Cannes. Review orphans.

Though a slew of new entries went up throughout the Cannes Film Festival, each devoted to an individual film, I certainly didn't get to all of them. Below the jump: an attempt to find all those missing pieces for you.

Before getting into the actual festival lineup, a few mentions of films that screened either in the Market or were special previews, etc. I've already mentioned the upbeat receptions given to opening sequences of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center and the showreel for Dreamgirls, but perhaps the most spectacular response - if Kevin Smith is to be believed, as we're all sure he is - has to have been the eight-minute standing ovation for Clerks II.

I also found this, from George the Cyclist, worth noting: "My foraging in the market place was amply rewarded with Unknown, an American production starring Barry Pepper, Greg Kinnear and Jim Caviezel.... It was most gripping and exhilarating film-going experience."

A week ago, I pointed to Rob Sharp's piece in the Observer on the controversy kicked up by Provoked. When Kiranjit Ahluwalia, the Sikh woman whose story the film tells, and Aishwarya Rai, who plays her, arrived in Cannes, Karl Rozmeyer had a talk with them for Premiere.

Variety's Derek Elley caught one you probably want to hear about: "South Korean maverick Kim Ki-duk takes a scalpel to the local obsession with appearances in Time, in which a young couple resort to plastic surgery to perk their relationship - with unexpected results. Though typically centered on a high-concept idea, film is more of a conversation piece than Kim's usual pics, recalling recent works by fellow Korean helmer Hong Sang-soo, with its coffee shop meetings and ironic playfulness." The film will open the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on June 30.

All the films in Competition got entries, and of those screening Out of Competition that didn't, I'm primarily sorry I missed Ici Najac, A Vous la Terre (Najac Calling, Over to You Earth) and Chlopiec Na Galpopujacym Koniu (The Boy on a Galloping Horse) since they're the ones most of us know the least about. I did point to Bernard Besserglik's in the Hollywood Reporter, but without mentioning that he wrote, "As the title suggests, Najac purports to be a call to arms against globalization. In fact it is a celebration rather than a manifesto, a wry shrug at the contradictions involved in living off the land in the digital age, and all the more enjoyable for that."

As for The Boy, it's only just yesterday that Anne Feullère's brief review appeared at Cineuropa - the only one I've seen so far: "Filled with silence, lengthy still shots and close-ups, dreamlike sequences and dialogue that frames two characters at a time, The Boy is a film deeply inspired by the cinema of Ingmar Bergman."

Looking at the list more closely now, I'm only just now realizing that Wenders's Chambre 666 was screened this year.

You might already know about the set-up: Cannes, 1982. Wenders placed a camera in a hotel room and gave a series of directors a question: "Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" Most directors were left alone with the camera and the question, though some, as you see up there, were in pairs (Fassbinder, who would die in just a few months, and Herzog, whom death might be too scared to bother with). You can see the full list of interviewees here. As for seeing the film itself, I'd certainly like to again; I'm guessing it's been a good 15 or 20 years since I have. A DVD is available here in Germany, so I'll see to that soon enough. As for Region 1, there was supposed to have been a second Wenders collection with this one in there over a year ago, but I don't know what's come of those plans.

Then there's Eugène Green's Les Signes, and here, I eagerly point you to an entry by Scott Foundas, who was silent throughout much of the fest, but suddenly blogged up a storm right at the end there: "Like all of Green's films, this one is a fable, about a group of characters who find themselves at a crossroads, and how they come to choose which of many possible paths upon which to shine their symbolic candles. 'How does one search?' one character asks, only to be answered 'By looking at the world.' And there are few greater pleasures to be had in Cannes this year than looking at the world through the eyes of Eugène Green."

Signs was part of a program of shorts that included Jane Campion's The Water Diary (see "Cannes. Shorts and shorts."), Gaspar Noé's SIDA, François Ozon's Un Lever de Rideau (A Curtain Raiser) and Monte Hellman's Stanley's Girlfriend. Click the titles for more.

"With Nouvelle Chance, presented out of competition at Cannes, Anne Fontaine continues the adventures of Augustin Dos Santos, played by her brother Jean-Chrétien Sibertin-Blanc, after Augustin (1994) and Augustin, Roi du Kung Fu (1999)," explains Cineuropa's Anne Feullère. "Fontaine returns to a style that suits her very well, to make an unusual, slightly offbeat, tender and crazy comedy."

Variety's Todd McCarthy: "A French homage to the American Old West that comes at a time when it is unusual to see much Gallic enthusiasm expressed for the cowboy mentality, Requiem for Billy the Kid advances a curious parallel between the famous outlaw and the contemporaneous poet Arthur Rimbaud." Hm! He does mention that it's "ultra-French from top to bottom" and features "a new version of Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door' sung by musician Claire Diterzi in sexy hush-whispered style."

As for the other films screened Out of Competition - Over the Hedge, United 93, X-Men: The Last Stand and Sketches of Frank Gehry - have already gotten plenty of coverage, with the possible exception of that last one. Michelle Devereaux has one of the most recent reviews in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: "Yes, Frank Gehry is the People's Architect, so it's no surprise an admitted architecture novice has created the first filmic retrospective of his work. Actually, Sydney Pollack probably knows more than he lets on... The relationship between the two men - their professional jealousies, the push-pull of commerce in their respective muddied art forms, and how that tension has been realized in their work - is probably the most interesting aspect of Sketches of Frank Gehry. Unfortunately, it's barely explored, perhaps because the incessantly safe Pollack refuses to insert himself into the narrative in any meaningful way." Also, Rebecca Epstein talks with Pollack for the LA CityBeat and you may remember that David D'Arcy turned in a long, thoughtful review from Toronto last fall.

The review orphans from the Un Certain Regard section:

• Last summer, Tom Birchenough turned a production report on Russian filmmaker Nikolay Khomeriki's 977 into the Moscow Times; Variety's Leslie Felperin is underwhelmed by the results.

• "For the first three quarters of the movie, La Californie is a wonderfully old-fashioned French soap opera bordering on camp," writes Kirk Honeycutt in the Hollywood Reporter of screenwriter Jacques Fieschi's directing debut. "Then the filmmaker spoils the fun by turning his movie into a serious crime story."

• Variety's Derek Elley calls Danny and Oxide Pang's Gwaï Wik (Re-Cycle) "a feast for CGI geeks but famine for auds requiring narrative and character development."

• Elley again, on Patrick Grandperret's Meutrieres (Murderers): "A distended, wannabe drama about two young female drifters who end up committing manslaughter, pic blows a promising set-up to wander along, episodically and sans dramatic tension, to an almost casual resolution."

• Uro (Unrest) wouldn't have disappointed Variety's Jay Weissberg so much "if helmer Stefan Faldbakken hadn't made the beginning half such an enjoyable ride."

Critics' Week:

• Destricted. Site; reviews.

• Une équipe de rêve. No results in English, I'm afraid. Looks like we'll have to do with the synopsis you see when you click the title.

• Variety's Leslie Felperin finds that the Norwegian-British co-production, Free Jimmy, which closed the section, "plays like some unholy cross between Dumbo, Fritz the Cat and Requiem for a Dream." Site. Earlier: Mark Brown in the Guardian.

• Variety's Eddie Cockrell: "A deep breath of Kaurismäkian deadpan, Friss levegö (Fresh Air) measures the deceptively wide emotional chasm between a neat-freak workaholic who cleans subway toilets and her quietly defiant daughter with ambitions to design clothing who's more like her than either of them can imagine." And he liked it back in February.

• Variety's Derek Elley: "The Cinema of Verbal Abuse reaches new heights in I psihi sto stoma (Soul Kicking), a two-hour rant-fest that's as punishing on the audience as it is on the characters."

• Kigali, des images contre un massacre. Cineuropa has a synopsis.

• Komma (Black Out), a debut feature from Martine Doyen, "boasts a tantalizing undertow of infinite possibilities cloaked in often captivating imagery," writes Lisa Nesselson in Variety. "But the visual bravado and narrative teasing lead nowhere in particular, which is frustrating in the presence of so much raw talent."

• Variety's Jay Weissberg: "The German middle class takes another drubbing in novice helmer Matthias Luthardt's pingpong, a chamber piece with four characters full of unspoken needs that rarely bursts with the kind of tension required to make an impact." Site.

• And Variety's Deborah Young: "An engaging if uneven tale that outstays its welcome, Sonhos de Peixe (Dreaming of Fish) describes the life and loves of a teenage lobster diver from a poor Brazilian fishing village.... [W]hen a whimsical script ploy takes over the film's last half hour, credibility wanes."

Well, thank heavens Variety was all over the Directors' Fortnight, eh?

• "A French film director convicted of sexual harassment of two actresses has presented his own version of events in an explicit, and occasionally surreal, movie at the Cannes film festival," reported John Lichfield in the Independent on Tuesday. Lisa Nesselson reviews Jean-Claude Brisseau's Les Anges Exterminateurs (Exterminating Angels) in Variety; Frédéric Bonnaud mounted a defense of the director in Film Comment two years ago.

• Anche Libero Va Bene (Free is Fine, Too). Cineuropa has a file; Fabien Lemercier reports on its award, the Prix Art et Essai.

• Lisa Nesselson, Variety: "The intense feelings, reckless experimentation and sheer obliviousness of adolescence are convincingly portrayed in slightly overlong Ça brûle (On Fire)."

• Changement D'Adresse (Change of Address). Variety's Derek Elley: "Eric Rohmer meets Woody Allen... Parisian to its fingertips."

• Variety's Justin Chang: "The collision between a failed Belgian inventor searching for his birth parents and a Quebecois man trying to preserve his father's legacy yields about 10 contrivances too many in Congorama."

• Dans Paris (In Paris). Christophe Honoré directs Romain Duris in "a simple yet beautiful, light-hearted and tender film," writes Cineuropa's Anne Feuillère.

• "An uncommonly resonant sports drama in which a talented yet troubled gymnast comes to terms with a turbulent past, Fehér tenyér (White Palms) proves a distinctive and absorbing third feature by Szabolcs Hajdu, working from autobiographical elements involving his brother - and pic's star - Miklos Zoltan Hajdu," writes Variety's Eddie Cockrell. Site.

• The Hawk is Dying screened at Sundance, so reviews are out there.

• "A hauntingly serene and sometimes moving experimental take on Don Quixote, Albert Serra's Honor de Cavalleria (The Honor of Chivalry) seems to have spliced that Spanish classic to Waiting for Godot via Bresson and Ozu," writes Jonathan Holland for Variety.

• Variety's Leslie Felperin: "Pretentious, contrived and made with less technical skill than the average film school graduation project, [Lying] assembles underdirected cast for drama about a pathological liar (Chloë Sevigny) who invites three femme pals down to her country house for the weekend. Anyone who says this will go much further than fests and limited engagements is either lying or deluded." Ouch.

• Variety's Jay Weissberg calls On Ne Devrait Pas Exister (We Should Not Exist) an "unstructured mess."

• Writing for at indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman calls Stefan Krohmer's Sommer 04 an der Schlei (Summer 04 on the Schlei) a "little gem of a thriller" and notes that some "might sense the faint echoes of Michael Haneke's Funny Games or Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water. But while cleverly shifting character's alliances and motivations and playing with audience expectations, Krohmer's suspense is subtler and his drama more human. And a final chilling moral clusterfuck is the director's own ingenious making."

• Transe has a site with clips and such. At Cineuropa, Anne Feuillère fills us in on Portuguese director Teresa Villaverde's background.

• Yureru also has a site; Don Brown has a bit more info at japan film news.

And then there's the film that closed the fest, Transylvania, which Cineuropa's Fabien Lemercier calls a "fiery masterpiece"; Variety's Leslie Felperin is a tad less enthusiastic.

Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2006 4:39 PM