With Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist being branded as a debacle and other highly-anticipated auteur premieres drawing shrugs (Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock) and measured praise (Jane Campion’s Bright Star), the rest of the press and industry chattering classes have settled on Jacques Audiard’s undeniably well-made crime drama A Prophet as 2009’s sole breakout thus far. I walked out thinking it’s fine for what it is, but not much more. In the hours since exiting that two-and-a-half hour examination of spiritual and socio-economic transcendence via criminal calculation, I’ve gone back and forth between pondering a potential political subtext, and wondering if said pondering was more than the actual primary text required; I’m not yet ready to render a verdict, but I’ll let you know when I am.
Meanwhile, I spent much of my second full day in Cannes thinking about a Directors’ Fortnight double feature I caught the night before: Like You Know it All, the latest ode to drunken paralysis and hungover confusion by Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo (see my review here); and Go Get Some Rosemary, the second Fortnight feature in as many years from Red Bucket Films and their 20-something progenitors, New York-based brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. Both films are (at least) semi-autobiographical portraits of men who work in film but languish on the far margins of what we think of as “the industry”; both use humor to ingratiate us into the worldviews of protagonists who, at best, display a thought process that’s skewed, and at worse, exhibit behavior that cannot be excused. Where the former may depend on a familiarity with the director’s previous work to complete the joke, the latter’s blend of slapstick and surrealism in what should be super-serious situations helps to crystalize the Safdie style sketched out in last year’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed. Fueled by a go-for-broke lead performance by Frownland filmmaker Ronnie Bronstein, the Safdies’ follow-up should win over at least a few skeptics who failed to see the charm in their debut.
