****

Directed by Takashi Miike

Starring Takao Osawa, Nanako Matsushima, Tatsuya Fujiwara

In competition, 125 min

Audience noise is not rare at Cannes. Attendees at press screenings have been booing and cheering at perfectly well-behaved films for half a century. It is, however, unusual to hear the sort of ecstatic whoop that accompanies cacophonous action sequences in films with big guns.

Such a bellow rocked the Lumière theatre about 20 minutes into Takashi Miike’s terrific new road thriller Shield of Straw. This week’s film from the absurdly prolific director – he must have been able to offer Cannes another two options — concerns a maniac recently arrested for the killing of an ailing oligarch’s granddaughter. The old man issues a spectacular bounty on the killer. A billion yen will go the way of anybody who can arrange for the culprit’s annihilation. There are other conditions that seek to impose a façade of legitimacy on the execution, but, suffice to say, the pronouncement soon causes chaos in the nation. In a sort of malign variation on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, every citizen plots to blow away the unrepentant Kunihide Kiyomaru (Tatsuya Fujiwara). A group of cops is ordered to escort the perp to Tokyo. They don’t much like the notion of protecting such a vile piece of work, but a sense of honour keeps them committed to the task (for the most part).

There is human drama here. Presented in Miike’s characteristic heightened style (one of several characteristic styles, it should be said), various citizens fling themselves at Kiyomaru for various, often justifiable reasons. The film does everything to make the cops’ position untenable and, in doing so, creates an original class of moral quandary. Few action movies have been so dedicated to the cause of liberal democracy and trial by jury. Shield of Straw is the anti-Dirty Harry.

The film is, however, mainly to be recommended for its classy action sequences. All those careering vehicles, huge explosions and man-to-man standoffs probably rule this fine film out of any serious shot at the Palme d’Or. But it was nice of the Cannes gang to invite it to the party.

***

Directed by James Toback

Starring Alec Baldwin, James Toback, Ryan Gosling, Jessica Chastain, Martin Scorsese, Janes Caan, Francis Ford Coppola

Cannes Classics, 100 min

What exactly is the latest project from James Toback? Is it one big elaborate gag? (Not entirely) Is it a monstrous ego trip? (Almost certainly.) Does it have anything to tell us about the film industry? (Now and then.) Whatever we call it, the film will appeal to all committed  cineastes.

Screening in the Cannes Classics sidebar, Seduced and Abandoned (also the title of a 1964 film that competed at Cannes) finds the confident Mr Toback, director of Fingers, writer of Bugsy, embarking on Odyssey with his old pal Alec Baldwin. The two men have (or pretend to have) a notion to make an updating of Last Tango In Paris involving two Americans adrift in war-torn Iraq. Mr Baldwin will take on the Brando role. Neve Campbell tentatively agrees to step into Maria Schneider’s shoes. Their pitch primed and ready, they set off for the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

The exercise is really just an excuse to ponder the current state of the film industry. Along the way, they rustle up an impressive array of talking heads. For the 1000th time, the always agreeable Martin Scorsese discusses his decision to abandon the priesthood for film-making. Francis Ford Coppola is as energetic as ever. One particularly money-happy producer, lurking within the bunker that is the film Cannes market, denounces the festival itself as high-brow nonsense and suggest that what the team needs is a proper star like “Gerry Butler”.

As events progress, the fate of the largely imaginary project seems less and less important. We laugh as a realistic producer break it to Alec that, though popular, he’s not really the fellow to launch a blockbuster. The notorious Taki Theodoracopulos, the Greek-born socialite and journalist, entertains the guys to a fine lunch, but seems wary of producing his wallet.

The final conclusions fail to astonish: studios are only interested in really expensive films and really cheap ones; financiers take fewer risks than they used to; you need a “name” to drag in the big bucks. But the constant conflict between ego and artistic ambition that characterises the two men’s relationship makes for hugely entertaining viewing.

Now it’s back to the nonsense that is the world’s greatest film festival.

*****

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Starring Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Justin Timberlake. F Murray Abraham

In competition, 105 min

The latest project from the Coen Brothers sounded so promising one sensed the audience at Cannes watching terrified through its collective splayed fingers. Based on the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk, a kind of John the Baptist to Bob Dylan’s Jesus, the film hangs around Greenwich Village in the months (days, in fact) before the folk scene properly took off. It features Justin Timberlake as one member of a faux-Peter, Paul and Mary. John Goodman spouts furiously while being driven northwards by a crazed beatnik. It’s got one of film’s best ever cats. If something so potentially delicious had not turned out to be a triumph then we may as well have packed up and flown home.

We have good news. The film really delivers. It’s hard to position Inside Llewyn Davis in the Coen canon. It does not sit on the same shelf as the zany ones: The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, Burn After Reading. It is too wispy to qualify as one of their serious pictures: No Country For Old Men, A Serious Man, True Grit. You might reasonably argue that it offers a digestible blend of all the brothers’ most agreeable flavours.

The largely unknown Oscar Isaac plays the title character, a cantankerous, self-obsessed folk singer from the outer boroughs. Fellow warbler Jean Berkey (Carey Mulligan) — quickly revealed to be pregnant by him — offers up a series of hilariously furious commentaries on his numerous defects. He is, she explains, like some horrible version of King Midas in reverse: everything he touches turns to ordure.

After the first half of a framing sequence that sees Llewyn being beaten up outside the fabled Gaslight Café, we flit back to find him waking up in a friend’s house on the Upper West Side. He mistakenly lets the cat out, then allows the door to close behind him and is forced to carry the poor beast on his search for the next night’s couch. He watches Jean — now uncharacteristically sweet — sing wistful tunes with Timberlake’s rising celebrity and a buttoned-up military man. Eventually, he embarks on a road trip to Chcago.

The film, shot in soft focus by Bruno Delbonnel, is perfectly pitched between nostalgic longing for a much-lauded era — the first few months of 1961 — and gentle, sly cynicism. The Coens quite rightly show confidence in the film’s songs, curated by T Bone Burnett, and allow them to play melodically to their conclusion. There’s a bit of the Kingston Trio here. There is some of Peggy Seeger there. Irish eyes will shine at a brief, respectfully funny pastiche of The Clancy Brothers singing The Auld Triangle.

The cynicism is largely conveyed through the character of Davis himself. Played with overpowering weariness by an actor on the way up, Llewyn is the sort of man who will, when offered an easy way of doing the right thing, still invariably do the worst thing imaginable.

Yet he is not any kind of monster. The script makes it clear that he is still deeply troubled by the recent suicide of his former singing partner. The tolerance that others (though not Jean) display towards him confirms that deep beneath the frayed corduroy jacket there beats a heart worth cherishing.

Deeply in love with a vanished New York City, intoxicated by period detail, the picture confirms that, after a tiny lull in the early part of this century, the Coens have surged back to, once again, become the most consistently reliable American film-makers of their generation. The film is funny when it’s sad and serious when it’s frivolous. It will surely pick up some sort of prize here in a week’s time.

We do, however, have some bad news. Aware that they probably have a good shot at Oscars, the distributors have decided to hold back the release of Inside Llewyn Davis until blasted December. They’re probably correct about those Oscars. But that doesn’t make it right. Begin counting the days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

**

Directed by Arnaud Desplechin

Starring Benicio del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Elya Baskin, Gina McKee

In competition, 120 min

Ah, that’s more like it. After a stream of pretty decent films — and one proper stormer in Like Father, Like Son — the Cannes competition finally delivers what we’ve been waiting for: a genuine dud. Even those who believe that Arnaud Desplechin has been somewhat overpraised for bourgeois soap operas such as Kings and Queen and A Christmas Tale will be surprised by exactly the sort of bad film he has decided to make here. The informatively titled Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) is as boring as it is pointless and as ludicrous as it is drab.

The film is based on the the true story of a native American who, in the aftermath of the second World War, underwent analysis in Kansas to disentangle traumatic stress disorder. On the evidence of this film, the psychiatrist was an overdressed loon, prone to erratic hand gestures and at home to a French accent that would give Pepe le Pew pause to snigger. To this date we have thought  Mathieu Amalric incapable of giving a bad performance. But Desplechin proves his impressive way with performers by extracting an total stinker from the gifted Frenchman. If the character is supposed to be funny, he is surely not supposed to be funny in quite this fashion.

French viewers can, at least, relax in the knowledge that one of their own is bouncing national stereotypes into the red. Benicio de Toro may have “some Indigenous American ancestry”, but he still looks and sounds like a Puerto Rican. It’s not quite like the old days when Yul Brynner or Anthony Quinn were asked to play any required nationality. It would, however, have been nice to cast a Native American actor in a Native American role.

This is not to suggest that any such minor tweaks would save the film. Amalric raves. Del Toro mumbles. Gena McKee turns up to stand around awkwardly in a tweed jacket. At the end of it all, we get no closer to understanding why these interactions should be of any interest to a modern audience. We learn nothing new about Native American culture. We learn nothing new about psychotherapy. We do learn that Desplechin would be best advised to never direct in English again, but that  lesson hardly justifies two hours of unremitting tedium.

The film does seem to have some supporters. But this surely cannot be a serious contender for prizes.

****

Directed by Clio Bernard

Starring Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Sean Gilder

Directors’ Fortnight, 91 min

In recent years the Directors’ Fortnight — tucked away a few hundred metres east of the Palais — has been punching significantly above its weight. This year, one film from that sidebar has already sent dangerous degrees of positive buzz throughout the Cannes networks.

Clio Bernard made her debut with The Arbor, a flawless, sui generis study of Yorkshire playwright Andrea Dunbar. Her follow up is not quite as wilfully peculiar, but it tears just as aggressively at the heartstrings. The Selfish Giant is presented as a loose adaptation of the similarly titled fairy story by Oscar Wilde. But the connections are so oblique that, were the film not so titled, even the most fervent Wildean would have trouble identifying the source material.

Bernard will, however, have to face up to a few comparisons with Ken Loach’s Kes. Set near Bradford (just up the road from Kes’s Barnsley), the picture follows the meandering, hopeless adventures of two young men from the class we now euphemistically refer to as “socially excluded”. Arbor (Conner Chapman) is compact, hyper-active, aggressive and smarter than his school believes him to be. Swifty (Shaun Thomas) is large, kind and gifted with horses. As in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the smaller, less thoughtful partner is the one who holds the whip-hand. Largely at Arbor’s urging, the two boys — after being asked to stay away from school — set out on a scheme to rob wiring for a dodgy scrap-metal merchant (the reliably scary Sean Gilder). Danger comes their way.

The film is, perhaps, a little short on structure in its mid-section. But the flawless standard of the acting and the impossibly moving ending more than make up for any such deficiencies. With great skill, Bernard takes an apparently unlikable child — Arbor swears at his mum and even attempts to steal back stolen goods — and manages to drape him in pathos. There are hints early on that he has been diagnosed with a behavioural disorder, but, even without those nods, the young lad would emerge as a tragic figure. Chapman brings furious energy to the part, while Thomas deals in touching solidity. All this is shot by Mike Eley in impressive shades of gun metal grey.

The film is not entirely without hope. But, when set beside Wilde’s quasi-Christian tale, its refusal to offer easy routes to redemption seem particularly stark. Very powerful stuff.

****

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda

Starring Masaharu Fukuyama, Yōko Maki, Jun Kunimura, Machiko Ono, Kirin Kiki, Isao Natsuyagi

In competition, 120 min

The bookies probably still have Asghar Fahadi’s The Past ahead in the race for the Palme d’Or. But the warm audience response given to the latest film from Hirokazu Kore-Eda suggests that the Japanese wizard may stand a sporting chance of taking home the trophy on Sunday week. The film is not always subtle. Indeed, there is nothing in the structure or tone to dispel fears of a lachrymose Hollywood remake. But it manages to be properly sad in a way that only Japanese film-makers manage.

Like Father Like Son follows the story of two couples who, when their children are starting elementary school, discover that the tykes were switched shortly after their birth. Contact is made and they face up to an impossible moral quandary: do they hold on to the boys they have nurtured or switch the children and attempt to reboot family life?

In less careful hands, the crude binary contrast between families would seem unbearable. Ryota and Midori are well-off, buttoned-up and blinkered in their ambitions. Yukari and Yudai are free-spirited, lower middle-class and generous with emotion. At first Ryota, a businessman who has made little time for his child, plots furiously to grab hold of both children. He sniffs at the other family’s apparent recklessness. But, once the decision has been made, he begins to understand the flaws in his outlook.

So, yes, it is all a bit Cat’s in the Cradle. And regular outbreaks of Bach’s Goldberg Variations — the second most overused piece of music in cinema after Samuel Barber’s Adagio — add to the suspicion that we may be at home to cheese. Nothing could be further from the truth. A master manipulator posing as an art-house realist, Hirokazu nudges his cast towards performances that swell with honesty and integrity. After suffering through a wash of nihilism in the Official Competition so far, it is a pleasure to experience a film-maker so at home to big-hearted humanism. Shooting in unhurried style in a sedate palette, he demonstrates an affection for people — and for children in particular — that is going out of fashion in high-end art-house cinema. Ozu had it. So does Miyazaki. Hirokazu Kore-Eda looks set to gain a seat beside those masters.

Our favourite film in the competition to date.

****

Directed by Jia Zhangke

Starring Baoqiang Wang, Jiang Wu, Zhao Tao

In competition, 133 min

Only a very deluded fellow would argue that the official competition has, to date, offered an optimistic take on society. The latest film from Jia Zhangke, however, really excels in the field of applied misery. Previously best known for the relatively restrained Still Life, Jia takes aim at consumerism and corruption in a film that incorporates stories from different regions of China and different sections of society. A mineworker tweeters into psychotic mayhem after learning that this boss has somehow syphoned off enough money to afford a private jet and a delicious, luxury motorcar. A woman working in a massage parlour is forced to defend herself from the unwelcome advances of two well-heeled thugs. And so forth.

The opening sequence sums up the film’s nihilistic approach very nicely. A man on a moped is stopped by three muggers armed with hatchets. He produces a revolver and coolly kills them all. The moral — if that is the word — could not be clearer: society is governed by those with the biggest, most powerful weapons.

The picture is a very strange blend of deadened arthouse anti-drama and genre-friendly hyper violence. When the woman in the sauna is propelled into action, she responds in the fashion of a hero from a bold martial arts picture. There is little doubt that Jia is repelled by violence. Nonetheless, the outbreaks of bloody chaos are filmed with an uncomfortable enthusiasm that seems calculated to set the heart racing. Michael Haneke would greatly appreciate that quandary.

The director defines no grand design or no pointers as to any possible solutions. The film is mainly concerned with diagnosing the disease rather than offering any cures. Shot in grey shades, featuring some heightened performances, it remains, however, horribly engaging from its grim beginning to its utterly hopeless ending.

A sobering experience.

This heavily made-up mob were in town to further efforts to crowd-source a documentary entitled Occupy Cannes. If you want to give them a few centimes, I am sure they will stretch the deadline and allow you to do so. The film is described as “a documentary about independents at the Cannes Film Festival”. Away from the posh folk in the main competition, there is certainly a great deal of independents about. Every second lunatic in every second restaurant has a bag of flyers promoting his or her latest dubious opus.

By coincidence, there is a great deal of chatter in Cannes concerning a possible remake of The Toxic Avenger starring a former governor of California. No, not Jerry Brown, you fool. It seems as if Arnold Schwarzenegger is seriously considering appearing in the film. Annoyingly, reports suggest he will not be playing the beast himself, but a less dirty creature who trains “Toxie” to use his powers for good rather than evil. It sounds excellent. We hope to see it compete for the Palme d’Or in 2015 or so.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2. Identify the director on a desolate set.

3. Which 1995 film was adapted from The Sheep Pig by Dick King-Smith?

4. “Don’t Answer The Phone. Don’t Open The Door. Don’t Try To Escape.” The tagline to which horror hit?

5. “Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.” The first rule of which famous (notorious?) manifesto?

6. “Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced robot evolution into the NEXUS phase.” The first line of the script to which classic?

7. What links Verona Beach, Boulevard de Clichy, Faraway Downs and West Egg?

8. What links Ran (1985), My Kingdom (2002) and A Thousand Acres (1977)?

9. First commercially released Mickey Mouse cartoon. Pattinson and Witherspoon travel with a menagerie. The adventures of Manny the mammoth. The three states of what?

10. Which two films currently tie for the most number of Oscar nominations? (And, for an extra point, how many?)

ANSWERS

1. Fast and Furious

2. Ridley Scott

3. Babe

4. Scream

5. Dogme ‘95

6. Blade Runner

7. Principal locations of the last four Baz Luhrmann films (Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, Australia, The Great Gatsby.

8. All derived from William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

9. Water (Steamboat Willie, Water for Elephants, Ice Age)

10. All About Eve and Titanic (14)

Oh hurry up and take your seat. Look how early the Irish Times is.

Ms Coppola’s photograph graces the lobby of the theatre. A full review of her picture will appear tomorrow. Suffice to say it will do well enough. It’s better than the director’s useless Somewhere. But doesn’t quite count as a fully fledged “return to form”. You can, at least, enjoy some good music: the film kicks off with a number from Sleigh Bells. You can also laugh at a celebrity. One small performance was so extraordinarily terrible that I immediately thought: now this guy must be somebody or other. He was. He was that Gavin Rossdale from that band. Go back to doing what you do, sir.