Cannes 2007 - Day 3

by Andre Soares | | Leave a Comment     

 

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days by Cristian Mungiu

Considering that U.S. headlines have focused on American celebrities Pamela Anderson being booed and Jerry Seinfeld donning a bee outfit, you wouldn’t believe it that they have actually been screening movies at Cannes. But they have.

Here’s some commentary from people who are in Cannes to actually watch films.

John Harkness at Now Toronto:

"Irony Free — Television news being fairly irony free, this morning I watched CNN’s anchors interview some Brit about "isn’t Cannes just all glitz and glamour?" And, of course, the only clips they have are of Jude Law and Jake Gyllenhaal walking up the red carpet and Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee stunt …

"So, CNN talking heads, isn’t it television news largely responsible, since all they cover are the big stars walking up the red carpet? It’s like interviewing Jude Law every time he has a new movie out, which a couple of years ago was like every eight minutes, and then deciding he’s overexposed. Haven’t heard a lot of heavy-duty chin-wagging on the Eastern European presence in the Selection this year on CNN . (On the French chat shows, yes. We get so accustomed to the red carpet obsessions of TV news at home that it’s always a bit gob-smacking to come to France and watch an hour talk show devoted to quite serious conversation about movies playing at the Cannes film festival. The Brit was pointing out that at the heart of all the glitter and glitz, there is in fact a very serious film festival. Well, in honor of that statement, here are some reviews of some very serious films."

Harkness then proceeds with comments on Cristian Mungiu’s Romanian drama 4 Luni, 3 saptamini si 2 zile / 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (top), which revolves around a young college student, her roommate, and an abortionist. As per Harkness, the film’s lead actress, Anamaria Marinca (best actress BAFTA winner for the 2004 TV drama Sex Traffic), is a likely best actress contender at Cannes.

On the other hand, he wasn’t too impressed with Andrei Zviaguintsov’s Izgnanie / The Banishment.

 

Chansons d'amour with Louis Garrel, Chiara Mastroianni, Ludivine Sagnier

Via the Tribune de Genève:

"Christophe Honoré’s Les Chansons d’amour is everything that is most French. … A musical comedy, his film leans neither toward Jacques Demy (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) nor toward the American classics ([Vincent] Minnelli, Gene Kelly). The sung passages were written especially for the film and were performed via play-back by the actors, according to the tradition of the French cinema of the 1930s." The writer then proceeds to call Les Chansons d’amour "light and welcome, though hardly indispensable."

Time Out’s Dave Calhoun was considerably less impressed with Honoré’s attempt to mix three-cornered romance, tragedy, and song on screen.

 

Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men

Charles Ealy reviewing Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country for Old Men in The Austin Movie Blog:

"It’s by far the most violent Coen brothers film ever, surpassing the deadpan tree-shredding of bodies in Fargo. And it marks a return of the Coens to Texas, where they set their first feature film, Blood Simple. Like that movie, No Country delights in the unusual minor characters who pop up in scene after scene. You hate to see them gunned down, but you know it’s coming, just like a biblical plague."

Ealy calls the Coens’ latest effort "brilliant," but he didn’t care for Olivier Assayas’s Boarding Gate, starring Asia Argento and Michael Madsen, and Tom Kalin’s Saving Grace, which stars Julianne Moore.

Miramax will release No Country for Old Men in the U.S. on November 21.

 

60th Cannes Film Festival

60th Cannes Film Festival winners

60th Cannes Film Festival - Cinéfondation

Cannes 2007 - Special Screenings

Cannes 2007 Opens with MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS

GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA and DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE Screening

Curtis Harrington

 

by Andre Soares | May 18, 2007 | Filed Under American Cinema / Hollywood, European Cinema, Film, Film Festivals, French Cinema 

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