Cannes. Promise Me This.

"Two-time Cannes winner Emir Kusturica brought a happy ending to the film festival on Saturday with a boisterous Balkan romp, breaking the mould for a competition full of dark tales," reports Mike Collett-White for Reuters. "Promise Me This [Zavet; more] is the last of 22 films to be screened in the main lineup, a day ahead of the prize ceremony."

"The Sarajevo-born director confirms with this film that, rather than a straightforward filmmaker, he is the ringmaster of his own cinematic circus that returns each two years or so to your town with a slightly different show performed by pretty much the same group of performers," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "Newcomers and big fans of Kusturica's comedies will be delighted and should book first-row seats (even though Zavet completely misses the emotional resonance or satire of his best films), while returning visitors should opt for the cheap seats."

Updated through 5/27.

"Cross the hills to go to the village sell his cow, buy a religious icon and find a wife: Tsane makes these three promises to his grandfather, who believes he is dying," writes Camillo de Marco at Cineuropa. "In the style of Black Cat, White Cat (1998), the peculiarity of Promise Me This, announced as a 'a comedy with light and necessarily mad heart,' lies in its star, Uros Milovanovic, who is decidedly too young to find a wife. He is flanked by the 57 year-old Miki Manojlovic (who has appeared in many of the Kusturica's films, including Black Cat... and [When Father Was Away on Business]), Aleksandar Bercek (Life is a Miracle, 2004) and the beautiful Marija Petronijevic as Jasna."

"Continuing to play his brand of grotesquely exaggerated slapstick beyond all reason, Emir Kusturica actually manages to outdo the excesses of his previous pic, Life is a Miracle, with his new slice of buffoonery about a peasant lad who finds true love," writes Robert Koehler for Variety. "The only conceivable reason that this mess is included in the Palme d'Or lineup is as a nod during Cannes' 60th birthday to the two-time Palme winner, but it only serves to underline how far the helmer of When Father Was Away on Business has sunk."

Update, 5/27: "I lost interest after the 16th instance of someone falling into a hole or flying through a window, which was roughly around the midpoint of reel one," writes Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab.

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 26, 2007 11:57 AM