Entre les Murs Wins Palm D'Or

Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been busy with exams / clearing out for summer. This will be my last post, as I left Cannes soon after Le Silence de Lorna.

I just wanted to post the information for the Palm D'Or winning film, The Class by Laurent Cantet. It looks like a (much) better version of Freedom Writers, that god-awful sapfest with Jennifer Garner, which came out a couple of years ago. The award was presented to Cantet by Robert De Niro, and below is an exert from his acceptance speech:

"I have many people to thank... [he thanks everyone] All this is the product of ten or twelve years of work together, in the course of which we have forged a real bond of friendship and loyalty. Here, on this night, all together, we're sharing an intense experience. Lately, the film business has not been especially open to making films that are slightly offbeat. It has become very difficult. Paradoxically, this film was made in a way that was... ideal. I read François Bégaudeau's book, and the whole process flowed from that point almost naturally. We were supported by a sort of state of grace throughout the production phase, from the auditions, where I met all these young people, through the writing of the film, borne along by encouraging signs that proved to be right, through the editing. Though I'm capable of sinking into the depths of darkest doubt at times, with this film there was a sort of lightness, due to the energy and strength of all the people with me here, who are born actors, just terrific. The film we wanted to make was supposed to look like French society: multi-faceted, lively, and complex, with conflicts that the film was not going to try to gloss over. I hope that's what the film looks like, and that we didn't get it wrong. Thank you very much!"

At the press conference afterwards, he revealed that he was pretty confident about winning:
"I'm not all that surprised. Talking about school interests the whole world. The issues are pretty much the same, no matter what country you're talking about. Children go to school to learn something, but also so they'll grow up to be responsible adults, citizens. During the screenings, we sensed that the story was told in a sharable way. A foreign audience got into the film about as directly as the French audience. The discussions we were able to have with people after they'd seen the film confirmed my belief. It was a great source of delight to me, without being that much of a surprise... This film is also intended for people who don't know what school is like, who haven't set foot inside a school for a very long time, like most of us. Nevertheless, they have a set of unwavering opinions and prejudices about teaching, school, and the young people today, who are often portrayed as imbeciles. I hope the film does justice to young people, as well as doing justice to all the work that goes on inside the walls of a school."

The full, good looking press kit can be found here, and you can watch the video of an interview conducted at the festival here.

Thank you so much for reading; look for reviews from the Festival in next year's issues of The Saint.

Feature film prizes:
Palme d'Or
ENTRE LES MURS (THE CLASS), by Laurent CANTET

Grand Prix
GOMORRA (GOMORRAH), by Matteo GARRONE

Award for Best Director
ÜÇ MAYMUN (THREE MONKEYS), by Nuri Bilge CEYLAN

Award for Best Screenplay
LE SILENCE DE LORNA (LORNA’S SILENCE), by Jean-Pierre et Luc DARDENNE

Award for Best Actress
LINHA DE PASSE, by Sandra CORVELONI

Award for Best Actor
CHE, by Benicio DEL TORO

Jury Prize
IL DIVO, by Paolo SORRENTINO , Paolo SORRENTINO

Special Prize for the 61st Festival
UN CONTE DE NOËL (A CHRISTMAS TALE), by Catherine DENEUVE

L'ÉCHANGE (CHANGELING), by Clint EASTWOOD

Short film prizes:
Palme d'Or - Short Film
MEGATRON (MEGATRON), by Marian CRISAN

Jury Prize - Short Film
JERRYCAN (JERRYCAN), by Julius AVERY

I'd like to thank you, my readers (do you exist?), for sharing my eye-opening time at Cannes. I'm so excited to write up all the wonderful films I saw, and telling more stories from the festival in the paper.

Le Silence de Lorna

I had to sit in the front row of the orchestra section this time; the theatre was overflowing. The directors of Le Silence de Lorna, the Dardenne brothers, have won the Palm D'Or twice before, and I think people are so excited about the film because they believe it has a very good chance of nabbing the prize again. The film follows a young Albanian woman who attains Belgian citizenship to set up a snack shop with her German boyfriend by marrying a Belgian-born junkie, Claudy, a transaction arranged by the diabolical mobster/taxi driver Fabio. When Fabio forces Lorna to divorce him and marry a Russian hoping to attain citizenship to pay for her marriage to Claudy, things go horribly wrong as she realizes the implications of becoming involved in organized crime. As in Serbis, all the men turn out to be completely inhumane bar one, and Lorna is psychologically destroyed by their greed and selfishness.


The original score, used sporadically throughout the film, differentiates it slightly from the others, but by the time I sat down to see this one this morning, I had gotten pretty sick of that handheld/long tracking shot aesthetic. It just seems so formulaic now; all of the competition films look very similar, right down to the one extreme close up each throws in. There seems to be this criterion one must adhere to to get a film into Cannes; non-invasive documentary style, dark, in media res opening, no voice over, no shot-reverse-shot, no close-ups (except of boils and the like), and everyone has to get naked. The aesthetics of Blindness are different, and I'm guessing that can be explained by its unique perspective. There is a whole other ideology that filmmakers here subscribe to, while claiming to be anti-ideology. I also don't understand why their goal is to make the camera invisible for that documentary feel, while in every shot the frame shakes like it's having a seizure, making its presence known. Every film I've seen in competition tries to walk that line, but the real/unreal visible/invisible dichotomy schtik gets tiresome and repetitive after a couple of films.

I liked this film better than Gomorra, but couldn’t like it too much due to its similarities to the other films I had already seen. If you haven’t been watching a string of Cannes competition features, however, I'm sure that it would be much more enjoyable.

Gomorra

I managed to get a seat in the dress circle for this one after sneaking past the pass-nazis, otherwise I would have been about 80 rows back from the front again. The massive theatre was completely packed, which is apparently normal for the opening weekend, and I'm pretty sure that the person in front of me was filming it on his mobile. Cannes security: there is none.

The film, by Matteo Garrone, confirmed perhaps almost all the Italian stereotypes I'm aware of. It opens in a tanning parlor, where a bunch of Italian mobsters are getting their bronze on, before one of them pulls out a gun and obliterates the others. Several other sequences in the film link Italian culture – weddings, music –to gang warfare purposefully, and some might find this slightly offensive. The film captures the extremity of the drug-fueled gang warfare of Gomorra, and according to the statistics played at the end of the film, it's quite realistic. Gomorra is based on the novel of the same name by Roberto Saviano, which forced the author into hiding because the mob found it too revealing. Gomorra loosely braids the stories of five Gomorra residents together to describe how every life is affected, or deeply involved in, the web of organized crime controlling the city.


With the handheld shaky long tracking shots, natural lighting and green tint cinematography (again), the film tries a documentary feel and succeeds without feeling too intrusive or too distant. There's no score to soften the gun blasts, and the camera views the violence with a cold, unblinking eye. I felt like a big idiot covering my eyes during some of the shooting scenes, when all of the other jaded journalists seemed completely unfazed, but I couldn’t help it.

The film follows a young boy who becomes embroiled organized crime, two teenagers who try to start their own gang, a young man who narrowly escapes mob life, a middle-aged tailor who sells out his skills to a Chinese-run clothing factory, and Don Ciro, a gentle senior responsible for distributing the mob’s money to families. As each character sinks deeper into the town’s escalating warfare, driven by gang members' desire to retaliate and “rack up corpses”, each must decide whether to go all in or try to get out. The youngest boy’s story is the most involving, but it was difficult to become attached because there was so much else to focus on.

A good film that portrays Italy in a very bad light, I highly recommend Gomorra for people who enjoy pitch-black, utterly humourless gangster movies and that shaky handheld long tracking shot green tint aesthetic. Though this film would probably be better categorized as a subversion of the gangster genre, taking a closer look at the maschinations behind more glamorous shoot outs on film. Or something. I've never wanted a cocktail after a screening more than now.

Serbis

I saw this one yesterday, and was pretty impressed because it is one of the few competition films where I've been able to feel empathy for the characters. The film, by Brillante Mendozam, follows Nayda, a thirty-something mother, as she tries to keep her family, and the family business - a porn theatre - above water. Her efforts are usually thwarted by her male relatives, who fight, engage in prostitution, and cause chaos in general. She and her mother, the family matriarch whom she is beginning to replace, try to keep the family's morality intact, while their relatives are influenced by the illicit films they watch daily at the theatre.

The overwhelming city noise always present in the film really gives you a sense of the heat of both the Philippines, where it is set, and the theatre, which doubles as a brothel. The shaky hand-held long tracking shot cinematography worked well, except for the standard extreme close up (there seems to be one in each competition film) that they used to capture a boil on someone's ass. Unnecessary. I guess they thought the film needed an extra shot of gritty/gruesome to make it into the competition, so they threw that in. I can't think of any other reason, it was pretty gross. For the first time, I wasn't the only one in the theatre covering my eyes in disgust.

This was one of my favourite films so far, and I highly recommend it. Full review to follow in the Saint. The full press kit can be found here.

Indiana Jones

Update: Spoiler Alert! Sorry I didn't have this up before.

I just saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and I am sad to report that I was unimpressed. The first act is as cheesy and funny and wonderful as Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade, but then they threw in a spaceship and everything went to hell. I'm a big Indiana Jones fan, and wasn't happy with the ending, which is like something out of a bad romantic comedy. The first half of the film makes it well worth seeing, but the second half is plagued with sentimentality, and becomes duller than Temple of Doom. And then there's the objectionable proposition that the Mayan people couldn't have built their civilization themselves, but I guess that smacks of the 50s, when the film is set.

All of the acting was good and most of the characters were very entertaining, except for Marion, who, unlike Blanchett's equally humourless Irina Spalko, was unable to elicit any laughs from the audience. The arguments she had with Indy made the audience cringem, and their ability to rebuild their friendship after 20 years of not seeing eachother wasn't really explained. Shia was hilarious as Mutt Williams, and Harrison Ford was, of course, as good as ever, but towards the end of the film, when all of the characters were following an insane Oxley (John Hurt), they weren't given the opportunity to create any action themselves or really make any good jokes.

The story was good, the acting was good, the special effects were good, John Williams succeeded in creating another great score, but somehow it just didn't add up. The screenplay didn't allow for entertaining interaction between the characters once they moved to South America, and some of the third act's few jokes fell flat. There was lots of action, but most of what took place in Peru (aside from the ant scene) lacked the cheese of the earlier Indiana films. The topical messages about governments that spy on their citizens evaporated once the crew left America, along with the interesting political dialogue that went with it. I think it could have been much better if Spielberg had both the CIA and the Russians trailing Indy; it would have distracted from the awkwardness between him and Marion, and held up the storyline better than the Russians alone, who, aside from Cate Blanchett, were devoid of personality.

The film tried to be touching and romantic, but that is something an Indiana Jones film should never attempt. I don't want to slap it with a bad star rating, because the first half is really enjoyable, but it isn't a film that I would watch more than twice, which is something I could say about the other films in the franchise. The screening was, however, one of the most impressive and emotive I've ever attended; I don't think I've ever seen a movie with an audience who cared so much.

Vicky Christina Barcelona Press Conference

Even more insane than the Jury Press Conference, this press conference was the busiest that I've attended at Cannes. Journalists were sitting on the floor, someone's tripod myseriously snapped because it was jammed to close to the others (and was probably taking up space that someone else wanted), and the security guard tried to get me to leave because the conference was for white and pink passes only. I just moved, and he didn't seem to notice. The security here is completely lax. I'm beginning to understand how people illegaly upload films to the internet the second they've premiered; you could definitely smuggle a camera into a screening without any trouble. They only glance into people's bags and sort of wave those metal-detector batons over you like they're performing a blessing, and they let you go even if they do go off. Anyhow,

I got some pretty good pictures of the chaos that I will post once I have them developed. I think Henri (MC extraordinaire) looks quite cherubic in the second one.





I wanted to ask Mr. Allen about whether he ever felt constrained by the expectations people had for his films, but didn't have a chance. Instead, people asked him about his feelings on Central Asia and what it was like to shoot in Barcelona. I really don't understand how some journalists work for the papers they work for, because some of their questions are just so stupid. A few of them visibly pissed off Penelope Cruz, particularly the one about whether she enjoyed the lesbian kiss, which she declined to answer. It's so cool to be in the same room as the film critics that I love to follow, though! I always want to ask them about their reviews, but the room empties out so quickly after conferences that I never manage to.

Grr

Seeing Woody Allen was interesting. You could tell that his persona isn't something he puts on; he was a genuinely fidgety, slightly neurotic senior who is hard of hearing, and loves making people laugh. Even when he was joking around, you could tell that he really cared about this film, and tried hard to make it different from his other work.

Vicky Christina Barcelona follows two young women as they travel to Barcelona for the summer, where their lives "disintegrate" with "a few laughs along the way", as Allen described it. It stars Brit Rebecca Hall as Vicky, Scarlett Johansson as Christina, and Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem as the ex-couple that they disrupt. Rebecca Hall, who is not as well known in the States, said she was surprised that she got the part without having to demonstrate her American accent. The fact that she was cast before they knew if she was capable of playing an American worries me. I will have to find out how that worked when I try and see the film again tomorrow (that's try again, not see again - last night, due to my yellow pass, I was turned away from the theatre). At least I got to the conference, though! Some of those dumb questions yeilded hilarious answers:

Woody Allen on threesomes (thank you, Maclean's): “It’s hard enough to get one person.”

Allen on Russia: “I was there for about two hours… before calling and asking when the next flight was out of there… I’m a very fearful traveler, and it would take me a lot to get back to Russia.”

Allen on the flm's darkness: “I wanted the tragic part to sneak up on you… At the end of the movie I wanted there to be a feeling of rueful sadness… No one ends up happy." Rebecca’s character ends up “regretting that she never took a more courageous and adventurous route… Scarlett [who plays Christina] has no idea what she wants, and she never will… and Maria Elena [Penelope Cruz] is too full of feeling.”

On his next project: “I have two more weeks of shooting in NY; it’s a comedy for laughs… it’s a picture about a group of highly neurotic characters [laughter from the press] that interact in ways that I hope you think is funny.”

I still can't believe that I saw him in person! The first few minutes of Manhattan is one of my favourite sequences in cinema.

24 City Press Conference

This one was slightly busier than the Linha de Passe conference, with the majority of journalists hailing from China and Japan. They asked many interesting questions about censorship and the changes in China which the film reflects and explores, and a moment of silence was held for the victims of the earthquake that devastated the region where the film is set. Of course, the photographers couldn't keep themselves from snapping pictures during the silence, which turned it into a publicity stunt, but that's typical. The director and actresses hope the film will bring attention to the victims of the earthquake, and generate some compassion for them, because they are portrayed so sympathetically in the film.

24 City mixes documentary and fiction, and tells the story of three women from different generations - the 50s, the 70s and the present - as they cope with the closure of a factory that has been operating for 50 years, and is to be replaced by a luxury condo development called 24 City. “The best way to talk about history is to mix fiction and reality,” Director Jia Zhang said, “because it enables you to have a much richer perception of history” and understanding of the present. He said the film allowed him to build a new bridge between the present and the pass, and taught him to seek “answers to contemporary questions in the past”.

For Zhang, the destruction of the factory “is also symbolic of the speed with which changes in China occur.” He wanted to show how ordinary Chinese people lived outside the big cities in the country's interior in a country that is changing rapidly, and judging from the commentary of the critics in the room, it seems like he succeeded.

The film also reflects the changes in the openness of the Chinese government towards the filmmaking community. All of Zhang’s films before Knife were not shown in China, but since then he has been able to screen his features there, 24 City included. “It is a tremendous change when it comes to freedom and liberty," he said about the reduction of censorship, "we directors have been able to establish a dialogue with the authorities. In the past, we couldn’t defend our stances." He did admit that censorship is still tight, and that "the dialogue will have to continue to ensure that things become more conducive to modern cinema.” He wouldn’t say whether his films had to be severely censored before playing in theatres, and none of the Chinese journalists bothered asking, because his answer would probably be censored out of their work.

Linha de Passe Press Conference

I just finished a long stakeout in the press conference room, from 9:00am til now, which allowed me to stay for Linha de Passe, 24 City and Vicky Christina Barcelona. I'll post highlights from each after this post, in chronological order.

The conference room was almost empty for Linha de Passe, a Brazilian film directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas that explores the relationships between four who share a mother, but each have a different, missing father. “The boys search for father figures among other people within the film,” explained Thomas, “[and] they find it within themselves… There isn’t a father, but there are fathers.” The general lack of fathers in the film was inspired by the absence of the father in Brazil more broadly, a country which Thomas described as “dramatically orphaned." I wasn't able to see the film, but the conference was really interesting. Staking out has allowed me to listen to directors explain their different motives for filmmaking; how passionately they speak about their work is inspiring.


The directors spent the bulk of the conference discussing their inspirations, and how they wanted to portray paternal absenteeism prevalent in Brazil. Salles cited the statistic that almost 30% of Brazilian homes are without fathers, and traced this absence to the colonization of Brazil, when the Portuguese arrived, named the country, and went back to Spain. “Brazil can be explained by the chronic absence of fathers,” he said, and so can the film.


Salles wants to differentiate his work from the films that come out of Brazil in which characters use violence to resolve their problems (City of God, etc), and sought to create a more positive portrait of a people who do not resort to murder and gang warfare. “We wanted to make a film that shows that violence is turned down as an option… about people who really do achieve redemption.”

To make the film as true a portrait of Brazil as possible, he and Daniela visited Sao Paulo and explored its suburbs to get a more rounded perception of the city. “Sao Paulo was born with the basic storyline of the film as a sixth character in the film,” explained Thomas. "It has no escape, no sense of redemption… [It’s sort of a] city at the end of the world.” They wrote about the places they visited, and included real people in the film. Italian neorealism was a big influence, and the inspiration behind their use of non-professional actors and real people as extras. “There were no extras in this film,” Salles claims, “the people in the church were people in a church. The football players were real football players.” The influence that artists Rossellini adn Eistenstein have on him stems from his admiration of the way they changed cinema; he said that “all the guys who created an aesthetic revolution" are at the heart of Brazilian film, and Cinema Novo was a huge influence on Linha de Passe.

On whether he would collaborate with another director again: "the cinema is a collective venture... I think it would be very difficult to [co-direct] on a permanent basis. After solo films it is good to have different people contributing to the film. It's very inspirational, and [Linha de Passe] is stronger than what I'd do by myself."

More info about the film can be found here and in the issue of the Saint after the film comes out in the UK, on September 26th.

Colour discrimination continues

It is practically impossible to go to screenings that aren't at 8:30 in the morning. I tried to get into Vicky Christina Barcelona last night, but it was completely packed by the time they had gotten through just half the blue passes, which is one step above me. So instead I'm focusing on press conferences, which I figure I won't be able to attend anywhere oustide Cannes, unlike the films. Wait...am I whining about being at Cannes? Pleut moi un riviere, I hear you saying.

Today I'm going to try for two conferences, including that for Vicky Christina Barcelona. I want to ask Woody Allen whether he ever feels constrained by the expectations people have for his films, but I don't know whether that will go down very well.

Tonight I'm determined to see Serbis, which is on at 7:30. If I manage to get into that one I'll be sure to post a review.

Short Films

Today I'm taking a break from features and press conferences to explore the Marche du Film in the Palais basement. I just spent about two hours at the Short Film Corner, and thought I'd post about the ones I liked best. The festival has such a dirth of short films to watch, I felt totally spoiled by the (literally) hundreds of films I could choose from. Why isn't there a database like this on the internet, or iTunes? I doubt I'll be able to find these films easily once I leave the festival; it's a shame, some of them I could watch all day.

1. Jerrycan - a Trainspotting for children, this short by Australian director Julius Avery catalogues the power politics of a group of tween boys who decide to blow up something one afternoon to stave off boredom. Well shot, favouring the green tint and grainy handheld cinematography prevalent in the selection fo short films I saw, the short conveys struggles typical of most children transitioning into adolescence. It also shows how abject circumstance can affect young people, and force them to behave in more adult ways than expected. Watch the trailer here.

2. El Deseo - This Mexican short by Marie Benito confronts perceptions of older women as asexual through the journey of its protagonist from depressed chastity, after her husband leaves her, to the red light district. A bit uncomfortable at times, the long close-ups are meant to be combative against limiting stereotypes. There's a stunning shot of the protagonist's face in close up backlit with green light, which alone makes the film worth watching; it looks like a painting. A clip of the film is available here.

3. Megatron - A Romanian film by Marian Crisan in which a boy and his mother go to the McDonalds in town for the boy's birthday, where he hopes to meet his father. The tension between his desire to meet him and his mother's attempts to keep the two apart is conveyed well through the short depth of field used throughout the film to distance the two. One particularly bleak shot of the two riding their bikes to the train station shows the mother almost completely out of focus, following her son like a protective shadow. Big points for original cinematography, and largely shirking the green tint that was present in the other films.

4. 2 Birds - A dark Icelandic film by Runar Runarsson (yes, really), the title references the effeminate male and female leads who come of age in perhaps the bleakest way possible. It captures the awkwardness of that transitional period well in a party scene where the two try to talk to each other, and are driven to take drugs in hopes that it will make interaction easier. That goes horribly wrong, but the film reaches an uncomfortable resolution.


5. The Hole of Space and Time - A British short directed by Raza from Leeds, of the short film corner but not in competition, which compresses the present and the past into a single moment when an actor destroys his career with his alcoholism. An interesting concept played out well by the lead, but it could have done without the stock canted shots of him drinking. More information about it can be found here.

I'll see where I can find information about where you can watch these films in full. If I can't find anything, I'll make the reviews a bit less ambiguous and give away the endings.

Kung Fu Panda

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, I was pushed out of my spot at the wifi zone by the pandaemonium of aggressive photogs crowding to the window to catch Angelina Jolie coming out of the Kung Fu Panda conference. For the two minutes that she was crossing, the snapping of the 40 or so cameras was so rapid that it sounded like rain. Once she had gone they rushed back to their computers to upload the shots as quickly as they could, so they could be sold for the highest price. A few of us written press people innocently checking our emails got slightly maimed and cursed at by the photographers, but we’ve learned to expect that. Their moods depend entirely on the position they’ve managed to get in relation to the star they're trying to capture.

I was able to see Kung Fu Panda yesterday in the big theatre, the Grande Theatre Lumiere, and could actually follow the action from the nosebleed section of the balcony, which I didn’t expect. It’s a decent comedy that kept the audience chuckling, but there were only a few good jokes and most of the characters were unbelievably flat. The story line of a self-conscious panda who gets a weight loss training makeover was strangely reminiscent of many reality show plotlines, and did nothing to differentiate itself from them. The trite messages about believing in yourself sounded recycled, and were just barely redeemed by the slapstick and quality of the animation, which I’m guessing is what caused the enthusiastic applause after the screening. It couldn’t have been anything else.


The panda (Jack Black), Master Mantis (Seth Rogen) and Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) were the only three characters with any definable traits. Lucy Liu and Angelina Jolie did the best they could with the horribly stale and colourless dialogue they were given, and Jackie Chan, who played the monkey, was funny when he voiced the few lines he had. Jack Black showed off his ability to make audiences laugh under any circumstances, even a direly predictable script, and his voice and his animated character worked well together.

The traditional animation in the opening dream sequence was quite impressive, and reached the level of phantasmagorical anime that the directors, Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, seemed to be striving for. The fight scenes were very well done, and showed off Dreamwork’s animation skills well - the scenes with the wisdom/emotional-eating tree were particularly realistic and mystical, and could have come out of a Pixar film.

I couldn’t make the press conference because I was playing paparazzo instead; I managed to get my self a spot in a palm tree outside the steps where the cast exited the conference and got into their cars. There were about 25 other photographers there, and they were much nicer than the ones that pushed me out of my spot at the wifi café. Then again, the man that took up half my spot behind the palm probably didn’t snap at me because I didn’t reprimand him for it, so I don’t know – when a foot can make the difference between five and ten thousand dollars, people get mean. While we were waiting, I overheard one photographer telling another about how he used to dream of being an art photographer, but found the only way to make a living was by snapping pictures of celebrities.

How you know if a star is going to turn up

Making me feel ashamed of my camera

Where's Dustin?

I’m ashamed to say that I had to mutilate the palm tree a bit to get a clear shot, but I tried to straighten it out as best I could once the actors had whizzed off. Dustin Hoffman stayed the longest, and a full minute striking different poses, but Angelina just went straight to her car, which is fine because she’s very pregnant and can get away with pretty much whatever she likes. Jack Black did a few kung fu moves before leaving, but none of them stayed for very long. As usual, I was completely intimidated by the foot and a half long lenses the other photographers were showing off. I definitely prefer press conferences to just snapping pictures, I didn’t find the paparazzi experience very satisfying. Paparazzo is off my list of future career paths as of yesterday, not that it was ever really on there in the first place.

Thanks

Angie and Jack arrive

I’m about to try to stake out the conference room like I did on Tuesday. Cannes is definitely in full swing now, with thousands of people on the Croisette every day, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get a spot. We’ll see.

Jury Press Conference

"We are all in sync that we've got to feel confident that the filmmaker of that film is conscious of the times in which he or she lives." - Sean Penn on deciding the Palm D'Or winner


The jury press conference is the big press conference that kicks off the festival, and it happened today at 2:30, with the full jury in attendance. The directors and actors on the panel had fun answering multiple questions about whether their biases will affect their decision making and what they're looking for in a winning film. These questions seemed to make Sean Penn look even more tortured than he did at the beginning of the conference, but he loosened up after he was allowed to smoke (for "medical reasons"). He seemed to get the brunt of most of the questions, and Natalie Portman was virtually silent.


Alfonso Cuaron, Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman, Rachid Bouchareb, Sean Penn
The conference started off with an explanation of the Jury's Choice award, which is a new addition to the festival this year. Sean Penn explained the selection, Third Wave, by saying that it reflects the current political climate, in which necessary change won't come from politicians, but from people. "It's the closest thing I've seen on film to saying what is the purpose of life," he gushed, "I thought that at this time in film if that wasn't important, nothing was. I think it is a very important film and fascinating to watch." It was interesting to see how he and Marjane Satrapi disagreed on the criterion for choosing a winner; Satrapi called purely political films "leaflets" that would be read and tossed away, while Sean viewed a film's participation in political debates as an important determinant of its quality.

Then came the avalanche of questions directed to Sean about how his biases, particularly the fact that he has worked with Clint Eastwood - who directed The Changeling - would influence his vote. "We will be influenced by our cultural backgrounds, but we will try not to be biased because of them," he explained. "We have to listen to the heart of a film." And, after the cigarette, "If Clint Eastwood deserves it, we're going to fuck well award him."

Like the Blindness conference, this one was completely mad, and since I didn't really know what you would ask a jury, I didn't say anything. It was much more packed, with journalists crammed into every corner and sitting on the floor, and the videographers spilling down the stairs despite the protestations of security personell about fire regulations.

I'm going to haul all of my gear back to my hotel room and try to understand Waiting for Godot. Tomorrow I will attempt to get into the Leonara and Kung Fu Panda press conferences, which will involve me missing the first screenings of both films. I'll try to catch them in the afternoon.

Sidenote: The guy next to me has ring tones of the music that plays over studio logos when films open for each company. It's a bit disorienting, hearing the fox music about every five minutes.

Update: The apolitical Entre les Murs, by Laurent Cantet, has taken the Palm D'Or. Looks like Satrapi won!

Blindness

I just got back from a screening of Blindness, after the press conferencev (I got in!!!). The review will be printed in the Saint in time for the UK release date, which is early October. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, except for the voice over, which choked the film and distracted from the performances, particularly Julianne Moore's. She conveyed everything that was being said, and the constant droning on about the meaning of blindness cast over her scenes was unnecessary. Her love for the apocalyptic, which she admitted to at the press conference, shone intensely during the film's darker scenes when she was able to exercise the less angelic aspects of her character. I was able to ask the screenwriter which character he found the most difficult to write, and Meirelles responded by saying that it was Moore's - he had trouble keeping her from being a "flat angel". She wasn't, though the script seemed to demand it, thanks to her nuanced treatment of the character.


Moore, of course, credited her performance to Meirelles, who helped her try to convey the naturalism that the script tried to translate from the Nobel-prize winning novel. "He elicits performances from actors [in which] you don't feel like they're acting." This was especially true for Bernal, who was absolutely chilling as the self-anointed king of the quarantine, and was definitely not given enough screen time. The deep emotional understanding he was able to cultivate for his character came through when he talked about how terrified he was on the first day of shooting, and how scary yet liberating being blind can be.


Interestingly, Meirelles seemed irritated by comparisons to Lord of the Flies, and said that the film was more about searching for human dignity than savagery alone. I disagree, because some of the scenes in the quarantine seemed to be ripped from the book, and were more about people searching for food or power than dignity. Screenwriter McKellan said he was inspired by the devastation that governments have left their citizens to suffer in recent years, mentioning the arena in New Orleans that many were forced to take shelter in after Hurricane Katrina. "Tragically, it kept feeling timely," McKellan said of his first failed attempt to get the rights to the novel in 1998, "the allegory of the book has been kept alive."


Underneath the political allegory is a discussion of human nature, and how capricious it can be. Meirelles explained: "How do we organize society when society collapses? There's so many different questions, and that's what I like about this film." The film doesn't answer any of the questions either - the strangling voice over did little but offer irritating cliches - but I guess that's part of the appeal. The cinematography, sound and editing, bent around creating a sense of disorientation and showing what blind people sense - taste, touch, sound - did a good job of conveying the "seeing, but not seeing" the story centres on.

A more detailed review to follow in the next Saint.

The madness as people rush the table to get autographs and pictures

Director Fernando Meirelles and Gale Garcia Bernal

PS: According to the director, everyone should go watch Black Sand, a documentary about blindness that was one of the strongest influences on the film.

Almost at Blindness Press Conference

11:04 - I'm writing from inside the press conference room, where I am definitely not supposed to be. All of the videographers are setting up their cameras, and the written press has yet to arrive. I've had my pass checked once by a security guard who is clearly not familiar with the security precautions against letting jounralists with yellow passes into anything, and hopefully I won't have it checked again.

There's about fifty massive videocameras and tripods set up behind me on this ledge, and all the journalists are jockeying for a better spot. Some have even began to setup on the stairs, and they may or may not be kicked off. Here's a picture - it's not great, because it was so dark, but it shows the limited space they have to work with:


As it turns out, attending a screening and it's press conference is practically impossible; in about forty minutes about 1000 journalists from the theatre are going to make a mad dash to get one of the 150 spots in the press conference room. The schedule was probably originally set up to allow journalists to attend conferences directy after screenings, but most of the journalists who will be able to get into this room will not have seen the film, which is unfortunate.

They've set up all the little water bottles and name placards that are way too small to read, so the "talent" should be arriving soon. Doug, a journalist from Colorado who snuck in here with me, has just informed me that "the talent" is a hoighty-toighty term that should be avoided; from now on I'll simply say "cast and crew".

11:37 - Still haven't been kicked out. This is a good sign. The scary security guard keeps pacing, so that makes me very nervous.

11:45 - They're letting people in and I'm still here.


Lens Envy

Yellow is an unhappy colour

I queued for Blindness for about an hour this morning and couldn't get in; about 1000 journalists were in line, and no one with a yellow pass made it into the theatre. Now I'm parked outside the press conference room, and will try to get in soon, but I don't have my hopes up. There's another screening of Blindness later tonight, and I'm hoping that everyone with superior passes will be too busy out at exclusive parties to attend. Right?

Last night there was a party at the Majestic for British filmmakers, and I was able to meet a couple working on their first feature film. It's called "Quick, slip me a bride", and awful title aside, it sounds like a good project - they're trying for bollywood-hollywood crossover appeal. They gave me the full pitch and one of their business cards, and I'm going to watch their short film later today. There's this racing quality to Cannes, and it's great that I'm exempt from all the industry competition smaller filmmakers are caught in. The beige-upholstered security force is the only thing I have to deal with every day, not trying to get a distribution deal for my tiny film. Meeting the filmmakers made the festival seem small--like people say it used to be--and definitely inflated my pride in The Saint (now considered a legitimate means of promotion for tiny films, apparently).

Right now I'll attempt to sneak into the press conference room, but I'll write later, once I've managed to watch a film. I think the security guards have gone on a break...so there's hope!

In Cannes

Right now I'm sitting in the wifi cafe at the huge Festival Palais, the hub of the festival where the screenings and press conferences take place. I just got my press pass - yellow, the lowest caste of pass, but that's fine with me - and my festival bag, with the catalogue of films and festival daily, the daily screening guide, something about a Europe day on the 19th, a mysterious blank air france booklet, a copy of the Cahier du Cinema, a practical guide, and a bunch of other guides in French that I don't understand. I think I'll spend this afternoon wading through the material and figuring out how to attend screenings.

One of the strangest things about the festival has been feeling like I'm living in a fishbowl. I've been videotaped about 10 times since I've been at the cafe by random journalists, who for some reason believe their viewers will enjoy footage of the internet cafe.

I'm hoping to go to Blindness, Three Monkeys, Changeling, and, of course, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is being shown out of competition, this week. I've put the descriptions of those films below; those available on IMDB aren't thorough enough.

Three Monkeys - dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkish)
"A family dislocated when small failings blow up into extravagant lies battles against the odds to stay together by covering up the truth... the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear it, or talk about it. But does playing 'three monkeys' invalidate the truth of its existence?" Just from the screenshots you can tell that it's been shot well, and I'm hoping that watching it will help me with my philosophy exam, which I'm petrified for.

Blindness - dir. Fernando Meirelles (Brazilian)
"A city is ravaged by an epidemic of instant 'white blindness'. Those first afflicted are quarantined by the authorities in an abandoned mental hospital where the newly created 'society of the blind' quickly breaks down. Criminals and the physically powerful prey upon the weak, hoarding the meager food rations and committing horrific acts." It's Lord of the Flies - but blind! Sounds interesting. The film is told from the perspective of the wife (Julianne Moore) of a blind man (Mark Ruffalo), who follows him into the quarantine, despite the fact that she herself is not blind.

Changeling - dir. Clint Eastwood (American)
"Lost Angeles, 1928: On a Saturday morning in a working-class suburb, Christine (Angelina Jolie) said goodbye to her son, Walter, and left for work. When she came home, she discovered he had vanished. A fruitless search ensues, and months later, a boy claiming to be the nine-year-old is returned . She knows he is not Walter." It doesn't sound that fascinating, but everyone here is buzzing about it, so I want to see what all the fuss is about.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hors competition) - dir. need you ask?
"The newest Indiana Jones adventure begins in the desert Southwest in 1957 - the height of the Cold War. Indy and his sidekick Mac have barely escaped a close scrape with nefarious Soviet agents on a remote airfield. Now, Professor Jones has returned home to Marshall College - only to find things have gone from bad to worse. His close friend and dean of the college explains that Indy's recent activities have made him the object of suspicion, and that the government has put pressure on the university to fire him. On his way out of town, Indiana meets rebellious young Mutt (Shia Labeouf), who carries both a grudge and a proposition for the adventurous archaeologist: If he'll help Mutt on a mission with deeply personal stakes, Indy could very well make one of the most spectacular archaeological finds in history..."

I wanted to see Soderbergh's Che, but I'll be writing my English exam back in St Andrews during the screening. The ultralong film tries to explain why Che remains a symbol of idealism and heroism. I also want to see Synecdoche, New York, because it validates all the time I've spent memorizing relatively useless literary terms.

That's about everything half-interesting that's going on right now; I will be sure to write again tomorrow when the festival officially opens, and the entire city "goes completely insane", according to the cab driver that brought me here this morning. I'm thrilled that I could wander around the palais before the madness starts, the theatres are stunning!

Update: Pictures of the Palais

Inside the Palais, with the Marche du Film downstairs and the press stuff upstairs

Red carpet being set up

Grand Theatre Lumiere being set up for the opening ceremony
View from the top (of the press conference table)

Nerdiest blog ever

I thought it would be interesting to look at the films by the nationality of the directors, to see what the demographics are like this year. I was surprised to find that there are more American-born directors than French, and that the Latin American contingent was so large. While the selection includes films by Turkish and Israeli directors, there aren't any African-directed films in the features category.





Folman and Ceylan constitute the Middle Eastern category; I wasn't sure how to classify them. Atom Egoyan I put down as Canadian, where he was educated and where Adoration was shot, but he was born in Egypt.

Official Selection

The films in competition at the festival were made public quite recently, and the list has just been updated. Blindness, by Fernando Meirelles, the Brazilian director who did City of God, will be opening the festival, and What Just Happened? (out of competition) by Barry Levinson , who has won Best Director at the Academy Awards twice, will close it. Steven Soderbergh's Che has been extended - in the last announcement, the movie was four hours long, but it has grown to 4 hours and 28 minutes since then. At this rate, it will be over 5 hours long by the time the festival starts. All the other films, even the latest Indiana Jones installment, are under three hours. The shortest film, My Rabit Hoppy by Anthony Lucas, is just three minutes.

A complete list of the films screening at the festival, including out of competition features, short films and the Cinefondation student films can be found here.

Under Construction

This blog will be up and running by May 12th, when Katie arrives in Cannes. Check back for updates, reviews and previews from the biggest film festival in the world.