ROUND-UP: CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2008
One of the world's oldest, most influential and prestigious film festivals had its 61st outing from 14-25 May in its wonderful setting at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, in the resort town of Cannes, in the south of France. AFCA member Peter Malone was there with this report.
26 May, 2008
There was rain on and off during the whole of the Cannes festival. Some thought that this was a sign of general dullness. Be that as it may, there is a wide range of films to be seen: at least 20 in competition, 20 in Un Certain Regard, 10 or so in the Directors’ Fortnight as well as some big and small shows ‘Out of Competition’ and a selection for Critics’ Week. And then there are hundreds of screenings in the market.
The buzz this time was that there was nothing outstanding in competition and it was too difficult to predict the winners. As it was, the Palme d’Or went to the last film screened in competition, Entre Les Murs (The Class) from social-minded director Laurent Cantet (Human Resources, Towards the South). While it shows many problems in contemporary French classrooms, it ends in quite an upbeat mood. This was not the case with most of the films in competition and in Un Certain Regard.
Were one to do a summary of themes in the film, it would sound like what Charlie Kauffman suggested in his Synecdoche, New York, ‘existential misery’: poverty in Sao Paolo, Manila and Singapore, dysfunctional families in France (and most other places) including chronic absence of fathers, Middle East conflicts, quite a number of murders, the Mafia, child abduction, police corruption, racism… This made for a very serious festival.
The opening film was Blindness, based on Nobel Prize winner, Juan Saramago’s novel and directed by Fernando Mireilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener), an allegory about society going blind and being self-destructive. By way of complete contrast, the closing film was a moderately amusing parody of Hollywood, What Just Happened? with Robert de Niro as a harassed producer. The star of the film within the film, 'Fiercely', was Sean Penn, featuring a climax during a Cannes Festival. Penn was the president of this year’s jury which meant that at the end, he could be in his seat in the Grand Lumiere, watching himself as himself watching a film in the Grand Lumiere starring himself as a gangster victim!
Waltz with Bashir was a fascinating Israeli documentary about war in Lebanon in the 1980s. What made it different was its being an animated film, first shot on video with people and this footage then sketched in a strikingly vivid style.
Clint Eastwood was in Cannes again, this time with The Exchange, a finely crafted story of an abduction and police corruption in Los Angeles, 1928. Angelina Jolie gave one of her best performances as a strong-minded mother whose son was abducted. Along with Catherine Deneuve, he received the special prize of the 61st Festival. He turned 78 on May 31st. Catherine Deneuve appeared in one of those epic French family films, Un Conte de Noel directed by Arnaud Desplechins.
The Dardennes brothers, who have won the Palme d’Or twice with Rosetta and L’Enfant, won the screenplay award for Lorna’s Silence, a topical EU story of illegal migrants and gangs who organise often violent schemes to get round the law.
The main jury seems to have overdosed a little on Italian social and political problems, especially the Mafia. They gave the Grand Jury Prize to Gomorrah, directed by Matteo Garrone, a hard-hitting film showing the Naples suburb, Scampia as a modern Gomorrah, where the Camorra ruled, supporting its families but otherwise merciless. The author of the original book has been under police protection since its publication in 2006. There were five separate stories which made watching the film sometimes quite confusing as the screenplay moved from one to the other in bits and pieces. Another confusion difficulty was that one young thug looked the same as another! And then they gave their special Jury Prize to Il Divo, directed by Paolo Sorrentino (The Family Friend), a quite satirical portrait of veteran politician, Giulio Andreotti (but not an easy film for those unfamiliar with the subject).
While the award for Best Actress to Argentinian actress, for her hardworking mother of four in Sao Paolo in Linha de Passe was commendable, the Best Actor was a surprise. It went to Benicio del Toro for his performance in the well-anticipated Che, directed by Steven Soderbergh. This was a mammoth four and a half hours’ film, the first part showing the Cuban revolution, the second, much less interesting, showing Che’s attempts to foster revolution in Bolivia. Soderbergh seemed to make Che less charismatic than we might imagine and, in the second part, he sometimes disappears. However, del Toro may have been on screen longer than actors in much shorter films.
This year the Philippines and Singapore were included in the main competition, a good thing in principle but the two films could not match the quality of most of the other films. Serbis from the Philippines showed the squalid side of Manila and the sex trade, sometimes in quite squalid detail. My Magic, from Singapore, was sad but had a much more humane approach with an alcoholic magician father trying to do the best for his young son.
Led by Fateh Akin, the jury for Un Certain Regard gave film awards. The main prize went to Tulpan from Kazakhistan (a counter to Borat!). It was a simple tale of the steppes not unlike The Story of the Weeping Camel or The Cave of the Yellow Dog from Mongolia. They also gave awards to Johnny Mad Dog, a film about civil war in Liberia and the child soldiers – but filmed now in Liberia with the support of the national government. A film about an affair between two elderly Germans, Wolke 9 (Cloud 9, directed by Andreas Dresen) also won an award as did a portrait of Mike Tyson by James Toback. It won the ‘knockout award’. The other winner was Tokyo Sonata, directed by Kurosawa Kyoshi – not to be confused with the absurdist Tokyo! with surreal short films by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon Ho.
The Ecumenical Prize is always an interesting gauge of the dramatising of values. This year’s winner was the Canadian film, Adoration, directed by Atom Egoyan (who won the prize in Cannes in 1997 for The Sweet Hereafter). Egoyan tackled a huge range of themes in 100 minutes including family relationships, education, appearances and reality, theatre, fact and fiction and imagination as well as racism and contemporary terrorism. The film unfolded gradually. What seemed coincidences were not. Some found the plot too confusing, but for those who appreciated it, it was a very satisfying film.
The International Film Critics award (FIPRESCI) is always a gauge of the more artistic (and arty) side of the festival. This was definitely the case this year with the winner, Delta, from Hungary. Filmed in the Romanian Danube delta, it was one of those very grim (even glum) beautifully photographed but pessimistic films that can only end in meaningless death. However, in the Un Certain Regard section, they gave their prize to the British film about The Maze prison and Bobby Sands, Hunger, directed quite strikingly by the Turner Prizewinning artist, Steve McQueen. (He also won the Camera d’Or for best first feature.) The prize in the Directors’ Fortnight went to the Belgian film, El Dorado.
And that is not to mention the events out of competition, crowds flocking to Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda as well as Woody Allen’s latest take on (his?) problems of sexuality and love, the amusing Vicky Cristina Barcelona or, on the last day, the Korean ‘tribute’ to Sergio Leone who must have become addicted to Sam Peckinpah and overdosed on Tarantino and Rodriguez, The Good, the Bad and the Weird, with emphasis on the weird, the rapid body count and ingenious and crass ways of killing people. It got quite an ovation at the press screening.
Peter Malone