Not even a worldwide recession can derail the juggernaut that is the Cannes Film Festival. In the first of his reports, Michael Dwyer, describes the opening movies and the atmosphere on the ground
IT’S PAYBACK TIME
Anxiety is in the air, the bars and the restaurants of Cannes. The festival is awash with rumours and speculation on the impact of the global recession on financing film production, even though distribution deals are being done and new projects are being announced by the hour.
It's all the more timely, then, that the Irish Film Board is hosting a debate on the international distribution landscape for independent film.Scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Irish Pavilion in Cannes, the event has the punning title, Death of a Sales Agent?
An alternative title might be Debts of a Sales Agent, given the number of film industry folk using the festival as an opportunity for face-to-face contact to pursue companies that reneged on payments for deals concluded on the festival circuit over the past year. They can run, but they can't hide in the hothouse atmosphere that is Cannes.
WHEN HACKS BOO
A common misconception is that the thousands of journalists covering Cannes spend our time soaking up sunshine and cocktails, donning evening wear and rubbing shoulders with Brad Pitt or Penélope Cruz, depending on one’s preference.
The reality is that covering Cannes begins every morning, weekends included, with an 8.30 screening of a Palme d’Or contender. There are many more movies to be seen every day, and reports to be written. Sometimes the schedule is so frenetic that dinner in the south of France is limited to fast food. I can already anticipate your sympathy.
As this grind continues over 12 long days and nights, patience gets limited and tempers get frayed. Many journalists take it out on the movies, turning vociferous, which must be disconcerting for the many film directors who hide at the back.
Notable booing victims have included Vincent Gallo's narcissistic The Brown Bunny, David Lynch's meandering Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Meand Lars von Trier's risible Dancer in the Dark.
DIRECTORS’ CUTS
Most of this year's competition movies dare to exceed the two-hour mark. Quentin Tarantino has the longest, Inglourious Basterds, which clocks in at 160 minutes. And Lars von Trier is back, venturing into the horror genre with Antichrist, which screens on Monday. Because he finds Cannes "too claustrophobic", von Trier is staying out in Antibes at the Hotel du Cap, the most expensive hotel on the Riviera. "It's a little bit like a refuge," he says.
I’M OFF TO THE ABU DHABI BEACH PARTY
Of course, it’s hard not to lighten up and take in some parties at Cannes, although it’s hardly a respite because everyone talks about movies here all the time. Space has been reserved in today’s diary for the Toronto festival’s annual cocktail reception, followed by the Abu Dhabi festival’s beach party, which promises “an evening of fine food and entertainment”.
It’s Irish party day tomorrow, with Northern Ireland Screen hosting lunch and the Irish Film Board greeting guests on the beach for early evening refreshments and a performance by gifted composer David Holmes.
THERE WILL BE NOISE
There's no fear of any of us dozing off at Sunday's 8.30am press screening. It's Vengeance, the latest thriller from Hong Kong action maestro Johnnie To. It will be loud.
OPNEING SCREENING: Up gets things off on a high
The first animated feature selected to open Cannes, and the first 3D presentation with that distinction, Upset an upbeat tone that delighted audiences as the marathon screening extravaganza got underway for the 62nd year. This wholly endearing movie ranks among the outstanding achievements from Pixar, the remarkably adventurous animation company now owned by Disney.
Uphas Monsters, Incdirector Pete Docter at the helm for a very funny, often touching and richly accomplished entertainment. Its 1930s-set prologue introduces Carl and Ellie as children drawn together by mutual admiration for explorer Charles Muntz. A wonderfully succinct - and wordless - sequence illustrates their lives from when they marry, fail to have children and dream of visiting Paradise Falls, a South American land said to be lost in time.
After Ellie's death, Carl (voiced with crusty aplomb by Ed Asner) retires from his job as a balloon seller. He is leading a lonely life when an unintended incident causes him to be placed in a retirement home. Carl impulsively draws on his vast stock of balloons to elevate his house into the skies and to set his controls for Paradise Falls, discovering too late that he has an eager motormouth Boy Scout on board. Their journey involves encounters with a giant multicoloured female snipe they name Kevin, a friendly talking dog, and Carl's tarnished idol himself, explorer Muntz.
Brimming with inventive narrative and visual ideas, Upmakes imaginative use of 3D that adds depth to the imagery and never resorts to the gimmicky potential of the process. Upwas not shown in competition at Cannes, which is good news for the 20 movies up for the Palme d'Or.
REVIEW: China uncovered
And now for something completely different. The press screening of Up was followed by the first competition entry, Spring Fever. It opens on playful banter between two young men who, within minutes, are passionately making love. It transpires that one is bisexual and that his wife has hired an opportunist who diligently follows and photographs them.
Such a scenario would not raise eyebrows in, say, a US or European movie, but Spring Feveris set in present-day China and depicts complicated sexual relationships with a candour that ensures it won't be released there. No stranger to controversy on home turf, director Lou Ye was officially banned from making movies for five years after his Summer Palace(2006) addressed the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square.
He received funding from French and Hong Kong sources for Spring Fever, which was shot covertly in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The film, which is drably grainy in some interior scenes, is daring and provocative on one level, and compelling up to the midway point, when it descends into implausibly overheated melodrama.
REVIEW: Francis's folly
Cannes wisely decided against accepting Francis Ford Coppola's in competition and offered a gala screening instead, which Coppola rejected. Offered last night's opening presentation slot in the prestigious sidebar, the Directors' Fortnight, he accepted.
Set in Buenos Aires, Tetrocharts the angst-riddled reunion of the Tetrocini brothers, 18-year-old Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich) and the much older Angelo (Vincent Gallo). Their father is a smugly successful orchestra conductor (Klaus Maria Brandauer) who long ago told Angelo that there is room for only one genius in the family.
In a movie full of shrill, outsized performances, newcomer Ehrenreich, looking like an even more baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio, makes Bennie the only bearable character in this trite, overblown yarn, while Gallo, more mannered than ever, chews the scenery.
Tetrois handsomely photographed in black-and-white, with detours into colour for flashbacks. That can't compensate for this folly of a film, which is wilfully eccentric, ludicrously contrived and either deeply pretentious or just incredibly naive.
REVIEW: Eclipse of the heart
There are no Irish productions in the official Cannes selection this year, but plenty in the crowded festival market. First to be screened was Conor McPherson's The Eclipse, trailing the best actor award for Ciarán Hinds at the recent Tribeca festival in New York and a distribution deal with Magnolia Pictures.
It's the third feature film from Irish writer-director McPherson, who collaborated on the screenplay with fellow playwright Billy Roche. Set and shot in Cobh, Co Cork, it features Hinds on prime form as a woodwork teacher mourning the death of his wife and experiencing ghostly visitations.
Volunteering as a driver at the town's literary festival, he finds himself drawn to a visiting author whose books deal with the supernatural and ends up competing for her attention with an obnoxiously arrogant novelist, played with relish by Aidan Quinn.
This is an intriguing and ultimately moving picture. The mood can shift abruptly from melancholy to startling in the space of a minute as McPherson navigates an absorbingly unpredictable route to resolution.
For more Cannes coverage, see the News pages of today’s Irish Times. Michael Dwyer continues his Cannes reports on Tuesday’s Arts page
