Christophe Honoré & Catherine Deneuve to close Cannes Film Festival
Christophe Honoré’s Les bien-aimés / The Beloved will close the 2011 Cannes Film Festival on May 22. The out-of-competition screening will take place after Robert De Niro and his Official Competition jury hand out the Palme d’Or and other awards.
The Beloved follows a couple of love stories in 1960s Prague and 1980s London, in addition to Paris in the early 21st century. The Beloved cast includes Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni (Deneuve’s daughter with Marcello Mastroianni), Louis Garrel, Michel Delpech, and two-time Oscar-winning filmmaker and Czech emigre Milos Forman.
Honoré’s Les chansons d’amour / Love Songs, which also starred Garrel, Sagnier, and Mastroianni, was among the Palme d’Or contenders at the 2007 Cannes festival.
As usual, the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Competition film line-up is overwhelmingly centered on European (co)productions: British, French, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Danish. The five “outsiders” hail from Israel, Australia, the United States, and Japan.
In other words, barring one American entry, the Americas were completely ignored this year, and so were Africa, most of Asia, and – barring Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Turkish-Bosnian Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – what used to be known as “Eastern Europe.” (Remember, Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of Yugoslavia.) The non-European entries are listed below:
- Joseph Cedar’s Footnote (Israel), a father-son drama set at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with Walk on Water‘s Lior Ashkenazi;
- Newcomer Julia Leigh’s Australian mix of mystery, sex, and fantasy Sleeping Beauty, starring Sucker Punch‘s Emily Browning (who replaced Mia Wasikowska);
- Terrence Malick’s eagerly anticipated 1950s-set drama The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn;
- Naomi Kawase’s Japanese drama Hanezu no tsuki, based on a novel by Bando Masako, and included in the festival line-up because it “resonated” with the recent catastrophes that took place in Japan;
- Takashi Miike’s Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, a 3D remake of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 classic Harakiri, co-winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes festival.
Among those bypassed this year (or whose films weren’t ready) were Wang Xiaoshuai, Brillante Mendoza, Alexander Payne, and Lou Ye.
Cannes 2011 will be held May 11-22.
The list of 19 films in competition for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or was announced earlier today. According to festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux and festival president Gilles Jacob, 1,715 entries were considered for Cannes 2011. But instead of opting for something new and risky, Fremaux and Jacob, as many had predicted, mostly stuck to the works of past friends of the festival.
Pedro Almodóvar (La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In) won as Best Director for All About My Mother in 1999 and the Best Screenplay award for Volver in 2006; Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) won the Best Director award at the 1978 festival for Days of Heaven; Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Le gamin au vélo) have won the Palme d’Or twice – for Rosetta in 1999 and L’enfant / The Child in 2005 – in addition to the Best Screenplay award for Lorna’s Silence in 2008.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once upon a time in Anatolia) won the Best Director award for Three Monkeys in 2008; Nanni Moretti (Habemus Papam) won as Best Director for Caro Diario in 1993; Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre) won the Grand Prize of the Jury for The Man Without a Past in 2002; and Alain Cavalier (Pater) won the Jury Prize for Thérèse in 1986.
Paolo Sorrentino (This Must Be the Place) won the Jury Prize for Il Divo in 2008; Lars von Trier (Melancholia) won the Jury Prize for Europa in 1991, the Grand Jury Prize for Breaking the Waves in 1996, and the Palme d’Or for Dancer in the Dark in 2000; and Naomi Kawase (Hanezu no tsuki) won the Grand Prize for The Mourning Forest in 2007.
Opening Film
Woody ALLEN, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Out of Competition)
Competition
Pedro ALMODÓVAR, LA PIEL QUE HABITO
Bertrand BONELLO, L’APOLLONIDE – SOUVENIRS DE LA MAISON CLOSE
Alain CAVALIER, PATER
Joseph CEDAR, HEARAT SHULAYIM (Footnote)
Nuri Bilge CEYLAN, BIR ZAMANLAR ANADOLU’DA (Once upon a time in Anatolia)
Jean-Pierre and Luc DARDENNE, LE GAMIN AU VÉLO
Aki KAURISMÄKI, LE HAVRE
Naomi KAWASE, HANEZU NO TSUKI
Julia LEIGH, SLEEPING BEAUTY
MAÏWENN, POLISSE
Terrence MALICK, THE TREE OF LIFE
Radu MIHAILEANU, LA SOURCE DES FEMMES
Takashi MIIKE, ICHIMEI (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samuraï)
Nanni MORETTI, HABEMUS PAPAM
Lynne RAMSAY, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Markus SCHLEINZER, MICHAEL
Paolo SORRENTINO, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE
Lars VON TRIER, MELANCHOLIA
Nicolas WINDING REFN, DRIVE
Out of Competition
Xavier DURRINGER, LA CONQUÊTE
Jodie FOSTER, THE BEAVER
Michel HAZANAVICIUS, THE ARTIST
Rob MARSHALL, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES
Midnight Screenings
CHAN Peter Ho-Sun, WU XIA
Everardo GOUT, DIAS DE GRACIA
Special Screnings
Frederikke ASPÖCK, LABRADOR
Rithy PANH, LE MAÎTRE DES FORGES DE L’ENFER
Michael RADFORD, MICHEL PETRUCCIANI
Christian ROUAUD, TOUS AU LARZAC
“More Stars Than There Are in Heaven” used to be MGM’s tagline. Now that the old home of Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, et al. has been reduced to less than a shadow of its former itself – the latest announcement has Sony Pictures releasing the troubled studio’s upcoming James Bond flick – the Cannes Film Festival is apparently trying to nab the old MGM tagline for itself.
Surely it’s no coincidence that many of the films in and out of competition at Cannes 2011 boasts high star-wattage: Marion Cotillard, Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Sean Penn, Jodie Foster, Mel Gibson, Kirsten Dunst, Carey Mulligan, Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, Owen Wilson. Cannes may have a reputation for being all about auteurs, but the festival’s top film selections clearly reflect a preoccupation with movie stars – especially the ones from Hollywood – and the publicity those celebrities will inevitably engender.
Below is a partial list of the star wattage Cannes 2011 will be offering:
- Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni (that’s the wife of French president Nicolas Sarkozy), Gad Elmaleh in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris
- Penélope Cruz, Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Geoffrey Rush in Rob Marshall’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
- Brad Pitt and Sean Penn in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life
- Sean Penn again, with Frances McDormand in Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place
- Jodie Foster, Mel Gibson, Jennifer Lawrence in Foster’s The Beaver
- Sucker Punch‘s Emily Browning in Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty
- Antonio Banderas and Marisa Paredes in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In
- Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, John Hurt, Charlotte Rampling, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia
- Lior Ashkenazi in Joseph Cedar’s Footnote
- Nanni Moretti, Michel Piccoli, and Margherita Buy in Moretti’s Habemus Papam
- Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, Albert Brooks in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive
- Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin
- John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller in Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist
Photo: The Beaver (Ken Regan / Summit Entertainment)
A photograph of Faye Dunaway taken by Jerry Schatzberg in 1970 has been transformed into the poster for the 64th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 11-22. On the Cannes Film Festival site, the image is described as a “model of sophistication and timeless elegance … [and] an embodiment of the cinematic dream that the Festival de Cannes seeks to maintain.”
Jerry Schatzberg, who won the 1973 Palme d’Or for Scarecrow, directed Dunaway in the 1970 drama Puzzle of a Downfall Child. Faye Dunaway has never won an acting award at Cannes, but she did win the 1976 Best Actress Oscar for Sidney Lumet’s Network.
Now, why would the Cannes 64 poster feature a Schatzberg-Dunaway collaboration?
Well, because Puzzle of a Downfall Child has been restored by Universal Pictures and will be distributed in France in the fall. The restored print will also be screened at Cannes in the presence of both Schatzberg and Dunaway.