I was super surprised when Giorgos Lanthimos’s Dogtooth, one of my favorite movies in Cannes, was selected as the winner of the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Before the prize was announced, very few members of the press had seen it, no one was talking about it, and it was competing against much higher profile films, including the Romanian favorites Police, Adjective and Tales of the Golden Age. The NSFW teaser trailer below the jump (from Twitch, via Living in Cinema) reinforces some of why the film is an unlikely prize winner — mainly, its sense of humor is brattily crude, its aesthetics are ugly-pretty, and though it’s no more bloody than main Competition entry Inglourious Basterds, its commanding melding of genre film and art film is much weirder and more unnerving.
Thanks in part to the ever-impressive professionalism of Delta Airlines, I didn’t arrive in Cannes until after Martin Scorsese’s big announcement that his World Cinema Foundation (newly executive directed by Kent Jones, who collaborated with Scorsese on Val Lewton — The Man in the Shadows) is teaming up with Criterion, B-Side and The Auteurs to align the cause of film restoration with emerging models of online film distribution and discussion. And not having much time to read press releases while overseas, I didn’t realize until I returned to New York a couple of days ago that fruits of the collaboration are already tangible: there are currently four WCF films streaming for free on The Auteurs. And not knowing anything about any of the four films, I decided to watch 1964 Berlin Film Festival Winner Dry Summer last night. In trying to sum up the experience of spontaneously watching that film on my laptop, completely blindly without any real knowledge as to what I was in for, two words immediately come to mind: Holy. Shit.
In 2008, The Class won the Palme D’or “out of nowhere” — or so it seemed, as the film hadn’t screened before a large chunk of the press had gone home. Almost as if pulling a bait and switch on journalists who stayed through the final weekend the following year in fear of missing a second Oscar-safe “surprise”, the 2009 Cannes lineup saved not the best for last, but certainly the most balls-out and commercially unviable. The two films I saw on my final day in the South of France were admirably experimental, undeniably gorgeous to look at, obstinately focused on form over narrative, so ambitious as to threaten to render that word meaningless as an adjective, and really fucking hard to watch.
As of this writing, no film at Cannes has yet managed to surpass Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, which premiered three days ago, as the hot topic of conversation. In fact, the chatter began before the movie screened: there was a palpable level of excitement days ago about a main Competition title, in English, from a name-brand auteur, with elements of genre that could potentially up its market value. In fact, for awhile there was talk that Antichrist could be the most accessible film Lars Von Trier has ever made. And then people saw it.
As you may have heard by now, the film stars Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a married couple (they’re never named) who lose their only child in a freak accident, which they were present for but failed to stop because they were distracted having operatic sex. After she spends some time in a psychiatric ward dealing with her grief, Dafoe, a therapist, convinces Gainsbourg they should retreat to their house deep in secluded woods (they call it “Eden”) so that he can teach her how to face her fears. The house happened to be where the wife used to go to work on an academic thesis on Gynocide — ie: archaic and semi-mythic violence against women, witch hunting and like practices through which, as Gainsbourg’s character puts it, “nature causes people to do evil things to women” — before her husband dismissed her subject and thereby discouraged her ambition. Feeling as though her own sexuality is responsible for the death of her son, the woman essentially internalizes the texts she’s studied and becomes an embodiment of the “evil” she once dedicated her life to critiquing, manifested mainly through total sexual hysteria. And it’s funny!
It’s the first true Big Cannes Moment to happen since I arrived in Cannes on Friday: Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, starring Charlote Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe, screened for the press last night, and immediately word started to spread that the film was intentionally unreleasable, chock full of intense violence, graphic sexuality, unforgivable misogyny … and also beauty. One man’s total debacle is another’s ecstatic vision, but thus far the Antichrist supporters seem to be outnumbered by the offended press. I haven’t seen the film yet — I waited in line for an hour last night, but didn’t get in — but I did watch the press conference. As I passed through the Palais, my attention was drawn over to a bank of monitors when I saw this quote on Matt Dentler’s Twitter stream: “I work for myself,” Von Trier said. “And I am the best film director in the world.”
In the twelve months since I was last in Cannes, I forgot the difference between “real” Festival screenings, and Marche (market) screenings. Everyone talks about the rigorous rules of Cannes festival screenings — the ceremony of lining up; the draconian stratification of press badges, in which your relative importance is proscribed by the color of the plastic ID card around your neck; the near-ritual standing ovations. What people generally don’t bother talking about, and I had forgotten, is the diametrically opposed informality of the market: the fact that lining up is only required for the hottest tickets (usually those that have already screened once in the festival); that most films play to mostly empty rooms, with badgeholders drifting in and out throughout; and that sometimes things happen that defy any attempt to trainspot the schedule to carefully.
So I arrived at the Star for the 9:45 screening of Kore-eda’s Air Doll twenty minutes early, not realizing that at 9:30, the lights would go down and I’d get a surprise glimpse at a 10-minute extended trailer for Gainsbourg, Je t’aime moi non plus (that, at least, was the title flashed at the end; IMDB calls it, Serge Gainsbourg, vie héroïque), written and directed by French graphic novelist Joann Sfar.
indieWIRE has posted the lineup for this year’s panels at the American Pavilion in Cannes. The events include a Conversation with Francis Ford Coppola moderated by journalist Scott Foundas; a panel presenting a cross-section of American indie talent including Lee Daniels, Josh and Benny Safdie and Lynn Shelton; and sessions on the recession, documentaries as journalism, and new platforms of distribution.
And I’ll be involved in two panels: on Sunday evening, I’m moderating a session called Fan Nation, featuring Anvil! director Sacha Gervasi, Tim League from the Alamo Drafthouse/Fantastic Fest and other esteemed guests; the next night, I’ll be speaking to the evolution of film journalism ona panel called “It’s a mad, new media world.” Full details on all of these sessions can be found at the link above.
This is interesting: Variety reports that I Love You Phillip Morris, a comedy in which Jim Carrey plays Ewan McGregor’s boyfriend which debuted at Sundance and shocked people who get shocked easily by leaving without a distribution deal, has been picked up by Consolidated Pictures Group in advance of its premiere in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes.
Consolidated’s Randall Miller and Jody Savin had an indie hit last year with the Miller-directed Bottle Shock, another title that premiered at Sundance but didn’t land an ideal offer there. According to a profile in Screen, after self-distributing Miller’s film the duo teamed up with Bottle Shock releasing partner Freestyle Films as well as the company formerly known as Leonidas films and, armed with equity financing, sought “to do for other peoples films what we did for Bottle Shock.”
Of course, some people might say that a Jim Carrey comedy shouldn’t need the lo-fi, grassroots treatment that netted Bottle Shock a whopping $4 million at the domestic box office. But those people probably haven’t heard that the sky is falling, we’re all going to die, and that the only recourse is to take refuge under new models and to set expectation bars low enough that they can be easily cleared.
Diane Kruger is on the cover of this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, and inside there’s apparently going to be an interview with Quentin Tarantino pegged to his Cannes-premiering, Kruger-starring Inglorious Basterds. So far, so inoffensive!
Unfortunately, the interview is accompanied by a photo spread, featuring star and director getting, uh, intimate in a hotel room. Quentin and Diane, cheek to cheek. Diane, one leg draped over Quentin’s shoulder, one hand cradling his cheek. Quentin, sitting on the floor between Diane’s legs, gentling fondling her right foot. And no, this does not appear to be a “Ha ha! It’s funny because it’s NOT sexy” thing like that Vanity Fair thing — it all appears to be done with a straight face. The kicker is the tease text on the cover: “Quentin Tarantino Cannes-noodles with Diane Kruger.” I Cannes-puke.
While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film. More important than Cannes, our team can focus all our time, energy and resources into the U.S. release this June 11th
Above: in a statement published on Mike Jones’ Blog, Francis Ford Coppola explains why he’s not going to bring his next film, Tetro, to the Cannes Film Festival next month. Remember, the one that inspired him to vlog about the brilliance of Vincent Gallo? The phrasing of the statement makes one wonder if Coppola’s indie spirit would have remained as paramount if Tetro had been invted to compete…
Same family, very different headline: FFC’s daughter Sofia has inked a deal to make her fourth film. Somewhere is described in Variety as a “dramedy” in about “a bad-boy actor stumbling through a life of excess at the Chateau Marmont. With an unexpected visit from his 11-year-old daughter, he is forced to reexamine his life.” Stephen Dorff plays the father, Elle Fanning plays the daughter. Sounds potentially unwatchable!
Rarely has movie love been handled with both the dreamy indulgence and the cynicism that James Grey pulls off inTwo Lovers. It’s a pity that the film, which premiered nine months ago at Cannes and is now rolling out on VOD and in theaters via Magnolia, has been pegged in time as the allegedly final film of star Joaquin Phoenix. In this meditation on class passing and infinite adolescence, set mainly in Brighton Beach with a few giddy sojourns to Manhattan, Grey creates a mood pocket, as it were, that’s distinctly out of time. Working off a series of contrasts that’s very true to its New York setting, Two Lovers is implicitly concerned with the way romantic relationships give us an opportunity to slide back and forth across class lines; if that motion temporarily offers the potential for an erasal of personal history, our ultimate stations in life can’t be escaped.
I recently submitted a ballot for indieWIRE’s annual Critics’ Poll, which offers respondents a chance to create two separate lists of the best films of the year: one comprised of films which received theatrical distribution (which is described as, at minimum, a one week run in a commercial theater in New York City, essentially the same type of release required for Oscar consideration); and a list of the best films which weren’t distributed commercially in 2008––ie: those which screened only at festivals, and/or in other non-commercial venues, and/or outside of New York. Because I see so many films at festivals, I had a far greater pool of candidates for the latter list than the former. My “true” top ten list would combine films which were made readily available to audiences via studio subsidiaries (such as Synecdoche, NY and Rachel Getting Married), with films that I fell in love with at a festival and may never get a chance to see again, and with films which had the bare minimum New York release, but nevertheless were probably still seen by fewer people than the average distributor-less festival hit (such as Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness). That said, I understand the purpose of making the distinction––even if there was no other benefit to it, there’s always the hope that some smaller theatrical and straight-to-DVD distributors will look to the annual Best Undistributed list as a reference to films they might have missed. After all, 2007’s “winner,” Hong Sang Soo’s Woman on the Beach, was purchased and ended up in theaters barely a week into the new year.
In fact, I think singling out films which are still on the market, and in a perfect world wouldn’t be, is so worth doing, that not only am I revealing here the ten titles I included in the poll, but I’m adding a few bonus films. The following list is presented alphabetically and should be considered unranked, with the exception of the first title mentioned — they all deserve to be seen by wider audiences, but the reception thus far bestowed on the work of one French master in particular is actually a travesty.
If you’ve read this blog with any regularity, you’ll know that, as a work of stand-alone cinema, I am notcrazy about Che. However, that doesn’t mean that I was anything but thrilled to hear that the Steven Soderbergh film sold out most of its weekend shows at the Ziegfeld in New York and the Landmark in Los Angeles. Here are five reasons why Che’s +$30k opening weekend per screen average is –– say it with me now –– Good For Cinema:
If I was Nikki Finke, I’d start this headline with a “TOLDJA!”, but I’m too obsessed with search engine optimization for that.
So as I predicted, Steven Soderbergh’s Che, which has gone MIA since controversially premiering in a two-part, 4.5 hour cut at Cannes, has made the lineup for the Lincoln Center event. Also of note, Darren Aronsofsky’s The Wrestler, which will close the festival.
Otherwise, it’s basically Cannes Redux–giving lie to the whispers that this year’s installment of the French festival was sub par, I guess. Clint Eastwood’s The Changeling will serve as its Centerpiece, and will join a whole ton of Cannes cherry picks, including Gomorrah, Tony Manero, Waltz With Bashir, Serbis, A Headless Woman, A Christmas Tale, 24 City…I could go on for awhile. There’s really only a handful of films which didn’t premiere at Cannes (one of which, I’m Going to Explode, was directed by the star of Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid, and also Mike Leigh’s Berlin fave Happy-Go-Lucky). I’ve pasted their titles and synopses after the jump. I guess, refreshingly, there are few slots filled by star-studded indie-arm Oscar bait…but then, there are few indie arms left to fill slots. indieWIRE has the full schedule. …Read more
Britney Spears to play lesbian killer in Quentin Tarantino film!!!!!!
The exclamation points are mine, but they’re implied in this Telegraph headline, which is quickly making the rounds of the “publish first, conveniently forget to retract later” gossip blogs. The rumor is that Britney has been hand-picked by Quentin to “play dancer Varla in a remake of the 1965 cult film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”
The reality check: as far as I can tell––Tarantino has never even confirmed a Liz Smith report from way back in January claiming that he’s making a remake of the Russ Meyer schlock classic. And, since that story mentioned that Britney was in the running, even if there is something to it it’s kind of old news. It might be a strategic PR drop (I don’t know by who––does Britney even have a publicist anymore?) to counteract the Page Six item from last week, which suggested (without comment from the Tarantino camp) that porn star Tera Patrick was getting the role. But I have a hard time believing that this is anything other than a publicity game at this point, considering that Tarantino hasn’t even finished castingthe epic that he plans to screen in seven months at Cannes.
That said: if it’s between Spears and Patrick, we definitely vote for the former. She needs it more.
UPDATE: Access Hollywood has denials from both Tarantino and Spears. And Media Morgue says Quentin’s agent told them way back in March that the remake was just a rumor.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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This is interesting: 
If I was Nikki Finke, I’d start this headline with a “TOLDJA!”, but I’m too obsessed with search engine optimization for that.
