Yomeddine, about two lepers leaving their colony in search of their estranged families.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi Asako I & II

The Japanese writer-director, 39, has made a number of features since his 2007 debut, but found international acclaim in 2015 with his five-hour intimate epic, Happy Hour (ND/NF 2016), a bittersweet study of female friendship that won awards at Locarno. His follow-up, the romantic drama Asako I & II, runs a mere two hours.

Yann Gonzalez Knife + Heart

A late addition to the line-up, Gonzalez – a Frenchman and a former member of the dreamy electronica band M83 – made a splashy debut in 2013 with his queer erotic drama, You and the Night, and appears to be bringing similarly neon-hued energy to the competition with his second film, Knife + Heart, a thriller starring Vanessa Paradis. (French title Un couteau dans le coeur.)

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Forever jinxed?

Alas, Terry Gilliam's health may prevent his long-delayed Don Quixote from debuting at the end of this year's festival.

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Terry Gilliam, the former Monty Python member and director of films such as Brazil and Time Bandits, has suffered a minor stroke. He is said to be recovering well in London after falling ill over the weekend, returning home from hospital on the evening of 8 May.

The same day, a court hearing was held in Paris to rule whether Gilliam’s new film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, can close the Cannes film festival on 19 May. The film, which has been in the making since 1989 and has a reputation as one of the most unlucky productions in screen history, has been the subject of a distribution rights disagreement.
-Guardian

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About women, Cannes, and the 2018 Jury.

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STEWART, DUVERNAY, BLANCHETT, SEYDOUX, NIN GATHER AT CANNES TO POSE FOR PHOTOS

Cate Blanchett, heading a Cannes Jury with a 5-4 female majority this year, defends the festival's lack of selections by women in an opening speech. She says the progress is happening, but takes time. That Competition films are in because of merit, not gender, as it should be. See the Guardian story for more details and a photo of the five ladies on the Cannes Jury. They are: Kristen Stewart, Blanchett, Ava DuVernay, Léa Seydoux, and Burundian singer and musician Khadja Nin, who has lived in Belgium since 1980.

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Cannes coverage?
Opening night film, Everybody Knows/Todos lo saben.

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Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Everybody Knonws/Todos lo saben

I'm not at Cannes. I've never been there, even on a visit. These Cannes threads, pursued with enthusiasm, are done by following online coverage of others and summarizing or excerpting it here for you. We'll see what media have coverage we can follow. AV Club will, but for the second year, none of those excellent roundups (and Tweet ratings) I relied on from Mike D'Angelo for years. The Guardian will: we'll see who's there.

A.A. Dowd covers for AVClub. The opening night film was by a quality director this time, Iranian Separation, The Past and The Salesman director Asghar Farhadi. His new film is called Everybody Knows and is set in Spain. It stars Penélope Cruz and real-life mate Javier Bardem, and Jaime Lorente. See a description of it in Vulture, which calls the film "soapy-yet-substantial." Peter DeBruge in his Variety review calls it "repetitive" (of earlier films, not just themes). But just from the stills, it looks like it has a lot of charm. Peter Bradshaw liked it a lot and gave it 4/5 stars in his Guardian review.

Dowd notes people focused a bit on who or what's not there: films by Alfonso Cuarón, Peter Greenaway, and Jeremy Saulnier, plus the postumously completed Orson Welles movie, The Other Side Of The Window, withdrawn by Netflix in pique due to being excluded from Competition. Claire Denis, Terrence Malick, and Luca Guadagnino, among other notables, didn't make the cut with their new films this year.

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Carey Mulligan in Wildlife

Wildlife (Paul Dano).

(Opening film of Critics Week.)
First review (other than Opening Night): Paul Dano's directorial debut stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan as a couple in 1950's Montana in an adaptation of Richard Ford's novel wildlife to which the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gives 4/5 stars in his review, saying this contains "one of the best roles and best performances" of Mulligan's career and is "an extremely watchable movie, beautifully and even luxuriously appointed in its austere evocation of smalltown America." Owen Gleiberman calls this an "impressive debut" in his Variety review. This is good news indeed and I am eager to see this film. It is the only American film to show in Critics' Week.

Wildlife sounds like a possible awards prospect.

Donbass (Sergei Lonnitsa).

(Opening Night Film of Un Certain Regard.)
"Another cri de coeur by Sergei Loznitsa, set in the eastern region of Ukraine, that reveals the degradation of civil society in the post-truth era," says Jay Weissberg in his Variety review. 'Donbass” recounts the corrosive nature of the conflict pitting Ukrainian nationalists against supporters of Russia’s proxy Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.' Like his previous A Gentle Creature, it screams "against a society that’s lost its humanity and can’t be bothered to care." I have reported on several of Loznitsa's films starting with My Joy (NYFF 2010). The fiction ones are serious, powerful, unpleasant, and not much seen outside of festivals. Peter Bradshaw's Guardian review shows he liked it a lot. He says its "feverish procession of scenes is handled with steely control" and gave it a 4/5 start. Not so sure myself how I might like it.

Yomeddine (A.B. Shawky).

(Shown in Competition.)
"A lovingly-made, character-driven road movie that occasionally dips into sentimentality yet has moments that honestly play on the heartstrings....An Egyptian leper and his young orphan friend journey south in search of family in debuting director A.B. Shawky’s lovingly made road trip movie, Yomeddine ["Judgment Day"]. Anchored by lead Rady Gamal’s warm-hearted charisma, the film is a sweet, solid first feature marbled with genuinely touching moments that make up for times when the siren call of sentimentality becomes a little too loud." - Variety, Jay Weissberg review. Guardian (Bradshaw)] gave this only a 2/5 stars and called it "slight and sugary." Though my love of Egypt and Egyptian Arabic would make me want to see this film, it seems unlikely to get me excited about the state of Egyptian cinema as Tarek Saleh's The Nile Hilton Incident and Mohamed Diab's Clash recently did.

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Sorry Angel

Leto ( Kirill Serebrennikov).

(Shown in Competition.)
The title means "summer", or here in Cannes, l'été. "A wild, whirling, often confounding 1980s rock opus" that "moves freely," says Guy Lodge in his Variety review, despite the director's being under house arrest. A sometimes messy over two-hour film based on the life of "tragically short-lived Soviet singer-songwriter Viktor Tsoi." Last year I reviewed the director's The Student (SFIFF). This sounds like a choking but exotically fascinating contrast to that film's cool formalism. It also sounds like a film I'd probably like to watch - at a festival.

Sorry, Angel (Christophe Honoré).

(Shown in Competition.)
A film (French title Plaire, aimer, et courir vite) about a gay love affair troubled by two different ideas of what love means. Guy Lodge's review for Variety says this is Honoré's best film since his 2007 Love Songs (R-V 2008), finally making good on its promise and the love it inspired in its fans (who would include me) that's been "chipped away at" since. The French title is Plaire, aimer et courir vite (Please, love, and run fast). Set semi-autobiographically in 1993, this co-stars Pierre Deladonchamps (of Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake) as Jacques, an HIV-positive playwright and novelist, and comic talent Vincent Lacoste as Arthur, the college student who becomes his lover (together two sides of the filmmaker), with distinguished Comédie Française actor Denis Podalydès also important as Jacque's distinguished actor friend. Lodge makes the huge claim that, despite being hard to follow at times and overlong (133 mins.), Sorry, Angel "represents a major stride in the treatment of gay relationships on-screen." The film's out in France now, and its extravagantly high AlloCiné press rating of 4.4 strongly suggests the French would more than agree; Les Inrockutibles among other French reviews say it's Honoré's best film yet. I hope Guy Lodge is right, and not Peter Bradshaw, who called it sometimes "light and unrewarding," and gave it 2/5 stars. As a long time fan of Honoré, I am eager to see this film.

Birds of Passage ( Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra)

A South American drug trade drama (original title Pajaros de verano), this sounds like a big deal too, being by the makers of the much admired and Best Foreign Oscar nominee Embrace of the Serpent and constituting a kind of Latin American Godfather epic. So says Jordan Mintzer in his Hollywood Reporter review. It chronicles the history of the Colombian drug business before Escobar from point of view of the country's indigenous Wayuu people, so it's a beautifully drug adventure/crime saga with an strong ethnographic angle. This got a 4/5 stars rating from Jordan Hoffman in his Guardian review. This is obviously a must-see film.

Rafiki (Wanuri Kahiu).

A brightly-colored tale of two adolescent girls falling in love in the streets of Nairobi, this Kenyan film, says Guy Lodge's Variety review, is ho-hum in its conventionality for us, perhaps, in a time when Love, Simon is playing the malls, but significant because of its boldness in Kenya, where homosexuality is a punishable offense and the film has been banned. Also the first Kenyan film ever to be included in the Cannes Film Festival. A colorful addition to any LGBT festival this year.

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Still from Rafiki

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I just (and finally) caught up with Stephane Brize's "The Measure of a Man". The only other film of his I've seen is the only one reviewed in these forums (by Chris Knipp of course): Madame Chambon. Chris liked it as much as I did. So I'm writing this in the Cannes 2018 thread because Brize's new film En Guerre is set to premiere "in competition". Brie has a long collaboration with Vincent Lindon, a winner as Best Actor for "The Measure of a Man" a couple of years ago. I need to see other films from this director (the list of films to watch before I die just gets longer)

Another collaboration between Stéphane Brizé and Vincent Lindon cannot fail to be of interest, Oscar. I have reviewed his Not Here to Be Loved and saw it twice, in Paris and in the US, as the one you saw, Mademoiselle Chambon (also with Lindon, also seen twice) and The Measure of a Man, but I have not seen his well-received 2016 A Woman's Life. For some reason it has not come my way.

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Joanna Kulig in Cold War

To the Ends of the World (Guillaume Nicloux).

(Shown in Directors' Fortnight.)
(French title Les confins du monde.) "Guillaume Nicloux’s Platoon-style drama about the French presence in south-east Asia is suitably violent, but also flirts with macho cliche," says Peter Bradshaw in his 4/5-star Guardian review. Nicloux made the much-discussed The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (which I've never seen), also the dull star-fest Valley of Love reuniting Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu. He also made The Nun (I've reviewed both of these): you can't pin him down. Jordan Mintzer, who notes his "wildly eclectic" filmography in his Hollywood Reporter review makes this ambitious latest direction toward Apocalypse Now territory but set in the 1940's sound pretty interesting. It stars Gaspard Ulliel, Gerard Depardieu and newcomer Lang-Khe Tran. Mintzer says Ulliel "has something of Alain Delon's cold and tenebrous beauty" and calls this film "flawed but captivating." I definitely want to see it.

Petra (Jaime Rosales).

(Also in Directors' Fortnight.)
"With his sixth feature, Spanish Cannes regular Jaime Rosales delivers his most accessible film to date, an intense damaged-family drama set on a country estate," writes Jonathan Holland in his Hollywood Reporter review. Jay Weissberg in , says the same thing: his "most accessible," but he says the second half gets bogged down in too many panning shots. Still it is beautiful and graced by excellent performances. It's too complicated to summarize in a few words, and I might not be very able to follow its jumbled chronology. Shot in 35 mm. by dp Hélène Louvart, AFC.

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski) .

(Shown in Competition.)
Followup to Ida, says Guy Lodge in his Variety review, is "another immaculate monochrome study of midcentury Polish discontent," like his Best Foreign Oscar winner Ida, but adds that "this star-crossed, jazz-infused romance moves to its own rhythm." David Erlich in [I]Indiewire[/I] calls this "one of the bleakest love stories ever told" and makes Ida seem cheery. Tim Robey of the Telegraph says it's more personal than Ida. For anyone who liked Ida this will be a must-see.

P.s. By day 5, May 12th, this is so far looking at the best film anybody's seen at Cannes - the likeliest Palme d'Or contender so far.


Sextape (Antoine Desrosières).

(Shown in Un Certain Regard.)
In his Variety review Owen Gleiberman makes this movie sound largely revolting, a thing where fellatio is constantly graphically described as a pleasurable act that's also "a ritual of domination, a negotiating chip, a victory. It’s that moment of bliss when life becomes porn." All the actors have Arab names. What does that mean? It's perhaps in Marseilles, just before Ramadan, and some kind of assertion of freedom. But the two guys start out as dicks and end up as dicks. All four, though, aver very good looking. A guilty pleasure, for sure.

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