The annals of filmmaking are filled with stories of people who managed to make films against all odds, without money, without shooting permits, without proper professional equipment. This Is Not a Film, or In Film Nist, the 75-minute film directed by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb that has screened here out of competition, may be the ultimate achievement in stealth filmmaking, considering that Panahi is currently serving a six-year jail sentence and has been banned by the Iranian government from making films for 20 years. And yet somehow he has made a movie that has found its way to one of the world's major film festivals: This Is Not a Film is a small but extremely significant message in a bottle.
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Really, in the end, what's the difference between Lars von Trier and Charlie Sheen? One lost his heavyweight Cannes status because of a bad joke; the other lost his heavyweight TV-star status because he was tired of telling bad jokes. One went on a "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour; the other made Antichrist. Both are known to declaim grand artistic statements to their Web cams. Both experienced unconventional liberal upbringings. Both have mutual, sympathetic interests in porn and porn actors (at least according to a new interview with one -- no peeking!). They've both made award-winning films, and they've both made career-threatening debacles. And ultimately, they'll both say pretty much anything. But can you deduce which maverick said what in Movieline's quote quiz?
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In the late '80s I had a boyfriend who warned me off Pedro Almodóvar's sex-death-religion free-for-all Matador, claiming it was the most perverse movie he'd ever seen. You can bet I eventually saw it, and I love it to this day. (I can't say the same of the boyfriend.) Almodóvar has made both terrific pictures and mediocre ones in the intervening years, but I've long been waiting for him to deliver more of the stylish, twisted pleasures of his earlier movies. The Skin I Live In isn't quite as el sicko as I'd hoped it would be, but the depraved gleam in its eye its nonetheless irresistible.
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Just because Lars von Trier has been dubbed "persona non grata" by Cannes Film Festival organizers doesn't mean he's left the French Riviera. The Melancholia director is still doing the press rounds at Cannes, and he addressed his controversial comments about Adolph Hitler by doing what one does in situations like this: throw Mel Gibson under the bus.
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Poor Pedro Almodóvar. His new movie, The Skin I Live In, is suitably lush and twisted, but especially after the Lars von Trier Nazi fiasco yesterday, the press conference after the well-received screening was restrained to the point of snooziness. Even Almodóvar's famous shock of hair looked relatively tame this morning, a little less Don King than usual. Sitting up there with his key actors (Antonio Banderas, Marisa Paredes and Elena Anaya, among others) and his brother/producer Agustín Almodóvar, he looked like a polite schoolboy in his green jacket and striped polo shirt.
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Despite the fact that Lars von Trier apologized on Wednesday following a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival where he said he understood Adolph Hitler, the Melacholia director has been declared "persona non grata" by the festival organizers. Click through to read their statement.
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It's not every day when a man has to make a public statement to announce that he isn't a Nazi, and yet that is just what Lars von Trier has had to do. In an effort to put out the fire he caused during the controversial Melancholia press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, Von Trier apologized for saying -- among other things -- that he sympathized with Hitler.
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The post-Melancholia press conference this morning was going swimmingly. Maybe too swimmingly. The stars (Dunst, Gainsbourg) were there, members of the fine supporting cast (Hurt, Kier, Skarsgård) were there, and von Trier was there, looking sporty and happy in a simple black T-shirt. He jovially fielded questions about the artists who inspired him while he was making the movie (Wagner, Breugel, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Bergman) and about whether or not he was happy with the film: "I'm not really sure. Maybe it's crap. Of course, I hope not. But there's quite a big possibility that this might be" -- he pauses -- "really not worth seeing." I can assure you he's wrong there, but never mind, because then von Trier hurled a bottle rocket.
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It's 11:45 on Tuesday night in Cannes, and seemingly just outside my window are the loudest fireworks I've ever heard. Good thing I'm not asleep yet, and too bad I'm not still in tonight's screening of Naomi Kawase's Hanezu, one of the slowest competition films I've seen since I've been here. The audible snorer a few rows ahead of me could have used a firecracker or two to jolt him awake.
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Lars von Trier's Melancholia is neither the provocation nor the yowl of anguish that his last picture, Antichrist, was. For those reasons, it's less effective and also far less of a workout: Antichrist was the first von Trier movie I genuinely loved, after a decade's worth of railing against the sufferdome atmosphere of pictures like Dogville, Dancer in the Dark, and even the mildly bearable Breaking the Waves. Antichrist stunned and upset me, but it also filled me with compassion toward the man who made it, a feeling I'd never imagined I could have. The gift of Antichrist -- with its horrific depictions of emotional suffering, its wailing-wind subtext of "Nature is everywhere, inside you and out, and it is not your friend" -- was that von Trier had surprised me. That is a critic's greatest pleasure -- or at least it's mine.
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In the press notes for Aki Kaurismäki's lovely, unassuming, buoyantly sad-sacky Le Havre, French journalist Christine Masson asks the famously depressive Finnish filmmaker if his favorite cinematic references -- Bresson, Becker, Melville, Tati, René Clair, Marcel Carné -- are present in the film. "I certainly hope so," he says, "because I didn't bring anything myself."
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This morning I awoke to the patter of rain on my window and the throb of a celebrity gossip gene sparking to action in my head. For whatever reason, this usually only happens with power couples -- recent revelations about Taylor and Burton or Schwarzenegger and Shriver come to mind -- probably because the sincerity and profile of their love, however transitory or immodest, makes them emotionally relatable while trafficking in mystique that more civilian celeb couples just don't have. They are eminently accessible, yet entrancingly elusive. Shaking off sleep and wondering what world event might have prompted this early-morning psychic schism, I figured it could only be one thing.
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Monday marked the Cannes Film Festival midpoint, a time to pause, reflect and -- cry. When a friend warned me last week that at some point I would burst into tears -- from exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, or some combination of the three -- I thought she was merely sharing her own personal experience. But this morning alone, I heard three critics mention the potential onset of a crying jag; one had just heard a male Australian critic announce cheerfully, "Usually by this time in the festival, I've broken down and wept, but not this year!"
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I was with French director Bertrand Bonello's L'Apollonide for about seven-eighths of the way through, which reminded me how painful it is to be tossed out of a picture just when you thought you were secure in its embrace. L'Apollonide -- its English title is House of Tolerance -- takes place in a Parisian bordello at the turn of the last century, and mostly, it's a sensuous, lurid, fascinating picture. The madam (Noémie Lvovsky) runs her house with a strict air of elegance and an even stricter set of rules. Bonello details the women's daily routines, including their assignations with their regular and their random clients, with respectful curiosity.
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Since pretty much the time the world press arrived on the scene last week, the burning question facing this year's Cannes Film Festival was, "Will Tree of Life director Terrence Malick show his face?" We pretty much know now that he won't, but that didn't stop Guardian gadfly Xan Brooks from digging further into the "Where's Terry?" phenomenon with the help of such friends as Movieline's own Stephanie Zacharek.
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