CANNES Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

Sidebar Cannes films.


WILLEM DAFOE IN TOMMASO

Tommaso (Abel Ferrara). Special screenings.

Mainly to be watched for the performance of Willem Dafoe, who fortunately is on screen most of the time, says Todd McCarthy in his Hollywood Reporter review. This is an autobiographical piece by Ferrara about a "director and recovering addict living in Rome" to which Dafoe brings "a pulsing gusto," says McCarthy. This costars Ferrara's own wife and child, Owen Gleiberman's Variety review explains, and is a serene, literally sober piece: Tommaso is clean-and-sober and goes to 12-step meetings.



Lillian (Andreas Horvath). Directors' Fortnight.

A long-in-the-making biopic by the Austrian director/photographer Horvath of Lillian Alling, a mysterious woman who walked from New York to Alaska in 1926-27 and has been much written about, explains Deborah Young in her Hollywood Reporter review. The lead is played by newcomer Patrycja Planik, who does not speak during the film. A strange tale of a homeless person headed back to Russia because her chances of work in America have vanished, this is a foreigner's depiction of the US (perhaps an updating of Robert Frank's The Americans?).



The Bare Necessity/Perdrix (Erwan LeDuc). Directors' Fortnight.

Debut feature from a French sports journalist is another sui generis creation featuring WWII relics, a crateful of personal journals, and nudists, an oddball family with some sleeping around and a police captain in a sleepy village in the northeastern Vosges region, says Boyd van Hoeij in his Hollywood Reporter review which calls this "Not perfect, yet easy to love." The aim is an amorous comedy, and an examination of love, and features a sleeping-around Fanny Ardant as " host of a radio show called Love Is Real." The film should "consolidate the reputation" of lead actor Swann Arlaud, following his s"tar-making turn" in Bloody Milk in the 2017 Critics’ Week, which was "a drama with fascinating thriller and genre notes," says van Hoeij.