Javier Bardem in Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Biutiful
"About halfway through the Cannes Film Festival, there are, amazingly, still no sales of films playing in any of the festival sections. Such is the frozen tundra of (a certain part of) the indie business these days. (The market, where many mainstream films are sold and where much of the business takes place, isn't faring much better, at least on the domestic side; it's tire-kicking time and not much more.)" Steven Zeitchik in the Los Angeles Times.
Zeitchik then adds that two Cannes movies "could go within days, or at least before the end of the festival." The two lucky ones are Mike Leigh's well-received Another Year, which stars Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen as an aging couple and which may be purchased by Sony Pictures Classics, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu's Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem as a man slowly dying. (Echoes of Alejandro Amenábar's The Sea Inside?) Blanca Portillo, of Pedro Almodovar's Volver and Broken Embraces co-star in this tale involving illegal immigration and scuzzy business deals.
Photo: Cannes Film Festival