Cannes Film Festival 2018

[Chris Knipp]

A scene from Shéhérazade

BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee).

(Shown in Competition.)
Spike Lee's new feature has premiered at Cannes (Mon. night May 14), and it received a six-minute standing ovation. In his Guardian review Peter Bradshaw, giving it 3/5 stars, calls the movie "a broad satirical comedy of the 70's American race war." Tim Grierson in his ScreenDaily review calls it "a movie of raw anger and sadness" that is "uneven, and impossible to ignore," saying Lee "prefers a hammer to a scalpel" but tempers his rough approach with "a mature thoughtfulness." It's based on the true story of Ron Stallsworth, an African American Colorado policeman who in 1979 spearheaded the penetration of a local KKK chapter by posing as a white bigot over the phone (he was good at doing white voices) and sending in a Caucasian officer for face-to-face work at the local chapter. (Stallsworth recounted this in a book; Jordan Peele proposed the adaptation to Spike Lee.) John David Washington, son of Denzel, plays Ron, and Adam Driver plays Flip Zimmerman, the Jewish fellow officer who is his stand-in/collaborator. (Driver will also appear as the costar of Gilliam's closing night "Quixote" movie.) Regular Lee composer Terence Blanchard "drapes the film in melancholy tones and majestic swirls" (Grierson). To underline his film's timeliness Spike ends it with a clip of Trump refusing to condemn the white supremacists at Charlottesville, and other Trump digs run through the film. Trump is linked with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace), who is also threaded through the film as someone Ron talks to. Obviously a must-see, and quite probably a prime Cannes Palme d'Or candidate, though feelings about it seem mixed. The movie opens in US theaters Aug. 10.

Another Palme d'Or contender, or in line for a Cannes award, anyway.

Shéhérazade (Jean-Bernard Marlin).

(Shown in Critics Week.)
Deborah Young in her Hollywood Reporter review draws an appealing picture of this gritty French-style romance set in the slums of Marseille where the boys deal drugs and the girls sell their bodies with or without a pimp. The film features non-actors; Marlin is from Marseille and knows the territory. A boy, Zach, 17, just out of juvie, is rejected by his mother and cruises the wild side of Marseille, where he meets Shéhérazade, a teen prostitute, who he falls in love with, oddly, choosing to become a pimp for her and several other girls. Conflicts and confusions nonetheless lead to a "satisfying courtroom dénoument." Jean-Bernard Marlin's short film, The Runaway, had already made him known by winning the Golden Bear for best short film at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival, and this energetic feature has been getting many good reviews, according to Playlist, due to great authenticity and engaging performances. Sounds very cool, and I would watch this - but maybe not for the French, which from the clip I saw, is so slangy and oddly accented I might not understand it worth a darn.

The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier).

(Shown out of competition.)
It is, on the surface, a 12-year chronicle of an architect-engineer serial killer in the Pacific Northwest in the '70's and '80's. It stars Matt Dillon, with Bruno Ganz and Uma Thurman, among others. Von Trier has never played his provocateur card harder, according to David Rooney's Hollywood Reporter review because it is also largely a masturbatory taunt referring to his jocular pro-Hitler remarks that got him ousted from Cannes six years ago, with many references to his filmography. And it is a taunting response to charges that his films are misogynistic, with a "methodical display of sadistic violence against women" through the soft-spoken protagonist. Seems "a direct FU to the current climate of reckoning over gender bias and sexual misconduct." But Jack pleads that he targets women as victims only because they are "easier to work with." The film's dialogue-interrogation structure with Ganz as questioner "Verge" refers to Dante's Divine Comedy, but, Rooney says, "Even with all the fancy detours into Glenn Gould (like Hannibal Lecter), William Blake, gothic cathedral architecture and dessert wine production, this is pretty much serial killer 101," "visually drab" and "one of his least forceful films." Bradshaw in his Guardian review (whose cool-headed and vivid review I recommend if you want to read one) gives it 2/5 stars and calls it "a smirking ordeal of gruesomeness" but one " partly redeemed by its spectacular finale." Bradshaw notes the American setting is very obviously fake. See also Owen Gleiberman's Variety review on how the Cannes audience received Von Trier in person (ecstatically) and the film (100 walked out). Eric Kohn in his Indiewire review calls it "horrifying, sadistic, possibly brilliant" and rates it A-. Of course, we must see for ourselves, nonetheless: Von Trier is always news and always a topic to debate.

This will probably be the most controversial Cannes 2018 film.


Matt Dillon as a serial killer in The House That Jack Built