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Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas is proof that the hits just keep coming from Romania. It’s the story of a marriage that comes apart over an affair. Paul has been married to Adriana for a decade. He’s a teddy bear, she’s an every day mom a little reminiscent of Olive Oyl after college. They have a reasonably cute daughter, Mara, they both adore.
Cannes—The strongest competition films to date have been Mike Leigh’s Another Year, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñârritu’s Biutiful, a contemporary story set in immigrant Barcelona featuring Javier Bardem as Uxbal, a fixer negotiating the underworld of brand knockoffs, drugs, illegal Chinese workers, their gay Chinese handlers, Senegalese street vendors double dipping as pushers, construction site migrant labor, parenting, a crazy wife sleeping with his brother who runs a sex bar, and the police, both straight and corrupt, all set to the furious metronome of a prostate cancer that could’ve been caught but has metastasized to the liver.
Cannes--Woody Allen's You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger had two reactions in Cannes. The French reaction, pas mal. And the American reaction, pretty mal. One could delve into why the French seem to like Woody better than the Americans do. Auteurism is enough.
But for the moment, that's not of great interest here. It's just accepted.
Ever since the personal cataclysm and public relations disaster of Soon-Yi, Woody's films have often buttressed this point: "The heart wants what the heart wants," which is how Allen excused and explained in court how it all came to pass. That's the spine that organizes the characters in Whatever Works and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, certainly.
Cannes--Mike Leigh’s new film, Another Year, opens with Imelda Staunton at the National Health Service because she can’t sleep. All you see are the doctor’s hands examining her, black female hands probing, then laying on the stethoscope, as the doctor asks about symptoms. The doctor detects anxiety and emotional distress, which a pill isn’t going to help, she says. The patient is as tight as a clam and insists on a chemical response to a physical problem. It’s an interesting moment because your sympathies are divided, though Leigh’s may not be. In short order, Leigh’s articulated where he stands on either side of the line between pursuing root causes versus surface remedies. Excavation is the tool of an enlightened mind.
In Leigh’s world, the gap between the working class and the professional class is education, which he believes in—witness Happy Go Lucky of two years ago. And that difference is played out with Leigh’s brilliant eye and ear for detail in Another Year, about people coming around the far turn and coping—or more specifically not coping terribly well—with who they are, as their remaining 20 years or so start to play out.
Cannes--Opening the 63rd Cannes fest with Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, or Robin des bois, as it’s known locally, is one more addition to the sad chapter of opening nights at festivals around the globe. The bottom probably was the DaVinci Code here a couple years back. But pound for British pound, this one is right up there, or down there, or in the hunt certainly. It’s a ridiculous film by a great action director with a great cast—Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett as Himself and Marian, who have exactly zero screen chemistry, plus William Hurt and a scandalously embarrassing Max Von Sydow thrown in, or up. But the whole enterprise has no reason for being except as a payday, and it would be futile to look for subtext or political smarts in this film and obscene to find any and give this film ground cover. In short, it’s drivel made by a lot of someones for no one.
To witless: Robin is a warrior in Richard the Lionheart’s Crusade en route back home in 1199 after a decade of a stupid war against the Muslim world ending in failure and bankruptcy. (That’s supposed to sound like now, get it?) Asked his opinion of the venture by the king in camp, Robin speaks truth to power that the slaughter of 2500 Muslim innocents along the way rendered the English now godless. That will not do. Robin ends up in the stocks. At the first opportunity, he and his minions—Little John among them—go AWOL, pick up Friar Tuck along the way at Marian’s place in Nottingham, where she’s head of the village Prefeminist Pain in the Ass Society. All of them are wasted as screen presences, and make you long for the romantic fake Robin and Marians and coterie of yokels of yore. Be assured that great amounts of cash, however, were hemorrhaged on battle scenes that provided excitement to a lot of costumers but naptime for customers. At best this beefcake parade should’ve been titled Showboys.
Cannes, France--Though it didn’t seem to go down all that well with US critics here at the 63rd Cannes, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is fresh on the money as far as today’s headlines go.
You can see onscreen whatever Oliver Stone and company read about the events leading to the financial meltdown of 2008—news accounts about Lehman Bros, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Chase, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, the Federal Reserve Bank. Composites of the crisis’ key players -- Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros, Ace Greenberg of Bear Sterns, Johnny Mack of Morgan Stanley, ex-Goldman Sachs chair and Bush’s Federal Reserve chief Hank Paulson, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, John Thain at Merrill Lynch, Maurice Greenberg of AIG, yadda yadda—seem not so much ripped from the headlines as given a shuttle pass into Stone’s movie.
It’s Gordon Gekko we've all been waiting for, however, Gekko who began his career 23 years ago in Stone’s 1987 IPO, Wall Street, as a swamp creature of the Reagan era corporate raiders. Gekko has resurfaced at last in Cannes, and he’s almost agreeable as a Bush 43 era market shyster. Stone apparently vacillated about making Money Never Sleeps. He must have liked the script, since he pops up here and there as an extra.
Blondes may have more fun, but the brunettes ruled the red carpet at Cannes 2010. With Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria and Aishwarya Rai strutting by it would be easy to forget about the films and festival all together.
Somehow our intrepid reporter, Harlan Jacobson will enudure the beauty and glitz to bring his reports to Talk Cinema over the course of the festival. Talkcinema.com will be your source for insider news, screening reviews and the overall "feel" for the festival that Harlan always brings to his festival reports.
Opening day has always been the day we sit back and admire all of our favorite stars. This year is no different, so click the Read More link and enjoy Talk Cinema's red carpet photo gallery, and check back often for the latest news from Cannes 2010.
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