One of the most conventional strange films ever made

A film about a man who goes barmy and begins talking via a beaver puppet could really push all the boundaries. Mel Gibson's comeback isn't that film, writes DONALD CLARKEin Cannes

The Beaver **

Directed by Jodie Foster. Starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Cherry Jones

Mel Gibson had threatened to turn up at Cannes to promote Jodie Foster’s latest middle-brow soap opera. But, at the last minute, it was announced that he had other plans. I can’t imagine what he’s up to.

The film is about a man who goes completely barmy and begins talking to his family via – and only via – a mangy glove-puppet. It’s not as if there are any parallels with Gibson’s own home life. Are there?

The Beaver, which is screening out of competition, sounds like a strange project. But, truth be told, it's not nearly strange enough. Gibson plays an executive at a toy firm whose mid-life crisis is fast developing into a complete nervous breakdown. After finding the beaver puppet in a skip, he makes his way to a hotel room and makes several farcical attempts to kill himself.

At his lowest ebb, he spies the dead-eyed beast and discovers a route towards equilibrium. Talking through the toy in what sounds like a bad Ray Winstone impersonation, Gibson finds that all his most series neuroses melt away.

He (or, rather, the aquatic rodent) can now speak reasonably to his wife (Foster) and he is finally able to bond with his young son. His elder boy (Anton Yelchin), is, however, not buying into the bizarre therapy.

What we have here is a very conventional self-help drama that happens to feature Mel Gibson with a beaver on his hand.

Scored to those jaunty pizzicato and accordion strains that demand the viewer get with the quirky, The Beavercomes across like an episode from a mid-ranking HBO comedy drama (the sort you wouldn't bother taping).

Gibson does a good job in the opening 20 minutes, but, as the picture creaks on, the conceit wears increasingly thin and the film becomes ever more ordinary. A safe director, who exhibits no desire to push the boundaries, Foster even fails to make something unsettling of the sex scenes.

Still, as a cosy, post-American Beauty family drama, The Beaveris efficient enough. One of the most conventional strange films ever made.

Making movies - and money - at Cannes

READING REPORTS in newspapers such as this, the naive punter could be led into thinking that people go to Cannes to see films. Some do, of course, but many more come to make contacts, initiate deals and construct cinematic castles in the air. Move a few hundred metres away from the Palais des Festivals and you encounter a colony of luxury hotels, each packed to the ceiling with eager industry professionals.

Andrew Lowe, the Irish producer of This Must be the Place, which screens in competition on Friday, owns up to being a veteran of the networking wars.

“I spend most of my time talking to people,” he says. “I very rarely get to actually see a film and, if I do, it’s usually one of ours. It’s very much a people business. You’ve got to remind people you’re there.”

As if to prove the worth of such meetings, Lowe, one of the founders of Element Pictures and a producer on such films as The Wind that Shakes the Barley,explains that the seeds of his involvement with This Must be the Placewere, indeed, sewn at Cannes in 2009.

Paolo Sorrentino, the film’s director and co-writer, had the notion to make a film about a middle-aged rock star living in some English-speaking country. Initially, he was thinking of making the film in the UK. A year after that first encounter, Andrea Occhipinti – Sorrentino’s producer – met up with Lowe and his team at the 2010 bash.

“We had a meeting with Andrea and his people in their villa and they cooked us pasta. We had a two-hour lunch and we talked about everything – what the deal might be, what they might do, what we might do. It really was the most civilised meeting we’ve ever had at Cannes. And that was that.”

Lowe confirms that although things happen at the relevant festivals in Venice, Berlin and Toronto, nowhere compares to Cannes when it comes to making business contacts.

“I love being in Venice, say. But there is no real business done there. Cannes is the one market that everyone comes to. I bump into lots of people that I never see anywhere else in the world. A lot of the time it’s just random conversations. You run into somebody at a bar and you just start talking about what they’re doing and suddenly something happens.”

Wander into any of the big hotels – the Carlton, the Martinez, the Grand, Le Hoity Toity – and you will see herds of producers flowing chaotically into one another. Everybody pretends to know everybody. Everybody seems to be everybody’s best pal. It’s easy to be cynical (as I’ve just demonstrated).

But, as Lowe confirms, it is in such semi-informal gatherings that many of the big deals get initiated.

“You do have these crazy speed-dating style meetings, where everybody is running to everybody else for a half-hour chat. Much of those are set up in advance. Then you have the receptions – the Irish Film Board party, for example – and then you have those late-night gatherings, where you make connections that may take years to eventually develop. It’s hard to underestimate the importance of those things.”

Not everybody is on the level.

Any producer will tell you that Cannes is awash with shysters, chancers and maniacs. Too many dull-witted kids with hefty inheritances fancy themselves as movie moguls. A great deal of smoke is blown up a great many unmentionable orifices.

“You meet a lot of tyre-kickers,” Lowe says, conjuring up the image of an uncommitted shopper for second-hand cars. “You quickly develop an antenna for bullshit. Cannes more than any other market attracts that. You see a lot of wannabes. The business attracts a lot of people who have a lot of money and want to get into film-making as a sort of hobby.”

Having shed the wannabes and the tyre-kickers, Lowe has ended up making a very intriguing piece of work.

Supported by the Irish Film Board, co-produced by Element with their Italian partners, This Must be the Placestars Sean Penn as the ragged-haired protagonist. Living in Dublin at the start of the film, he becomes bored with his lot and sets off in hunt of a fugitive Nazi. Anybody who has seen the director's Il Divoor The Family Friendwill agree that this sounds like business as usual for this eccentric film-maker.

So, does it really matter if you get your film in the race for the Palme d’Or at Cannes?

On Friday night, the photographers will be out in force as Sean Penn makes his way down the red carpet. Hardcore cineastes will all be paying attention. One might, however, reasonably wonder what effect the gala screening will have on Joe Box-office.

"For a film like this, we always understood that it was all about Cannes," Lowe says. "Paolo would have been enormously disappointed if it wasn't ready for Cannes. Certainly, in many European countries it does matter. Maybe not so much in Ireland. Then again you look at The Wind that Shakes the Barley. When it won the Palme d'Or, that gave it a real boost. It went from being an arts and culture story to a news story."

So, in short, it does matter.

“Venice is a terrific festival. Toronto is a significant festival. But there is nothing to compare with Cannes.”

Le Havre ****

Directed by Aki Kaurismäki Starring André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Blondin Miguel

There aren’t many directors – not nearly enough, anyway – who make this world their own with every film. Aki Kaurismäki, the eccentric Finnish director, is very definitely one of that bunch. For several decades, he has been imposing his characteristic class of wry absurdity on an impressively varied array of stories.

Le Havreis another small classic to add to the oeuvre. The picture follows an elderly shoeshine (the delightful André Wilms) who, while plying his trade in Le Havre, happens upon a young African immigrant with ambitions to make his way to London.

While his wife receives treatment in hospital for a potentially terminal disease, the kindly hero hatches schemes to pay for the boy’s passage.

That synopsis suggests a searing social-realistic drama. In the hands of, say, the Dardennes brothers (up against Kaurismäki in the main Cannes competition) the story would, no doubt, have been transformed into something unremittingly harrowing.

But Kaurismäki somehow manages to develop an endlessly charming, frequently hilarious fairy tale from unlikely material.

Shooting largely on pointedly artificial studio sets, he conjures up an antique world of neighbourhood shops, cheery bars and simple, but welcoming, parlours. The dialogue is nicely off-beam. The performances are curiously skewed.

Such was the waft of good spirits radiating from the screen that the audience managed to raise actual cheers when the credits rolled.