If you've seen even a modest number of European art-house films in your lifetime, you're familiar with the following formula: Act I, child with problems (emotional problems, family problems, what have you) is introduced. Act II, said confused, troubled child gets into big trouble by seeking out the wrong kind of father figure, committing a misdeed in a fit of frustration, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time; luckily, a kind someone comes to the rescue, offering the troubled child some respite and a dim ray of hope. Will it last forever? Do you even need to ask?
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A Cannes-style queue has a curious shape. It's not really a line at all, but more of a funnel -- you can stay at the end for ages, while unassumingly pushy types creep forward from the sides in a barely discernible kind of Brownian movement. The festival staff -- no-nonsense guys in matching taupe suits, notorious for being cranky -- try to stem the pushing from the front, but have no control over how it happens from the back. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, or at least about 20, here's a visual aid:
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A colleague and I spilled out of our last screening for the evening at 9:30, insanely hungry after eating nothing all day but what my friend calls "squirrel food" -- that would mean nuts, fruit and biscuits, a staple of festival sustenance for critics on a budget. We marveled at the throngs of people crowding the sidewalks and open cafes. Cannes is bustling during the festival, but it had never looked this crowded. Then we realized what everyone else had figured out hours ago: It was Friday night. Days and nights filled with movies (and writing in between) can turn you into a creature of the perpetual night. Daylight hours rush by in a blur, seemingly with little demarcation in between.
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In the '70s New York Magazine ran occasional contests, in one case asking readers to submit greeting cards for unlikely occasions. Nanni Moretti's Habemus Papam -- or We Have a Pope -- screening in competition here at the festival, could use one of those entries as its tagline: "Saw your smoke, now you're Pope, congrats!"
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Though I've covered lots of film festivals before, today at Cannes I had a staggering, if obvious, revelation: Going about your regular daily duties as a critic back home, there's no way you'd see one film about a teenage wacko who goes on a murder spree in his high school (We Need to Talk About Kevin), another about an adorable Aborigine kid who idolizes a local gangster-drug dealer (Toomelah, screening here in Un Certain Regard), and yet another about police officers who deal with sexually abused children in Paris, all in the same week. Here at Cannes, that's all in a day's -- maybe even an afternoon's -- work. Which is just one reason that single late-night glass of red Sancerre sometimes seems like the Holy Grail.
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The Cannes Film Festival is an extremely glamorous place to be. So glamorous that thieves and pickpockets abound, and some of the stories I've heard in the past few days -- first-hand from the victims themselves no less -- are enough to make this Cannes first-timer want to call up Amazon and express-order one of those hideous Rick Steves money belts that grannies wear on holiday.
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The Pitt-Jolie brood made their way to the South of France this week with matching his-and-hers festival offerings, starting with Angelina's animated sequel Kung Fu Panda 2. (Brad's much-anticipated Tree of Life debuts Monday; follow Movieline's complete Cannes coverage here.) Among the hot topics of inquiry international press had for Angie: Her kids, the state of animation, and that mysterious tattoo she recently added to her collection. Are there more additions to the clan in the works?
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Overheard in the mad crush to get into this morning's overcrowded screening of Gus Van Sant's Restless: Woman A says to Woman B, in French-accented English, "What is your problem?" Woman B says to Woman A: "Your being a bitch is my problem!" Ah, Cannes! Where the weather is warm, the selection of movies is vast, and film journos and critics are ready to kill each other by Day 2.
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Yesterday I needed to visit the press office to request a copy of the press-screening schedule. I asked the friendly Cannes staffer at the Palais information desk where I should go. She asked me whether my outlet was "written" or "broadcast," but I couldn't quite understand her French-accented English. When I told her I was with an online outfit, she nodded and said, "Written." Our eyes met. "Hopefully," I said. And we both had a good laugh.
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Opening ceremony red carpet events are cursed things, much better enjoyed -- I find -- via the wire photos that start popping up online mere hours after the fact. But I will confess that even just standing amid a crowd of onlookers outside the Palais des Festivals -- where the big premieres are held and where Woody Allen's sweet-natured, slightly melancholy Midnight in Paris made its debut on Wednesday -- I did feel a vague frisson of excitement.
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The Cannes Film Festival: it's not just for croissants and movie premieres! It's also where tons of films go to find distribution. Barely a day old, the 64th edition of Cannes has already seen some future awards contenders and possible blockbusters sold to happy bidders. Ahead, a rundown of the spending spree thus far, and which films could find distribution next.
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The Cannes Film Festival is the biggest and splashiest film festival in the world. It's also the most terrifying, particularly if it's your first time here, as it is mine. In the past few days I've had many generous friends and colleagues leap to my aid with advice and guidance along the lines of "It's horrible at first, and then it's fun, until it's just exhausting," "Don't get jacked up on the free espresso" and -- my personal favorite -- "You'll cry at some point in the middle -- don't worry, it's not just you." When friends and acquaintances learn it's my first time here, they look at me with a mixture of pity and protectiveness, as if I were a virgin -- hardly! -- being prepared for the big human sacrifice.
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As hella violent movie marketing art goes, the ad selling The Expendables 2 to foreign buyers at the Cannes market isn't quite in league with the splattery new Conan poster. But conceptually anyway, a skull with a "2" exploding out of it is pushing the next level of... something.
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Unlawful Killing, actor/filmmaker Keith Allen's documentary that bills itself as "an inquest of the inquest" after Princess Diana's death, will debut at the Cannes Film Festival with not just a new conspiracy theory regarding Diana's 1997 death, but also a grisly photo following her Paris car crash. Allen's efforts are backed by Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son Dodi Al-Fayed was killed alongside Diana, his girlfriend. Anyone else particularly un-enticed by all of this? Video preview after the jump.
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You know you're mere hours away from the launch of the Cannes Film Festival when the breeze on the Croisette is redolent of musty old critical gripes. Take the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, still fuming over Lars Von Trier's 2000 Palme d'Or winner Dancer in the Dark: "I think it is still one of the most exasperatingly awful films I have seen in Cannes, up there, or rather down there with Vincent Gallo's legendary The Brown Bunny and Pupi Avati's syrupy Il Cuore Altrove from the same annus horribilis of 2003." Damn. Pupi and syrupy? Where do I sign up? [Guardian]
