Cannes is a mess…and it’s beautiful. The day I got here I was wandering down Le Crossittee, the main pathway along the beach where all the sales companies have the tents set up, where first-time filmmakers hawk their wares, mimes silently strut their stuff (while not moving anywhere) and I found a man, complete with a full-sized piano, banging out Liszt for tips right along the tip of the beach--and then, out of nowhere, came four vamped-out nurses, swirling their stethoscopes like ER strippers, the word SICKO in read across their chests, singing:
I feel shitty, oh so shitty!
I feel shitty and gritty and gray!
Okay. I made that last part up. But, there has been a lot made about Michael Moore’s out-of-competition film, SICKO, since the fest started. And…I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. In fact the only negative thing I’ve heard about the film was from my belle back home who said she heard on CNN that it was full of the same old pompous Michael Moore manipulating the truth for his own benefit shtick—quite the opposite of the reactions I’ve heard here. People have told me that it is his most honest work to date, that he lets the issue speak for itself, that he remains, thankfully, in the background. Like I said, I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve liked what I’ve heard…and who I’ve heard it from.
What I have seen and liked is this:
CONTROL – the UK film that traces the beginning, and relatively quick ending, of one of the world’s most covered bands—Joy Division. Mostly centered around the life, depression, seizures and subsequent suicide of frontman Ian Curtis, I thought it was quite good. Shot in Black and White and featuring a…well, yeah, great soundtrack, the film opened the Director’s Fortnight here to universally good reviews.
YELLA – a German film that played in competition in Berlin where I missed it (the lead actress won the golden bear.)
COUNTERPARTS – another German film, this playing in the Director’s Fortnight also, which is absolutely emotionally exhausting, excellently acted and completely mad. I’m not sure If I’ve ever heard an audience react so audibly to a film before.
THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS. Another film that I missed in Berlin’s Panorama. Definitely not for everyone, but this split-screen, first-person confession piece belongs in any serious film festival. It’s probably exactly the thing that would never end up on US theatre screens…and that’s a shame.
The one film I was dying to get into but couldn’t, and what so far has been called the best film of the festival here, is the Coen brothers NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. It supposed to be amazing.
Things I had high-hopes for that didn’t really work out: Kim Ki-duk’s new film BREATH and Pen-ek Ratannaraung’s PLOY.
More later…
