So, what's the most momentous recent event on the international stage?
Barack Obama's chat with Raoul Castro, Hillary Clinton's announcement that she wouldn't mind being President of the United States or the official line-up for the 68th Cannes Film Festival?
On this site, we'll consider that to be a rhetorical question.
Ingrid Bergman -- who would have been 100 this year -- is on the poster and festival attendees will only FEEL as if they're centenarians come closing night. Apropos of cinema and longevity, eternally spry Portuguese director Manoel De Oliveira may have died recently at age 106 but a new book suggests that your chances of making it to 100 go up if, like the Seventh-day Adventists of Loma Linda, California, you never set foot in a movie theatre.
Have I made the suspense last? Festival director Thierry Fremaux is a world class film enthusiast but he's also a French-style showman. The annual announcement of who and what will be contending for an Oscar takes a swift 10 minutes or so. The Cannes Official Selection press conference in Paris went almost twice as long before so much as mentioning a film title and lasted a full hour.
France now has a Minister in charge of Simplification for the Nation -- maybe he could make a few suggestions next year?
Fremaux decided to try and dig himself out of the amusing verbal cul-de-sac he'd entered when he'd announced 2 days prior that "This year we decided to open the festival with a good film."
Some might call that common sense, others might call that an innovation. Because the folks behind the Opening Night film are expected to pitch in (a lot) to help underwrite the Opening Night dinner, there have been some shall we say, interesting, choices over the years. But rarely an outright clunker.
With certified "good film" Standing Tall French actress, screenwriter and director Emmanuelle Bercot finds herself the answer to future film buff trivia nights as the only person to have directed the (non-Competing) Opening film which will be followed by her (apparently co-starring) role opposite Vincent Cassel in Maiwenn’s Mon roi a love story slated later in the Competition, Standing Tall is coming out that night in French cinemas and theatres so equipped can also simulcast the Opening Ceremonies.
Standing Tall is a look at efforts by concerned adults to keep a disadvantaged young man from making bad choices. It's supposed to be particularly relevant in the wake of the terror attacks perpetrated by home-grown terrorists that left 17 people dead in and around Paris in early January. (And the Festival plans to schedule a tribute to the slain cartoonists of satirical weekly "Charlie Hebdo" who were the subject in 2008 of the rather good documentary It's Hard Being Loved By Jerks, which premiered in Cannes.)
The world press gathers annually on the French Riviera in search of glamourous photo opportunities, juicy gossip and tantalising announcements of films yet to be made but only the French press writes up every film every day for 12 days. You know, the actual movies themselves -- what they're about, whether they're good or not, that sort of thing, in a style aimed at rank and file movie-goers. (The English-language trade papers, of course, weigh in on every title but with an eye toward commercial prospects. For most French outlets, thank goodness, it still matters little whether a given film is widely sold or turns a profit. Cinema is a means of personal expression and every film has the right to exist unless proven otherwise. Hurray, amen, etc.)
Shrewd programming includes a few titles that might grab headlines. Of The Lobster an English-language film by Greece's Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) Fremaux said "Uh, this belongs to the tradition of films where you don't quite understand everything that's going on," eliciting laughter. "It's extravagantly inventive. We celebrate filmmakers who do things differently. It's one of the most original and mysterious films we have."
Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty premiered in Cannes in 2013 and made it all the way to the Best Foreign Language Oscar in addition to being voted European Film of the Year by the European Film Academy.
Fremaux said of the gorgeous ode to Rome and to writer's block, The Great Beauty was really 'The Great Vulgarity' and this year Sorrentino is back with Youth -- which is about old age."
Australians perked up at the news that native son Justin Kurzel will be in Competition with his film Macbeth. I have no idea what it's about.
Unlike Shakespeare, I could tool around on the Internet looking for clues but Fremaux advises against trusting anything you read on the Web: "Things get printed on the Internet and then everybody repeats them and it's just silly because films that are supposed to be a sure bet for the Festival haven't even begun shooting yet -- and then you read articles complaining that this or that title didn't make the cut, except that we knew those movies were never even contenders because there was no way they'd be ready in time."
With digital filmmaking, Fremaux admits, the decision-making has gotten more and more down to the proverbial wire. Some of the things on the list made available at noon had been decided at two that same morning!
It’s been known for some time now that the European premiere of Mad Max: Fury Road will be an official but non-competing presentation. A note to title-choosers: While native speakers of English have no trouble pronouncing this one, I've heard a fair number of French people call it "Furry Road."
There is only one film by a first-time director in the Competition, Hungarian Laszlo Nemes' Son of Saul. It is also the only film so far slated to be projected on 35mm. In this, the 120th anniversary year of France's Lumiere Bros., having perfected the Cinematographe, celluloid is still welcome -- if rare --- in Cannes.
Fremaux pointed out that Cannes was the first major Festival to accommodate digitally made films -- an iteration of Star Wars and the sneaky "Russian Ark" -- before the technology was strong enough to fill the big screen. "When we extend an invitation to a filmmaker we state that the film may arrive in Cannes on 35mm or as a DCP (Digital Cinema Package.) Every projection booth -- including the one for public screenings on the beach -- is set up for film. If they weren't ,Quentin Tarrantino would never speak to me again."
Last year, Quentin's personal print of Palme d'or winner Pulp Fiction was the only movie projected on film in the entire Festival. He and Uma Thurman stopped by to host the 2Oth anniversary screening. And while in Cannes, Quentin issued some choice words about how digital prints are just glorified TV and not cinema.
Not, as SBS viewers know, that there's anything WRONG with glorified TV. If, that is, you don't happen to have at your disposal a state of the art auditorium that seats 2,400 people with excellent sightlines and a huge screen. The Cannes press office accredits roughly 4,000 journalists and critics. And there ARE times when it seems as if all of them are trying to get into the same screening. Quentin's own "Inglorious Basterds" was one of those times.
In Hollywood circles it is said that a film's premise should lend itself to a one-sentence pitch. When Fremaux was done alluding to "Son of Saul" it still wasn't clear to some people what it was, you know, ABOUT. "This one lends itself to controversy because it treads where Claude Lanzmann says one must never go." Translation: Cranky but brilliant French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann made SHOAH, the lengthy documentary that makes Holocaust deniers look about as credible as the folks who still believe the Earth is flat and you'll fall off if you sail too close to the edge. Lanzmann believes that fictional depictions of the Shoah are inherently obscene. In his view, entertainments along the lines of Life is Beautiful or Schindler's List, educational though they may be, are a very bad idea.
So, yes, we have every reason to believe that this film IS about the concentration camps and what happened there.
There are four French films in Competition in addition to Bercot's feature. Fremaux admitted that "It's such a strong year for French films we could have chosen 7."
Anticipating flack over the fact that several films by directors whose first language isn't English have been made in English, Fremaux expressed the notion that English is an auxiliary Esperanto. "English is an international language that doesn't necessarily indicate a specific country," he said before getting in a dig at some of the movies he apparently had to sit through that made the mistake of thinking that "in English" equals "international potential" even if it's ludicrous for the characters to be speaking to each other in English. "We're interested in narrative logic. Every year we reject films that set out to portray life in this or that country but were made in English that just doesn't fit."
Now that Amy Winehouse has left the building, should we consider having gifted musicians just "skip" being 27 the way some public buildings pretend to not have a 13th floor? A Midnight slot awaits for Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy, a portrait of the late singer-songwriter who, as Fremaux reminded "died at age 27 like many a star before her."
"Since Charles ("Night of the Hunter") Laughton proved that when actors step behind the camera they have something to say -- something distinct and personal," said Fremaux, seeming to give very high praise indeed to Natalie Portman's Israel-shot directing debut “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” based on the autobiographical book by Amos Oz and set for a Special Screening.
"When the films are political, Cannes is political and when the films are romantic, Cannes is romantic," said Fremaux.
Will the 2015 edition be a good festival? Last year a colleague introduced me to a young woman who writes in Arabic and whose first Cannes it was. I asked her whether the Festival was what she had imagined it would be like. And she said it wasn't. In what way? "I expected all the films to be good!" she blurted out. "It's the world's biggest and most selective film festival and so I just assumed that all the movies would be really good -- but a lot of them, I don't know what they're doing here."
Fremaux -- whose various committees sifted though 1,864 submissions -- admits that he spends much of his time saying, "No. No. No. No. Maybe.
No." But the ultimate goal is to surprise and to entertain, to bring new talent into view and to not disappoint too many journalists or filmmakers (or sponsors) along the way.
Check back in late May to find out whether Cannes attendees spent more time scratching their heads or cheering. There was some grumbling last year as digital legions of zeros and ones seemed to have clobbered celluloid for good, but with at least one film due for a projection on film, the name "Cannes Film Festival" (Festival de Cannes in French) is secure for another year.
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