Peter Bradshaw on Bright Star (with Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, above) in The Guardian:
"Jane Campion has put herself in line for her second Palme d'Or here at the Cannes film festival with a film which I think could be the best of her career; an affecting and deeply considered study of the last years in the short life of John Keats, and the ecstasy of loss which suffuses his love affair with Fanny Brawne – a love thwarted not due to illness, but to a pernicious web of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties."
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Maggie Lee on Kinatay in The Hollywood Reporter:
"Festival darling Brillante Mendoza's Kinatay is a long night's journey into the Philippine underworld of casual corruption and nauseating cruelty, seen through the eyes of a greenhorn police cadet. Featuring shooting violence, rape and mutilation extensively in real time, from camera angles that make the audience feel like they are watching a snuff film, this full-on experience of forced voyeurism is certain to incite strong (most probably offended) responses."
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Dan Fainaru on Alain Resnais' (above, upper photo) Wild Grass (with André Dussollier, above, lower photo) in Screen Daily:
"Alain Resnais’ Wild Grass showcases one of the great masters of modern cinema with a romantic fantasy which displays the comfortable but consummate confidence of an artist who knows exactly what he wants to do and how to do it. If, once upon a time, audiences were scared away by the complexity of his work, here Resnais is offering a deceptively simple and elegant picture, which will grow in depth and meaning with every additional viewing."
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Thomas Sotinel on Vengeance (with Johnny Hallyday, above) in Le Monde:
"Ultimately, the risk pays off, as Vengeance, set between cop-thriller tragedy (the film is an explicit homage to the cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville) and the theater of the absurd, ends up by imposing its bizarre seduction."
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Howard Feinstein on Spring Fever in Screen Daily:
"Close-ups of flowers not only open and close the film, they also pop up intermittently, mirroring shifts in both the story line and the state of mind of its gay protagonist. This integration of visuals and narrative, however, is the exception rather than the rule in this ambitious and — by mainland Chinese standards — daring project."
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Filmmaker Lou Ye — who was banned from filmmaking by Chinese authorities following his politically charged Summer Palace — on his own Spring Fever, via indieWIRE:
"I didn’t film homosexuality, I showed feelings and complex relationships. While evaluating these relationships, I show a complex world."
…
"Regarding these love scenes … It doesn’t matter if they’re homosexual or heterosexual, I shot them in the same way. Sex is important to life in general."
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes