Once again, the Cannes film festival has unveiled a gorgeous list. The only
disappointments, for some, will be the fact that Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master
and Terrence Malick’s new project were not included, reportedly because they were
not ready in time – although the idea of Malick actually having a new film completed
just one year after the last head-spinning epic is fantastically improbable: as if he had
moved up to a Roger Corman level of productivity. Some observers will be
disappointed that Stoker, by the South Korean director Park Chan-wook has not been
selected, likewise Wong Kar-wai’s The Grand Master – although the festival could
sneak in a late entry here and there.
The relative absence of women in the list of directors is, however, pretty dismal: the
competition is an all-male affair, and there are just two women film-makers in Un
Certain Regard: Sylvie Verheyde, with Confession of a Child of the Century, and
Catherine Corsini, with Three Worlds.
Challenging … Marion Cotillard in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, screening in
competition at Cannes film festival 2012
It’s still a mouthwatering selection: new films by Jacques Audiard, Lee Daniels,
Carlos Reygadas, Andrew Dominik, Abbas Kiarostami, Wes Anderson, Hong Sang-
soo, and Ken Loach in the main lineup, with Yousry Nasrallah’s After the Battle
tackling the Egyptian revolution and the Arab spring. Bernardo Bertolucci’s new film
Me and You is screening out of competition – a dark two-hander, based on a novella
by Niccolò Ammaniti, about a young man helping his half-sister to beat heroin
addiction. Takashi Miike’s The Legend of Love and Sincerity and Dario Argento’s
Dracula are showing at midnight screenings – events that are bound to be red-hot
tickets. The Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Palme-winner for his ghost
parable Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, has a special screening for
his new project, Mekong Hotel. Pablo Trapero’s new film White Elephant is in Un
Certain Regard.
Michael Haneke, left, with his stars on the set of Amour
One auteur with a virtual freehold on the competition list is Michael Haneke, the
master of challenging and confrontationally difficult film-making – the idea of a
Haneke film getting put into Un Certain Regard, or even rejected outright, is pretty
much unthinkable. Cannes festivalgoers are steeling themselves for his new work,
about a woman, played by Isabelle Huppert, and her relationship with her elderly
parents, Georges and Anne, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.
The couple are trying to deal with the effects of Anne’s recent stroke. The film is
entitled Amour, or Love, and it should be expected that this purely ironic; certainly
its audience will be waiting for some single, devastatingly shocking moment – but his
previous work, the Palme d’Or-winning The White Ribbon, was not exactly like that
and appeared to show a softer, even humorous side. Amour intriguingly features the
British opera singer-turned-actor William Shimell, who appeared in Kiarostami’s
film Certified Copy.
Jacques Audiard’s De rouille et d’os, or Rust and Bone, is one of the most keenly
anticipated titles; adapted from the 2005 short story collection by the Canadian
author Craig Davidson, it stars Marion Cotillard, and tells the story of a bareknuckle
fighter and someone losing limbs to an Orca whale being trained in a marine show
park. The unsubtitled trailer is below, but this perhaps does not quite convey what is
thought to be the fiercely challenging nature of the movie.
David Cronenberg has long been a favourite of Cannes, and his new film, an
adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 novella Cosmopolis, follows a billionaire Wall
Street trader on his strange, slow and frequently impeded journey through
Manhattan in a lumberingly unmanoeuvrable stretch limo.
Given the title of one of Cronenberg’s best-known works, should we wonder about
the imminence of a crash? DeLillo’s novel was written before the financial meltdown,
but Cronenberg may wish to create a post-crash interpretation, or draw out
unsettling auguries already in the text. Robert Pattinson appears to have a vaguely
vampiric aura in the leading role. Cronenberg’s previous picture, the psychoanalytic
drama A Dangerous Method, was considered to have continued the director’s
evolutionary progress away from the body-horror effects of his early work and
towards something more conventional. Actually, Cosmopolis looks a little more
challenging than that.
Like Someone in Love is another film by the Cannes equivalent of a “made guy”.
Abbas Kiarostami, a Palme d’Or winner for his 1997 film Taste of Cherry, returns
with an intriguing-looking film set in Japan, his second fiction feature to be shot
outside Iran. It’s the story of a young woman working as a prostitute and her
relationship with a client. The trailer is up here:
Anything by Kiarostami is a must-see, although I have to say I found some tonal
uncertainties in his previous film, the Italian-set Certified Copy, with Juliette
Binoche and William Shimell. It will be fascinating to see how the director handles
the new cultural challenge he has set himself, and us.
Many festival observers had been asking themselves if Britain would get a
competition entry, and even wondering about the longshot possibility of a slot for
Ben Wheatley and his new film, Sightseers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t look to be
happening, or at least not so far. But Ken Loach, the British director to whom Cannes
is always loyal, is back with The Angels’ Share, his Scottish comedy written by
longtime collaborator Paul Laverty. It’s about some guys in trouble with the law who
find themselves involved in the whisky business.
Cannes has been a showcase for Loach’s gentler, more comic side recently – in the
form of his 2009 film Looking for Eric, for instance – and this film does seem to be
the one offering the most conventionally obvious lighter moments in the festival.
Loach is perhaps channelling the spirit of Alexander Mackendrick’s 1949 film Whisky
Galore.
Walter Salles’ account of Kerouac’s On The Road looks, on the face of it, to be similar
to his movie version of Che Guevara’s The Motorcycle Diaries, a road movie which is,
in the time-honoured manner, an internal journey of self-discovery. (However, Che
himself might have rejected that Hollywoodised egocentric approach to his own
journey, which was significantly about the discovery of injustice and exploitation in
the external world.) Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund are Sal and It, and Kristen
Stewart plays Marylou – the female “third wheel”, perhaps, in this intensely male
odyssey.
The 89-year-old Alain Resnais is now a virtual folk memory of Cannes and French
cinema, and a testament to the extraordinary tenacity and staying power of what
might be loosely called the “new wave” generation. His new film in Competition is
Vous n’avez encore rien vu, or You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet, a loose reworking of
Jean Anouilh’s Eurydice, about a group of actors gathered in the house of a dead
dramatist, awaiting the reading of his will. The movie features a blue-chip French
cast, including Michel Piccoli, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny and Lambert Wilson.
Resnais’s films have looked to me a little stately recently, but they have been
rapturously received, and the agility and wit of Resnais’s creativity is a marvel: his
presence at Cannes is always a treat.
I am excited to see the new film from Thomas Vinterberg, Jagten, or The Hunt, in
competition at this year’s festival. After the sensational impression he made with his
1998 film Festen, or The Celebration, a touchstone of the fledgling Dogme 95
movement, Vinterberg arguably did not deliver on his promise and has often seemed
to be missing in action. His 2010 film Submarino – a very good film that featured in
Berlin – did not find space in British cinemas. The Hunt stars Mads Mikkelsen as a
divorced man in a small country town who is accused of abusing a child. It sounds
like a tough watch, of course, but in all probability a rewarding one.
Leos Carax is a mercurial presence in French cinema and in Cannes, and he returns
with his first feature since the exasperating but diverting Pola X, which was in
competition back in 1999. Holly Motors stars Denis Levant as DL, a man who is able
to switch between different “parallel lives”. Kylie Minogue has a role, playing an
actor.
Every year, Cannes festival regulars nervously scan the competition list for the film
that’s going to shock and upset everyone. The main contender has to be the new film
from the Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl: Paradies. Like his earlier, very controversial
film Import Export, this film is bifurcated, a dramatic diptych with two stories. The
first, Sugar Mama, is about a middle-aged woman called Teresa who travels to Kenya
in the hope of finding a younger lover. The second story, called Melanie, is about
Teresa’s overweight teenage daughter, who is packed off to weight-loss camp while
Teresa is away and finds herself involved with the camp’s middle-aged director.
So: another colossal buffet of cinematic prestige from Cannes, a festival so spoiled for
choice that it can afford to put brilliant and well-known directors and heavy-hitters
on the sidebars, and one that always promises something new.
Selection of Cannes Film trailers here:
www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2012/apr/19/cannes-film-festival-2012-lineup