Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie in The Good Shepherd (top); Cate Blanchett, George Clooney in The Good German (bottom)
English-language productions dominate the Berlin Film Festival's 2007 official competition line-up. In all, 22 films are competing for the Golden Bear and four are being screened out of competition at this year's Berlinale, which runs between Feb. 8-18.
Most of the English-language fare hails from the United States and the United Kingdom, in addition to several American or British co-productions with other nations.
Robert De Niro's Cold War drama The Good Shepherd and Steven Soderbergh's post-WWII murder mystery The Good German had been announced earlier in January. Both films have big names attached to them (Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie in the former; George Clooney and Cate Blanchett in the latter), while The Good German has a German setting. That may explain their inclusion in the line-up, since neither film was well received upon their release in the United States.
Clint Eastwood directing Letters from Iwo Jima
Clint Eastwood's World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima , a major hit among U.S. critics, will be shown out of competition, along with Richard Eyre's British drama Notes on a Scandal, starring a superb Judi Dench as a lonely lesbian preying on adulterous teacher Cate Blanchett, who has been having an affair with a horny fifteen-year-old (Andrew Simpson, excellent as the melodrama's Lolito).
Based on real-life events, Gregory Nava's Bordertown stars Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas in a tale of murder and intrigue at the U.S.-Mexico border, while Sam Garbarski's Irina Palm has Marianne Faithfull playing a widow who, in order to help her ailing grandson, starts a new career for herself as a sex worker.
François Ozon's Angel with Romola Garai
Bille August's Goodbye Bafana, set in Apartheid-era South Africa and starring Joseph Fiennes, runs the risk of being one of those English-language international productions that fall way short of expectations, whereas François Ozon's Angel , starring Romola Garai, Sam Neill, and Ozon's muse, Charlotte Rampling, sounds as intriguing as the director's French-language fare. Set in early 20th-century England, Angel follows the rise and fall of a woman who becomes the British elite's literary flavor of the moment.
Since Ozon has gone the English way, it's up to veterans Jacques Rivette, who'll turn 79 on March 1, and André Téchiné to keep la langue française up there on the Berlinale's international competition screens.
Rivette is represented by Ne touchez pas la hache / Don't Touch the Axe, an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's love story La Duchesse de Langeais, with Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, and veterans Michel Piccoli and Bulle Ogier. Téchiné is offering Les témoins / The Witnesses, a drama about the AIDS explosion in the 1980s, starring Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, and Julie Depardieu.
There's also Olivier Dahan's La Môme / La Vie en rose, the festival's opening-night film, which has Marion Cotillard playing singing legend Edith Piaf.