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Cannes 2009 Aftermath at the LA WEEKLY

Philippe Garnier on Cannes 2009, in the LA Weekly:
"By this time, news should be out everywhere that Cannes this year was a special vintage. Not only did most of the selected ‘usual suspects’ outdo themselves in big and unexpected ways — or, like Alain Resnais, find new resources and verve which, frankly, we didn’t know they had in them — but it is also a measure of how shockingly strong this year was that the fest still had room for very good fare in the 20-film Un Certain Regard sidebar, from Israeli first-timer Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open [above] to the wonderful Colombian entry The Wind Journeys by Ciro Guerra, in which an [...]

Cannes 2009: Asia Argento, Claudia Schiffer, Isabelle Huppert, Monica Bellucci

Claudia Schiffer (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

Asia Argento (Photo by Eric Ryan/Getty Images)

Isabelle Huppert (Photo by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images)

Quentin Tarantino, Mélanie Laurent, Mike Myers (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Monica Bellucci (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
 

Cannes 2009: Diane Kruger, Joshua Jackson, Hilary Swank, Lily Cole

Julie Gayet (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Diane Kruger, Joshua Jackson (Photo by Eric Ryan/Getty Images)

Lily Cole (Photo by Eric Ryan/Getty Images)

Hilary Swank (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
 

Cannes 2009: Isabelle Huppert, Robin Wright, Jean-Marc Barr, Monica Bellucci

Sharmila Tagore, Isabelle Huppert, Robin Wright (Photo by Dominique Charriau/WireImage)

Jean-Marc Barr at Montblanc Party

Sophie Marceau, Monica Bellucci (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)

Rachel Weisz (Photo by Tony Barson/WireImage)
 

Cannes 2009: Shu Qi, Sophie Marceau, Diane Kruger, Eva Longoria

Shu Qi (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Sophie Marceau (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)

Diane Kruger (Photo by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images)

Tony Parker, Eva Longoria (Photo by Rachid Bellak/WireImage)
 

Cannes 2009: Juliette Binoche, Monica Bellucci, Rachel Weisz, Robin Wright

Juliette Binoche (Photo by Jean Baptiste Lacroix/FilmMagic)

Monica Bellucci (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/WireImage)

Rachel Weisz (Photo by Tony Barson/WireImage)

Robin Wright Penn (Photo by John Shearer/WireImage)
 

2009 Cannes Winners II

Cannes 2009 Winners: Part I
Among the other Cannes festival winners at the various sidebars and competitions were:

Best short Arena (above, top), directed by João Salaviza. Arena, the only Portuguese production in competition at the festival, tells the story of a young man under house arrest.
Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère / I Killed My Mother (above, lower photo) won the Directors Fortnight best film prize. In this Canadian growing-pains tale, a 16-year-old gay man (played by the then 19-year-old Dolan) learns something about life all the while despising his mother’s manipulative behavior and tacky taste in clothes.
Nassim Amaouche’s Adieu Gary / Farewell Gary, winner of the Critics’ Week best film award, chronicles the lives of several [...]

Cannes 2009 Winners

One of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival’s clear favorites, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a stark tale about a small northern German town beset by strange happenings right before the beginning of World War I, took the Palme d’Or for best film. (Cannes 2009 winners list.)
"Happiness is very rare," said Haneke upon accepting his prize. "This is one moment in my life in which I’m very happy, and so are you, I believe," he added, speaking to his wife.
The White Ribbon also won the International Film Critics’ FIPRESCI Prize for best film in the official competition. And it’ll surely be Austria’s submission for the 2010 best foreign-language film Academy Award.

Another festival favorite, Jacques Audiard’s tough drama A [...]

Cannes Awards 2009

2009 Cannes Film Festival Awards
2009 Cannes Film Festival: May 13–24
 

IN COMPETITION – FEATURE FILMS

Palme d’Or DAS WEISSE BAND (The White Ribbon) directed by Michael HANEKE

Grand Prix UN PROPHÈTE (A Prophet) directed by Jacques AUDIARD

Jury Prize (tie) FISH TANK directed by Andrea ARNOLD and BAK-JWI (Thirst) directed by PARK Chan-Wook

Best Director Brillante MENDOZA for KINATAY

Best Actor Christoph WALTZ in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS directed by Quentin TARANTINO

Best Actress Charlotte GAINSBOURG in ANTICHRIST directed by Lars von TRIER

Best Screenplay MEI Feng for CHUN FENG CHEN ZUI DE YE WAN (Spring Fever) directed by LOU Ye

Prix Vulcain: Artist-Technician Aitor BERENGUER, sound technician of the movie MAP OF THE SOUNDS OF TOKYO directed by Isabel COIXET

Lifetime achievement award for his [...]

Cannes 2009: Best Actress Favorites

Best Actress
Charlotte Gainsbourg as a bereaved mother in Antichrist.
Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar’s diva in Broken Embraces.
Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star.
Katie Jarvis as an aimless teenager in Fish Tank.
Giovanna Mezzogiorno as Benito Mussolini’s ex in Vincere.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Best Actor Favorites

Best Actor
Tahar Rahim as a young man behind bars in A Prophet.
Ben Whishaw as John Keats in Bright Star.
André Dussollier as the elderly hero in Wild Grass.
François Cluzet as a con man in In the Beginning.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Best Screenplay Favorites

Best Screenplay
Any of those listed for best film, in addition to:
Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere (co-written by Bellocchio and Daniela Ceselli), about how Benito Mussolini mistreated his first wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, top photo) and son while millions of Italians thought he was just the greatest guy around.
Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric (written by Paul Laverty), about a postman who gets soccer player Eric Cantona (middle photo) to become his life coach.
Writer-director Xavier Giannoli’s In the Beginning (bottom photo), in which a con man gets a small town to build a highway.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Best Director Favorites

Best Director
Pedro Almodóvar for Broken Embraces
Jacques Audiard for A Prophet
Jane Campion for Bright Star
Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon
Alain Resnais for Wild Grass
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Palme d’Or Favorites

Palme d’Or 2009, Grand Prix, Special Jury Prize:
Alain Resnais‘ romantic fantasy Wild Grass (adapted by Alex Reval and Laurent Herbiet from Christian Gailly’s novel), about a man who becomes intrigued by a younger woman
Jacques Audiard’s tough prison drama A Prophet (written by Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, and Nicolas Peufaillit)
Writer-director Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, about a northern German community enmeshed in a series of nasty events right before the beginning of World War I
Writer-director Jane Campion’s Bright Star, about the doomed love affair between British poet John Keats and his neighbor, Fanny Brawne
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: ADRIFT, DRAG ME TO HELL, IN THE BEGINNING

At Firstshowing.net, Alex Billington on À Deriva / Adrift (above, with Laura Neiva), screened in the Un Certain Regard sidebar:
"I think I stumbled across a big Cannes sleeper hit. From the beaches of Brazil comes Adrift, known as À Deriva in Portuguese, the third film from Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia. I’m going to say right up front — following in the footsteps of City of God director Fernando Meirelles, Dhalia is the next great Brazilian filmmaker on the verge of breaking out. Adrift is his calling card, a gorgeous family drama about a beautiful young girl and her parents. It’s not a masterpiece, but it is definitely one of the better films I’ve seen here that offers [...]

Cannes 2009: Gaspar Noé, Cristian Mungiu, Ciro Guerra

Manohla Dargis on Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, in the New York Times:
"Although he remains dedicated to shaking up viewer s, to getting under their skins and into their nervous systems, Mr. Noé [above, top photo] has mellowed. Despite its unpromising title, Enter the Void, his entry at this year’s festival, is an exceptional work, though less because of its story, acting or any of the usual critical markers. What largely distinguishes it, beyond the stunning cinematography, is that this is the work of an artist who’s trying to show us something we haven’t seen before, even while he liberally samples images and ideas from Stanley Kubrick and the entirety of American avant-garde cinema."
***
In [...]

Cannes 2009: Heath Ledger in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian:
"Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam’s loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition. Halfway through shooting, Ledger had made a desperately sad early exit, so the director ingeniously re-invented his character as a series of personae. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp gamely stepped into the breach.
…
"When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. … But the film’s convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how ‘imaginative’ everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy [...]

Cannes 2009: Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON

 
Dave Calhoun in Time Out London, via David Hudson’s The Daily:
"For quite some time at the beginning of Michael Haneke’s latest film, which is a two-and-a-half hour parable of political and social ideas set entirely in a north German village in 1913 and 1914, you wonder what you’re watching, how its disparate parts hang together and what it all might mean. More than ever, the playful, challenging, sometimes shocking director of Hidden, Funny Games and Time of the Wolf solidly resists answering the ‘what’s it all about?’ question and makes you work hard to make sense of what you’re seeing. As in Code Unknown, he resists focusing on one story or [...]

Cannes 2009: Out of Competition Films, Special Screenings

Cannes 2009: Out of Competition Films / Special Screenings
Below is a sample of out-of-competition films, special screenings, and midnight screenings at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
 

Pete DOCTER, UP (Opening Night Film)

Anne AGHION, MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER

Alejandro AMENABAR, AGORA

Terry GILLIAM, THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS

Robert GUÉDIGUIAN, L’ARMÉE DU CRIME (The Army of crime)

Sam RAIMI, DRAG ME TO HELL

Marina de VAN, NE TE RETOURNE PAS (Don’t look back)

Jan KOUNEN, COCO CHANEL & IGOR STRAVINSKY (Closing Night Film)
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes

 

Cannes 2009: Jane Campion, Alain Resnais, Brillante Mendoza, Johnnie To, Lou Ye

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."
***

Maggie Lee on Kinatay in The Hollywood Reporter:
"Festival darling Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay is a long night’s journey into the [...]

Cannes 2009: Ken Loach, Ang Lee, Andrea Arnold, Jacques Audiard

Derek Elley on Looking for Eric (above, Ken Loach and Eric Cantona) in Variety:
"… helmer Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty’s ninth feature together is a curious hybrid: Three movies — boilerplate, socially aware Loach; personal fantasy; romantic comedy — wrap around a central core of a hopeless soccer fanatic who’s given a second chance to sort out his life. As in many of Laverty’s scripts, problems of overall tone and character development aren’t solved by Loach’s easygoing direction, though when it works, Eric has many incidental pleasures."
***

Anthony Kaufman on A Prophet at indieWIRE:
"If James Toback’s petty-criminal tale Fingers inspired Jacques Audiard’s previous The Beat That My Heart Skipped, it’s Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas [...]

Cannes 2009: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds

Richard Corliss/Mary Corliss in Time:
"… Inglourious Basterds — first word as in "glower," second as in "turds" — is an alternative history of World War II from the writer-director of Pulp Fiction, the Palme d’Or winner 15 years ago. As with all of his recent work — the two Kill Bill movies and Death Proof — Basterds draws portraits of strong women facing down evil men; and in Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) and Third Reich screen star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) he’s created two of his fullest female portraits. But Basterds is long and, for the hypercharged auteur, surprisingly wan. It has to be declared a misfire."
***
J. Hoberman in The Village Voice:
"So what is [...]

Cannes 2009: Lars von Trier’s ANTICHRIST

Antichrist: Filmmaker Lars von Trier (top); Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe (bottom).
In this pyshcological horror-drama, a married couple struggles to come to terms with the accidental death of their son.

Wendy Ide in The [London] Times:
"Von Trier has moved away from the sparse, rough and ready work of the Dogme era and embraced a stylised and visually sumptuous look for Antichrist. The movie is packed with arresting and atmospheric images, some of which you’ll wish you could permanently erase from your memory.
"If von Trier’s issues with female sexuality have been evident in previous films, particularly Breaking the Waves and Dogville, in Antichrist he ups the ante, constructing a gender war of nuclear intensity between [...]

Cannes 2009: Pedro Almodóvar’s BROKEN EMBRACES

Broken Embraces: Pedro Almodóvar on the set (top); Penélope Cruz as the heroine (bottom).
In the mystery-melodrama, a director and his female star begin a passionate love affair that leads to all sorts of trouble.

Wendy Ide in The [London] Times:
"Certainly, it is unmistakably an Almodovar film. Nobody else does richly-textured melodrama quite like him; nobody else can encourage such overwrought performances without unbalancing the film; nobody else shoots Penélope Cruz with a reverence which borders on fan-worship. But what’s missing here is the warmth and emotional honesty that infuses Almodovar’s most successful features. What’s missing is, arguably, Almodovar himself."
***
Eric Kohn in indieWIRE:
"Pedro Almodovar offers nothing new in his [...]

Cannes 2009: Palme d’Or Line-Up II

Cannes Film Festival 2009: Competition Line-Up
Palme d’Or Line-Up: Part I
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Looking for Eric, Ken Loach, UK

Kinatay, Brillante Mendoza, Philippines

Visage (Face), Tsai Ming-liang, France/Taiwan

Soudain le vide (Enter the Void), Gaspar Noé, France

The Time that Remains, Elia Suleiman, Palestine

Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, USA

Vengeance, Johnnie To, France/Hong Kong

Antichrist, Lars von Trier, Denmark

Les herbes folles (Wild Grass), Alain Resnais, France

Spring Fever, Lou Ye, China

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