Proved its
relevance

The schizophrenic nature of the Cannes Film Festival as it enters its seventh decade

 "YIPPIE KI YAY MO,” read the giant Live Free or Die Hard billboard situated just across the street from Cannes’ Palais De Festivals. It was a constant reminder for attendees of the city’s 60^th Annual Film Festival just how much commerce has come to define the 12-day gathering; while to most folks, le Festival international du film de Cannes conjures up images of celebs on the red carpet or intriguing/boring/pretentious films of interest only to cineastes, there are actually five or six distinct festivals, all operating as wheels within wheels. This year, you could watch Jerry Seinfeld flying around in a bee suit to promote his animated feature Bee Movie, catch a showing of Julian Schnabel’s inspiring quadriplegic docudrama The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, enjoy a special anniversary screening of Sidney Lumet’s classic 12 Angry Men, and perhaps stop to get a flier from Troma Entertainment about their new shocker, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.
     It was that kind of party.
s a bonafide glamorous movie star that also happened to appear in very good French films, Brigitte Bardot was relentlessly touched upon, figuratively, as a symbol of what Cannes has meant to film and celebrity over the past six decades. But that ignores the other reasons folks flock here: there’s the Cannes that acts as a major schmoozefest for world distribution rights (resulting in a Disneyland for z-movie horror freaks); the secret Cannes out there on the gulf in those crash-proof yacht parties; the recently-developed Tous Les Cinemas du Monde (All The World’s Films) program that defies the Eurocentric nature of the main event (and which, ironically, grows faster than any other track); the Cannes of film panels and classes, taught by vets like Scorsese, and finally the Cannes for fame hags, the one that saw the crowd swell massively just before the star-studded Ocean’s 13 premiere—and then disappear the next day, four days before the coveted Palme D’Or was given out. This year’s crop of films was considered above average, but as with, say, Mardi Gras, the sideshows in Cannes are threatening to overwhelm the tradition entirely. Here’s how the 60^th broke down:                   

 UN CERTAIN REGARD
Most Americans attending this program of films not in competition but judged to be “of interest” were eager to watch the return of director Harmony Korine with Mister Lonely, but the obtuse result—a Michael Jackson impersonator falls for a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, intercut with skydiving nuns—was far too insular for them. Hou Hsiao Hsien’s The Flight of the Red Balloon didn’t play like the Critic joke it’s reminiscent of, but as a follow-up to the Cannes classic Le Ballon Rouge, it proved as pointless as a Hollywood prequel. Barbet Schroeder’s Advocate of Terror, a documentary about one of France’s greatest WWII resistance fighters, got a much better reception, as did the Italian coming-of-age drama My Brother Is An Only Child, the Estonian assisted-suicide story Magnus, and most of all, the surprisingly adept Munyurangabo, which put a more human face on Kigali tragedy than even Hotel Rwanda. The prize, however, was taken by that rarest of rarities—a posthumous debut, namely Cristian Nemescu’s portrait of Kosovo-era Romanian bureaucracy, California Dreamin’ (which also heralded the welcome return to form of Armand Assante). 

 IN COMPETITION
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, by Cristian Mungiu. Winner: Palme D'Or (Golden Palm). Although much of the supposedly smart money was on the Coens’ No Country For Old Men to take the Palm, this heartbreaking Romanian film, which deals with the abortion ban of Ceausescu’s infamous reign, had the most jaded attendees in tears. There was no real contest. My Audience Score: 1

 The Age of Ignorance (a/k/a Days of Darkness), by Denys Arcand. The closer was a surprisingly light (and lightweight) Canadian answer to Walter Mitty, but the satire was limp, and although it proved a blessed shaft of sunlight after a bleak lineup, this follow-up to Arcand’s Oscar-winning The Barbarian Invasions was, in the end, a letdown. My Audience Score: 4

Alexandra, by Aleksandr Sokurov. It may be a war film with no war scenes in it, but Sokurov nonetheless created one of the great Chechnyan-era snapshots with this tale of a grandmother who feels militarism cast a pall over her homeland. This may be the director’s most political work—and perhaps also his greatest. My Audience Score: 1

Auf der anderen Seite des Lebens, (The Edge Of Heaven) by Fatih Akın. Winner: Prix du scénario (Best Screenplay, Fatih Akın). The second film in Akin’s “Love, Death, and the Devil” trilogy (following Head-On), this harrowing tale of prostitution, responsibility, and battered family pride in modern-day Germany and Turkey was a huge hit with audiences. And rightly so. My Audience Score: 1

Izgagnie (The Banishment), by Andrei Zvyagintsev. Winner: Prix d'interprétation masculine du Festival de Cannes (Best Actor: Konstantin Lavronenko). Russian director Andrei returns after The Return with a well-shot but distressingly vague slice-of-death drama weighed down (and very nearly crushed by) religious imagery. It would’ve given this film another level, had it a first one. My Audience Score: 3

Breath, by Kim Ki-duk. Another South Korean entry, this one about a condemned prisoner who falls in love with a female visitation (not visitor). Done with as little dialogue as possible, in keeping with Ki-duk’s m.o., but not likely to prove captivating, even to his core fanbase. My Audience Score: 3

Les Chansons d'amour (Love Songs), by Christophe Honore. Only the French would construct a musical comedy about a threesome. But there’s a tragedy at the center of it all, and Honore’s sledgehammer approach annihilated it. The director’s homeland crowd loved it; everyone else was left cold. My Audience Score: 4

Death Proof, by Quentin Tarantino.  Although the Q-man played nice and restored the lap dance from his half of the Grindhouse double feature, even going so far as to insert some much-needed verbal foreplay between Stuntman Mike and the prey that bites him back, the festgoers remained unimpressed. Seriously, what was this doing here? My Audience Score: 4

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by Julian Schnabel. Winner: Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director, Julian Schnabel). Another must-see, this adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby's eponymous memoir details his attempt to live through a near-complete paralysis. The fact this French film was made at all is reason enough for wonder—the source material was typed by endless, tedious blinking—but it deserves the praise it got for not only finding hope in this story, but making it palpable for the rest of us. My Audience Score: 1

Import/Export, by Ulrich Seidl. The festival’s requisite shocker, this Austrian entry is a feast of despair, a dual story of desperate Austrian slackerism and Ukranian slum servitude that would have been one of the more fascinating entries at Cannes… were it not too bleak to comprehend for long. My Audience Score: 3

The Man From London, by Bela Tarr. Produced with the co-operation of four countries, set in Hungary, but shot in Spain, Tarr’s noirish thriller about a dour family man who comes across a suitcase full of money isn’t quite up to his usual level. My Audience Score: 3

Mogari No Mori, (The Mourning Forest) by Naomi Kawase.  Winner: Grand Prix (Grand or 2^nd Prize). A young caregiver and an old widower, both wrestling with their own personal loss, journey into the woods to find a place to grieve in peace. Lyrical and gorgeously shot, yet aggressively non-linear, this Japanese entry received a lukewarm reception from the critics—and won 2^nd Prize anyway. My Audience Score: 3

My Blueberry Nights, by Wong Kar Wai. The festival opener proved, as per usual, to be a big disappointment, as Kar Wai’s Chinese road trip turned up as a sloppy, fragmented shrugfest. Norah Jones, while providing star power, perhaps should not quit her day job. Natalie Portman perhaps should. Jude Law’s accent had no such excuse. My Audience Score: 4

No Country for Old Men, by The Coen Brothers. Although a little too reverent to the source material to be a home run, fans of the Coens’ work before they became guns for hire will appreciate this, the darkest noir they’ve done since Blood Simple. The brothers, rumor has it, just missed the Palm by inches. My Audience Score: 2

Paranoid Park, by Gus Van Sant. Winner: Prix du 60ème anniversaire (60^th Anniversary Prize). Van Sant was generally thought to have returned to form with this deceptively dark and pointedly fractured tale of murder among skateboarders, cast, even more so than usual, with a lot of promising street unknowns. My Audience Score: 2

Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. Shared Winner: Prix du Jury (Jury Prize). Animated features usually don’t get any more love from Cannes than they do from anywhere else, but this sentimental favorite, based on the hit series of graphic novels about one teenage girl’s struggle for identity during the 1978 Iranian Revolution, may have been the most accomplished film of the festival. My Audience Score: 1

Promise Me This, by Emir Kusturica. This joint French-Serbian production takes Kusturica’s slapstick to ridiculous heights in its tale of a family that’s not much more than a collection of quirks. Cannes is not where you go for anything-for-a-laugh comedies. My Audience Score: 4

Secret Sunshine, by Lee Chang-dong. Winner: Prix d'interprétation féminine du Festival de Cannes (Best Actress: Jeon Do-yeon). As you might imagine from the award, Do-yeon’s performance as a South Korean widower who finds Jesus carries much of the water, but that’s not a knock on the film’s overall quality. A bit long, but solid. My Audience Score: 2

Silent Light (Stellet Licht), by Carlos Reygadas. Shared Winner: Prix du Jury (Jury Prize). Another fantastic-looking, emotionally empty, overlong competition entry wherein Reygadas again fails to anoint himself as the heir to director Carl Dreyer. Adultery among the Mennonites? Only at Cannes. My Audience Score: 3

Tehilim, by Raphael Nadjari. Shot mostly hand-held for immediacy, this examination of an Israeli family and their search for their ominously vanished patriarch indicates more emotions than it actually explores. Tight enough, however. My Audience Score: 3

Une Vieille Maitresse, by Catherine Breillat. A wonderful examination of lust and its attendant manipulation that recalls Dangerous Liasons in both quality and setting. Here is the unbridled passion—of many kinds—that bored Americans visit French films for. Costar Asia Argento appeared in no less than three high-profile Cannes ’07 films. My Audience Score: 2

We Own the Night, by James Gray. One of the more conventional (and star-studded) movies of the festival, this American crime drama pits Russian mobsters against laughably cliché Polish New Yorkers. The acting, fine as it is, can’t save a retread story with zero surprises. This one actually got booed. My Audience Score: 4

Zodiac, by David Fincher. Here’s why directors flock to the festival—Fincher’s an accomplished American ignored by popcorn eaters for his bravest work, yet here they get it. Forget the bad stateside box office; his look at the most notorious uncaught mass murderer since Jack the Ripper is a new classic. My Audience Score: 1

 OTHER SCREENINGS

annes proved its relevance once and for all by scheduling Michael Moore’s true masterpiece, Sicko, just after his tussles with the U.S. over his Cuban visit (chronicled in the film) and hastily adding Andrey Nekrasov's documentary Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case—not completed in time for competition—when the Brits suddenly announced their intention to extradite the alleged murderer of the poisoned Soviet spy.  Activist celebs got plenty of coverage for their causes with Angelina Jolie’s surprisingly nuanced performance in the Daniel Pearl docudrama A Mighty Heart and Leo DiCaprio’s noble but somewhat unnecessary 11^th Hour, a more personal look at the ways we can combat global warming. Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales found him mining his usual dark cynicism in a comedic vein, while the self-explanatory concert film U23D provided the 60^th’s musical highlight (given the live performance on the famous carpet itself). For those who maintain, a la Stephen Colbert, that France never sent us “a thank-you note” after WWII, there was the French doc Return to Normandy and the premiere of all fourteen hours of Ken Burns’ The War. Finally, the consensus on Cannes ‘07’s biggest picture, Ocean’s 13, was that it managed to plug most of the gaping holes in the previous sequel. That is, among those who actually stayed to watch it.