Betting at Cannes
Since the European election coincides with the last day of Cannes film festival this Sunday, the mighty French have decided to give out the Palme d’Or one day earlier than usual. While predicting the winner is notoriously difficult I will have a go at it, or at the very least try to summarize some of the highlights and favourites of the festival.
Last year the winner was screened late into the festival and few even knew much about Kechiche — I had seen Games of Love and Chance — outside of France before Blue Is the Warmest Colour swept the Croisette. By the time I heard about its greatness, it was already impossible to get into the second day screening of it. It looks like Xavier Dolan’s Mommy is doing a bit of the same this year. It had its premier today (screened for press yesterday) and the critical response has been overwhelmingly positive. That being said, being a favourite of the critics does not by any means guarantee success at the awards. A few years ago Le Havre scored really well among critics, especially in French magazines, but failed to win any prizes except for the FIPRESCI critics award.
In Screen critics’ poll Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner — about the English painter J.M.W. Turner — has the upper hand, but it left the French critics polled for Le Film Francais cold. The Jury isn’t particularly French, though, and it seems like the brightest minds are English-speaking female directors (Campion & Coppola). Nobody knows if that has any effect on the awards, but there’s one more interesting title yet to be seen that has strong female leads. Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas features Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. A few clips have been released and it looks like this could be a breakthrough film for him. He has done films in English before but never with a cast this big.
Now would be a good time to confess I didn’t attend Cannes this year and all of this is obviously just guesswork. Moreover my (prematurely) high hopes for Assayas winning are probably guided by the fact that he will attend the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Lapland in a few weeks. Make of it what you will, but he wouldn’t be the first to go pretty much straight from glamour of Cannes to mosquito bites: the Dardenne brothers experienced it in 2006 when L’enfant won and was screened at both festivals.
The Dardennes have yet another film competing this year, and it has received positive reviews as always. Starring Marion Cotillard it’s also best actress award hopeful. But the big question is, is it really good enough to be their third winner (Rosetta was first in 1999)?
Both Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher and David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars were received with some high marks, but I don’t see either of them winning this year. Foxcatcher scored more highly of the two, but if the Jury did go for a North American winner, I’d say it’s French Canadian Dolan who gets it. He is however still quite young, so it’s possible he’ll have to make do with a lesser award.
One last film in competition that received very good reviews is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Winter Sleep. I’m not personally a fan of his work, so I’m inclined to believe it would be a surprise win. As would be a win for Jean-Luc Godard and his 3D (dog) movie Goodbye Language, despite how much I’m dying to see it.
Besides the main competition there are some interesting titles in the side categories. Un certain regard had well received films by Ruben Östlund (Turist), Asia Argento (The Misundestood) and Mathieu Amalric (The Blue Room). Östlund’s film seems to have had by far the best reviews, but Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, also well reviewed, is one of the most interesting titles at the festival. Starring Viggo Mortenson with a slowburning cinematography by Aki Kaurismäki’s favourite Timo Salminen it seems like an interesting mixture between bankability and art cinema.
In the other side categories Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery, Jim Mickle’s Cold in July and John Boorman’s Queen and Country will all go to my watchlist.
Update: The awards were given yesterday and it’s time to make a note that my predictions were hilariously off the mark (except for Mommy). But the winner being Ceylan kinda highlights one of the points I was trying to make, which is that Cannes is an excellent opportunity to see how subjective film (re)viewing is. I was pretty straightforward about why I didn’t think it would win and obviously my personal reaction made me basically wish for it to be buried by the Jury so that I wouldn’t have to see it.
Cannes is a festival that has an embarrassment of riches, and the differences in reaction between international and French press are quite staggering. There is a lot of nationalism and language barriers involved in favouring certain (be it Americans only looking at American films or British critics going bonkers when they finally manage to get an excellent film in competition) films not to mention which films are even covered by the papers in minor filmmaking countries such as Finland.
Anyhow, hopefully I’ll see you there next year.
