The other night, at dinner with some friends, our waiter forgot to bring something we'd asked for. When we politely reminded him, he said, "It is the end of the festival! Things fall out of our brain!"
In the special category of Un Certain Regard, Arirang and Halt Auf Freier Strecke (Stopped On Track) tied for the top prize. Elsewhere, the Special Jury Prize went to Elena and directing prize went to Mohammad Rasoulof for Be Omid E Didar (Au Revoir). It's a bittersweet consolation for Rasoulouf, who, along with director Jafar Panahi, was sentenced to a six-year jail term by the Tehran government for "propagandizing against the regime." [Deadline]
A few days ago I checked one of the fashion blogs I occasionally visit and noticed that the French fashion photographer and blogger Garance Doré was here in Cannes, shooting a portfolio for French jeweler Chopard, a sponsor of the festival. Her first post details how, when she first arrived, she told her chauffeur as he drove her down the Croisette, "I hate the show business, the evening gowns, and red carpets. Seriously now... That's why I thought I'd never set foot again at the Festival de Cannes." He responded, "I'm sorry mademoiselle, that just won't do. You just have to jump in and live it, or else I'll have to take you right back to the airport. Cannes is amazing, and you gotta love it all: the sun, the crazies, the films, the stars, the weirdos and the soirées."
Christophe Honoré -- director of bittersweet, entertaining pictures like Love Songs and Dans Paris -- makes films that seem very, very French when you're watching them in New York, but merely enjoyably normal when you see them in France. The festival's closing-night film, Honoré's Les Bien-Aimés (Beloved), is a family epic -- as well as a musical and a romance -- that lasts nearly two-and-a-half hours, and sometimes it comes close to being too top-heavy. But the picture has plenty in its favor, too.
Werner Herzog. Wim Wenders. Animator Michel Ocelot: Everybody's jumping on the 3-D bandwagon these days, whether they have ideas that are well-suited to the medium or not. Takashi Miike adds his voice to the multi-tracked chorus with Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, a 3-D melodrama showing in competition here at the festival.
In the past few years we've seen a mini-renaissance in Italian filmmaking, an environment in which young filmmakers like Paolo Sorrentino have been able to flourish. Sorrentino broke through with his 2008 political epic Il Divo, which won a special jury prize here in Cannes that year. So what happened with his follow-up, This Must Be the Place, a picture so ill-conceived and so bizarrely executed that watching it, I wondered if nine days (and counting) of nonstop movies had finally pitched me right over the edge of sanity?
And you thought you could get through the week without another Lars von Trier update! Zentropa -- the production company that Von Trier co-founded with Peter Aalbaek Jensen in 1992 -- released a statement apologizing for the director's comments: "We would like to make it perfectly clear that Zentropa does not share Lars von Trier's view of what might be funny to say at a press conference, and that his comments are a direct contradiction of Zentropa's values." It's going to be awkward when these two run into each other at the coffee machine. [Variety]
As we critics settled into our seats before last evening's screening of Drive, the big topic of conversation was -- what else? -- Lars von Trier's exile from Cannes after his sort-of but not-quite pro-Hitler remarks at Wednesday's Melancholia press conference. The consensus was that festival officials had gone overboard, turning Von Trier into a martyr when really, he's just a socially awkward guy who was trying to stir up some controversy with a few ill-considered, ill-advised jokes. The whole event is unfortunate from top to bottom, especially considering that Von Trier has just presented a strong film that has surely lost any chance of winning the Palme d'Or. But there we were, gearing up to watch a movie made by another -- although very different -- Danish-born filmmaker, Nicolas Winding Refn.
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.
Cannes has the glamour of the Croisette, Sundance boasts the first discoveries of the year, and Toronto and Venice have awards season buzz in their corner. Even Tribeca, finally, has its own distinct identity. But the Los Angeles Film Festival has often been too many things to people, and being smack dab in the middle of the entertainment industry has contributed in the past to that identity crisis. This year's edition may change that.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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