Cannes Film Festival 2015

[Chris Knipp]

Thank you, Johann. My pleasure to follow Cannes and be informed on the hot new movies. Yes, D'Angelo is valuable. I also admire the naturalness and assurance of his review-writing and especially his Cannes and Toronto bulletins. Take a look at his Postcards from Cannes on The Dissolve that can be found here.

I'm also enjoying AV Club's daily bulletins by young Russian-born, US-educated Ignatiy Vishnevetsky from Chicago, his first time at Cannes, and he gives lots of fresh observations, like "the red carpet is really dirty by now," or "there are copies of Variety and Hollywood Reporter scattered all over the street," and he's riding a bike back and forth to the festival from Juan-Les-Pins, a half hour each way, because a normal person can't afford to stay in Cannes during the festival. AV Club.

P.s. Today Vishnevetsky announces he's returned his rental bike -- and already missing it -- becaue he didn't like having to ride it back at night. So now he's taking the train.

10:12 p.m. I take the train back. It’s packed with filmmakers from Short Film Corner, a kind of open-admission purgatory for aspiring directors. A fiftysomething woman with an industry badge tightly clutches her handbag while telling two visiting filmmakers to always be on the lookout for pickpockets and thieves, "especially in first class." They are all immigrants, she says. Her tone is very authoritative. “And the gypsy people...,” she begins, just as the doors open at Juan-Les-Pins. -- Vishnevetsky, AV Club, May 20 10 a.m.

I love this stuff. We need a break from the nonstop movie talk, and a bit of crazy local color.

[Chris Knipp]

MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (Jia Zhang-ke) (Peter Braddshaw/GUARDIAN) Four out of five stars. Mountains May Depart review: Jia Zhang-ke scales new heights with futurist drama.

That final coda does not entirely work: inevitably, some of the dreamed-up technological innovations and stylings look self-conscious and the sheer weirdness means that the emotional power of ordinary life is no longer available. And yet without this unexpected leap into the future, the movie would not have the savour that it has. And what a wonderful performance from Zhao Tao.

Zhao Tao in Mountains May Depart

Scott Foundas/VARIETY:

The cinema’s consummate chronicler of a China evolving so rapidly that its own citizens can scarcely keep apace, Jia Zhangke strikes a particularly melancholic chord in “Mountains May Depart,” a polymorphous snapshot of 21st-century capitalism and its discontents that also finds the filmmaker, like several of his characters, venturing for the first time outside of his home turf and mother tongue. Following a single family as it is tossed about by time, tide and the onward march of progress over the span of a quarter-century, Jia’s latest feature addresses a host of pet themes through a less quirky, stylized lens than 2013’s gruesomely violent “A Touch of Sin” or 2006’s “Still Life” (with its condemned buildings blasting off like rocket ships). But if “Mountains” feels a touch schematic at times, and awkward in its third-act English-language scenes, the cumulative impact is still enormously touching, highlighted by Jia’s rapturous image-making and a luminous central performance by the director’s regular muse (and wife), Zhao Tao. International exposure should run high, while the film will encounter less opposition than “Sin” from the local Chinese censors.

D'Angelo's 41 rating shows he markedly differs from the majority on this one.

[Chris Knipp]

Lamb Cannes photocall

Updates from the Guardian, Variety, etc. In a 2nd Guardian group podcast Peter Bradshaw said he thinks this is a very good Cannes year.

LAMB (Yared Zeleke) (Jordan Hoffman/GUARDIAN) Four out of five stars. Lamb review: sheer brilliance knits together first Ethiopian film at Cannes. Boyd van Hoeij, Hollywood Reporter:

A young Ethiopian boy and his rust-colored ewe are the protagonists of Lamb, the beautifully crafted if rather familiar first feature from Yared Zeleke. . . This is certainly a positive sign, though despite some handsome observations about how Ethiopian society is slowly changing even in the remotest parts of the country, the general thrust of Zeleke’s narrative might be a little too familiar to earn the film any kind of wide distribution. . .

LOVE (Gaspar Noë)(Peter Bradshaw/GUARDIAN) Three out of five stars. Love review: Gaspar Noé's hardcore 3D sex movie is fifty shades of vanilla.

Here is the Cannes film festival’s 51st shade of … well, not grey, because director Gaspar Noé does have a penchant for that classic red-filter lighting appropriate for full-on filth, as well as a soupy sound-design and indistinct dialogue which sounds quieter than the deafeningly loud cheesy ambient music: soft rock and even, at one moment, Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

DON'T TELL ME THE BOY WAS MAD ("Histoire de fou"/Robert Guédiguian) (Andrew Pulver/GUARDIAN)– Three out of five stars. Armenia's tragedy becomes meaty drama. David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter:

The ripple effects of the Armenian genocide on subsequent generations are felt in Robert Guediguian's drama set during the wave of militant attacks in Europe in the 1980s.

DHEEPAN (Jacques Audiard) (Andrew Pulver/GUARDIAN) Four out of fife stars "Dheepan review - Tamil Tiger loose in the urban jungle makes powerful thriller" (Scott Foundas/VARIETY) Jacques Audiard charts the lives of three Sri Lankan refugees in Paris in a well-acted and gripping but finally overwrought immigrant drama.

A typically unpredictable career move by the prolific and varied Audiard following the unabashedly melodramatic romance “Rust and Bone” and the searing crime drama “A Prophet,” this almost entirely Tamil-language immigrant drama unfolds in solidly involving, carefully observed fashion for much of its running time, until it takes a sharp and heavy-handed turn into genre territory from which it never quite recovers. Commercially, this will be a far more specialized item than Audiard’s other recent work, especially in the U.S., where the film was acquired by IFC in advance of its Cannes bow.

MEDITERRANEA (Jonas Carpignano) (Jordan Hoffman/GUARDIAN) Three out of five stars. Horribly topical drama about African migrants in Italy

AMNESIA (Barbet Schroeder) (Scott Fouindas/VARIETY). Willful memory loss and electronic dance music collide in Barbet Schroeder's cinematic valentine to his German expat mother.

The thorny subject of German historical memory binds the characters in Barbet Schroeder’s “Amnesia,” a thoughtful, sensitive character study that reps a minor-key comeback for the veteran Swiss filmmaker

Mike D'Angelo tweets:

(Scheduling and access issues have kept his viewing quotient way down today (Thurs. 21 May). He promises to catch up on the Audiard, which as I'd feared seems to be a bit of a relative disappointment compared to his stunning previous films.)

Love (Noé): 45. Might have worked had he been able to get Cassel, Bellucci and (say) Demoustier to do it. Even then, they’d have to improv.

The Assassin [Hou Hsiao-hsien] : 54. As usual w/Hou, I'd rather have spent 15 mins leafing thru a picture book of stills from this (stunningly gorgeous) film.

[No rating] Those who loved POLICE, ADJECTIVE should get excited about Porumboiu's THE TREASURE. Those who did not, however, should not.

[Chris Knipp]

Guardian &c:

CHRONIC (Michel Franco) (Peter Bradshaw/GUARDIAN) Four out of five stars. Chronic review: terminal pain, but Tim Roth is a pleasure.

Michel Franco’s drama, starring Tim Roth as a nurse who invests too much in his clients’ end-of-life care, supplies a carefully measured dose of enigmatic class

Huppert and Depardieu in Valley of Love

VALLEY OF LOVE (Guillaume Nicloux) (Peter Bradshaw/GUARDIAN). Two out of five stars. peaks and troughs as Depardieu and Huppert feel the heat

Guillaume Nicloux’s half-English language, semi-Lynchian movie has a divorced couple reunited after their son’s death, and features Depardieu’s best turn in years

[He and Catherine Shoard both like this film, despite the 2/5 rating.]

THE ASSASSIN (Hou Hsiau-hsien)(Peter Bradshaw/GUARDIAN) Four out of five stars. The Assassin review - enigmatically refined martial arts tale baffles beautifully.

The first film in eight years by Taiwanese master Hou Hsaio-hsien is a wonderfully shot story of a killer facing a critical choice – but its meaning remains elusive.
For its sheer beauty, its mesmeric compositional sense and pure balletic poise, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s distinctive and slow-moving wuxia tale The Assassin demands attention. Although at the risk of philistinism, I now confess that for me its sometimes opaque and difficult plot means that my engagement with it can never be as absolute as it’s been for others here at Cannes, who have not hesitated to acclaim The Assassin as a masterpiece and a Palme contender. I’m not sure that I can go that far. The final spark of passion I was looking for was more a delicate firefly which floated entrancingly but elusively ahead.

D'Angelo gave this a 54. AV Club's Vishnevetsky says it's the most beautiful film at Cannes and Variety's Justin Chang gives it a rave.

THE LITTLE PRINCE (Mark Osborne) (Andrew Pulver/GUARDIAN). Three out of five stars. Adaptation of Saint-Exupéry just about gets off the ground. ['Disnyfied' animation, shown separately in two sound tracks, French and English.]

Peter Bradshaw tweet:

Tim Roth has basically shot past Vincent Lindon and Toby Jones in the Best Actor race at #Cannes2015

Toby Jones stars in Matteo Garrone's TALE OF TALES. But that movie is 9 on the Screen In'tl and 11 on the Le Film Francais French critics polls D'Angelo gave a few days ago in his Day 7: The bittersweet and the bitter column. Vincent Lindon's film THE MEASURE OF A MAN (Brizé) is #7 and #2 respectively on those lists.

AV Club's Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (remember him? the newbie) has a column describing the Cannes Festival's feudal system. His descriptions are great.

Cannes is a culture of patronage, consecration, and iron rules, and the Palais itself resembles a late ’70s abstraction of a medieval city. It has towers, bridges, and a central marketplace, the Marché, located in the basement

1:50 p.m. I have a pink press badge, which is widely considered “cool.” Pink badges are let in before the blue badges, who are let in before the yellows, who are rarely let in at all. There are also white badges, but they are rare, reserved for the big-big fish; I’ve met only two since getting here. They can move fluidly through the festival.

This color-priority thing creates a caste system, because every badge color represents a different relationship to time. Blues and yellows spend a large part of the day waiting in their respective lines. Pinks are all but guaranteed access, even if they arrive only five minutes before a screening starts. Within a few days, you realize that it’s difficult to socialize with people who don’t share your badge color.

D'Angelo:

Yakuza Apocalypse (Miike): 64. Takes its time getting revved up, then hits GOZU levels of batshit insanity. Enjoy it in M. Madness, TIFFers.

The Treasure (Porumboiu): 48. Like ADJECTIVE, a slow, largely monotonous build to a final-scene "punchline." Not a mode I much enjoy.

Chronic [Michel Franco]: 46. Or AMOUR 2: PLATONIC BOOGALOO. There’s a germ of a strong idea here, but it’s mired in pointless backstory, dumb provocation.

[Chris Knipp]

Sat. 23 May Cannes 2015 end of competition. Awards begin. Big ones tomorrow.


Marion Cotillard in Macbeth

The Marion Cotillard/Michael Fassbender "Macbeth" by Australian director Justin Kurzel has to be today's big final Competition film. Here is the lead paragraph of Guy Lodge's rave Variety review:

As the shortest, sharpest and most stormily violent of William Shakespeare’s tragedies, “Macbeth” may be the most readily cinematic: The swirling mists of the Highlands, tough to fabricate in a theater, practically rise off the printed page. So it’s odd that, while “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet” get dusted off at least once a generation by filmmakers, the Scottish Play hasn’t enjoyed significant bigscreen treatment since Roman Polanski’s admirable if tortured 1971 version. The wait for another may be even longer after Justin Kurzel’s scarcely improvable new adaptation: Fearsomely visceral and impeccably performed, it’s a brisk, bracing update, even as it remains exquisitely in period. Though the Bard’s words are handled with care by an ideal ensemble, fronted by Michael Fassbender and a boldly cast Marion Cotillard, it’s the Australian helmer’s fervid sensory storytelling that makes this a Shakespeare pic for the ages — albeit one surely too savage for the classroom

The Un Certain Regard prizes were awarded. These films have not been much reported on.

Un Certain Regard Prize : Grimur Hakonarson HRUTAR/SHEEP
Jury Prize : Dalibor Matanic LEAD SUN
Directing Prize : Kiyoshi Kurosawa JOURNEY TO THE SHORE
Un Certain Talent Prize : Corneliu Porumboiu THE TREASURE
Un Certain Regard Special Prize : Ida Panahandeh and Masaan de Neeraj Ghaywan NAHID

Hungarian Laszlo Neme's Competition first feature (unusual) SON OF SAUL won a FIPRESCI Prize. So did Santiago Mitre''s Paulina. And a lot of other films I'e never heard of. Now everybody is making roundup remarks and predicting the big prize winners, which everyone also agrees can never be predicted at Cannes.

D'Angelo's last day of tweets at Cannes 2015. (He didn't see all these today.)

Mustang (Ergüven): 70. At first I was all Why are these 5sisters behaving like a single organism? Then I was all Ohhh. Ending wrecked me.

Rams (Hákonarson): 66. Easily the best movie about feuding Icelandic sheep farmers I have ever seen ever. Funniest sight gag of the fest.

The Wakhan Front (Cogitore): 55. Intriguing, but never quite becomes anything more than that. Didn't need answers, exactly, but something.

Valley of Love (Nicloux): 53. Has anyone observed that this is basically the same film as THE WAKHAN FRONT, despite no surface similarities?

Dheepan (Audiard): 50. What everyone else said about the ending that seems like it wandered in from a bad Bruce Willis movie. Damaging.

Macbeth (Kurzel): 49. Maybe my love for Polanski's version (which I recently rewatched) is getting in the way? Seemed meatheaded to me.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes 2015: the big Competition prizes, etc. Some predictable choices but overall a pretty weird finale. See GUARDIAN'S
Film blog
Cannes 2015: baffling set of prizes take the edge off a great competition line-up

In other words, it was a good festival but the prizes sucked. I highly recommend this concluding GUARDIAN entry on the prizes and the festival by Peter Bradshaw. His movie writing is admirably pithy and passionate and I admire it more and more and am awed by his energy and enthusiasm at Cannes. The UK'S GUARDIAN team at major festivals has generally been great lately. It makes the NY TIMES coverage look truly pathetic. If Americans love cinema, and dominate the global film market, why can't they bother to send a few more critics, apart from the struggling online ones who have to ride a bike in from the next town -- and who are becoming more and more important for those of us English speakers who want to follow up-to-the-minute coverage of Cannes and not just read a couple of half-hearted know-it-all summaries?

Feaure Films

GOLDEN PALM
DHEEPAN (Jacques AUDIARD)
GRAND PRIZE
SON OF SAUL (László NEMES)
BEST DIRECTOR
[B]HOU Hsiao-Hsien for THE ASSASSIN
BEST SCREENPLAY
CHRONIC (Michel FRANCO)
BEST ACTRESS Ex-aequo
Emmanuelle BERCOT in MON ROI (MAÏWENN)
Rooney MARA in CAROL (Todd HAYNES)
BEST ACTOR
Vincent LINDON in LA LOI DU MARCHÉ (THE MEASURE OF A MAN) Directed by Stéphane BRIZÉ
Jury Prize
THE LOBSTER (Yorgos lANTHIMOS)

Short Films

Palme d'Or - Short Film
WAVES '98 (Ely DAGHER)

Comments. I haven't seen any of them but. . . DHEEPAN sounds an odd choice, with its "problematic" ending, much as I like Audiard. It seems clear that CAROL ought to have won bigger than this. I paid attention to Peter Bradshaw's reservations about everything but the look of THE ASSASSIN. It's questionable that Emmanuelle Bercot won for her performance in a movie that many found tiresome. The GUARDIAN blog calls this prize award "fantastically obtuse, exasperating and dumb." So, not a great year, though SON OF SAUL, THE LOBSTER and Vincent Lindon were worthy choices. There are other Cannes 2015 films I want to see, and there are of course the other sections outside Competition where some gems may be lurking, such as the three-feature ARABIAN NIGHTS, which many could not fit into the tight festival schedule.

Mike D'Angelo's "will wins" and "should wins."
PALME D'OR: SON OF SAUL. Should win: SICARIO.
GRAND PRIZE: THE ASSASSIN. Should win: CAROL.
BEST DIRECTOR: Jia Zhang-ke. Should win: László Nemes
BEST ACTRESS: Cate Blanchett. Should win: Cate Blanchett
BEST ACTOR: DHEEPAH"s star. Should win: Vincent Lindon
BEST SCREENPLAY: MY MOTHER (Moretti). Should win: THE LOBSTER
JURY PRIZE: He couldn't guess, but would like SICARIO, CAROL, or THE LOBSTER to win.

So D'Angelo misjudged on Jia Zhang-ke; he wasn't as loved by the jury as by some others. He was right about SON OF SAUL, wrong about Nanni Moretti's MY MOTHER and he shouldn't have been: it was 3rd in the Screen International poll and first in Le Film Francais' poll. It's been asserted that the Italians, who had three films in Competition by major figures, Garrone, Moretti, and Sorrentino, none of which got any mention, got screwed this year. There are just so many things that don't make sense, or that you can't predict -- which makes this more interesting than recent Academy Awards in yet another way, besides the wider, more international range of films. But other years, you could feel a lot better about the Palme d'Or and Grand Prix winners than this year. And not so much because of the Competition, so you have to blame the Jury.

UN CERTAIN REGARD

PRIZE OF UN CERTAIN REGARD
HRÚTAR (Béliers / Rams) by Grímur Hákonarson
JURY PRIZE
ZVIZDAN (Soleil de plomb / The High Sun) by Dalibor Matanić
BEST DIRECTOR PRIZE
JOURNEY TO THE SHORE (Kiyoshi Kurosawa}
UN CERTAIN TALENT PRIZE
TREASURE (Corneliu Porumboiu)
PROMISING FUTURE PRIZE
MASAAN (Neeraj Ghaywan)
Ex aequo
NAHID (Ida Panahandeh)

CRITICS WEEK

GRAND PRIZE
Paulina (Santiago Mitre) centers on a 28-year-old woman who gives up a brilliant career as a lawyer to dedicate herself to teaching in a depressed region in Argentina. In a rough environment, she sticks to her mission and to her political engagement, accepting to sacrifice her boyfriend and the trust of her father, a powerful local judge.
REVELATION PRIZE
La Tierra Y la Sombra (César Augusto Acevedo) follows an old farmer who has returned home to tend to his gravely ill son and tries to fit back in and save his family.
SONY CUNEALTA PRIZE
Varicella (Fulvio Risuleo) (The Sony CineAlta prize

There are other prizes -- can't list them all here. In particular the outstanding Turkish rookie director Deniz Gamze Erguven's MUSTANG got a prize, Clement Cogitore’s Afghanistan war drama THE WAKHAN FRONT, starring Jeremie Renier, took home the Gan Foundation Support for Distribution, and Arnaud Desplechin's MY GOLDEN DAYS won prizes. It's obvious MY GOLDEN DAYS was one of the festivals' best films and ought to have been in Competition instead of weaker films such as Valerie Donzelli's MARGUERITE ET JULIEN and Guillaume Nicloux's VALLEY OF LOVE. These, the ought-to-have-won, ought-to-have-been-in-Competition titles, are going to turn up at other fests and get distributors.


Cate Blanchett's star turn in Haynes' Carol. Both should have won big. But only the secondary actor got an award -- not Cate, not Todd.

[Chris Knipp]

.............VINCENT LINDON

One thing to feel okay, and more than okay, about is Vincent Lindon's Best Actor prize. For for several reasons. He is a very solid actor, one of the best in France of the last three decades, always convincing and true. He has done a lot of good work, yet never won any major prize. He has been five times nominated for a César and never won one. He has done three films with this director, Stéphane Brizé, MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON (2009), A FEW HOURS OF SPRING (2012) (not releaased in the US), and this one, THE MEASURE OF A MAN/La loi du marché, and people say this is on a whole different level from the previous two. See Mike D'Angelo's good discussion of this film in THE DISSOLVE. As he notes Lindon is "probably best known to U.S. cinephiles from his roles in La Moustache and in Claire Denis’ Friday Night", and it's also absolutely true and to be noted as he says that the actor "fairly oozes rugged masculinity." In this role D'Angelo calls this a passive version of the Dardennes' TWO DAYS, THREE NIGHTS. He plays here a laid-off factory worker long out of work who suddenly gets a job as a security guard in a huge department store. From then on, his performance is nearly silent -- but "deeply expressive." Brizé "stacks the deck more than is necessary" in his earlier plot set-up. But "there’s still something potent about seeing this passionate scrapper all but shut down after finally achieving his hard-fought goal"; he has to hold onto this job, he needs it desperately, and yet it's terrible now for A Man to find himself forced into the position of being THE MAN. Remember (see above), D'Angelo said Lindon was the one who should win Best Actor but probably won't; well, surprise, he did. Lindon himself says this role was a special opportunity to take his acting to a new level and find things in himself he didn't even know he had. This is what we look for, why we care about movies, people. And this time, the Coen brothers Jury did good. Bravo, Vincent Lindon.

Lindon has been married for 17 years to Sandrine Kiberlain, who is often more of a comic actor; they played opposite each other in the two-hander, MADEMOISELLE CHAMBON.