Cannes. Better Things.

"It's a painful portrait of a fractured Cotswolds community, though not the one on the postcards. [Duane] Hopkins's version is a world of teenage heroin addicts shooting up and driving too fast down country lanes, and sad, elderly folk staring out of windows."

Updated through 5/23.

"The drama takes place in the wake of a young woman's heroin overdose, and most of the young characters are past or present users," writes Jonathan Romney in the Independent. "Austere in the extreme, Better Things is shot in a vein (perhaps 'vein' isn't the best word) of poetic realism, Hopkins displaying an intuitive knack for stitching together allusive chains of images. It's certainly fated to be dismissed by some as the latest chapter in the history of British miserabilism, but Hopkins is a director with an introspective subtlety uncommon in UK filmmaking. Better Things proves the Brits can make Belgian art films as well as anyone - and I hope you realise that's a compliment."

"The film's presentation in Cannes' International Critic's Week - the first British feature to garner a slot in the three years since the similarly-set The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael - should attract festival programmers and put Hopkins on the radar as a talent to watch," notes Screen Daily. "But if Ecstasy was on uppers, Better Things is on downers."

"This Short Cuts-style film, full of fragile hopes and imbued with a deathly atmosphere, is outstanding in terms of its directorial approach," writes Fabien Lemercier in Cineuropa. "From the skilful changes in rhythm to the editing and the aesthetic effects of the natural light, Hopkins reveals an originality and talent that the future will no doubt confirm."

Earlier: Andrew Pulver profiles Hopkins for the Guardian - where Hopkins has posted a blog entry.

Update: "The slide-show-like rhythm moves too quickly between the multiple narratives, obfuscating relationship of characters and not giving various plots time to breathe," finds Variety's Alissa Simon. "Evoking memories of early work by Alan Clarke or Lynne Ramsay, as well as Nan Goldin's Ballad of Sexual Dependency, pic gives a special twist to UK tradition of social realism by juxtaposing the natural and the constructed."

Update, 5/19: "What is striking about Duane Hopkins' debut feature, Better Things, is the number of negatives it accumulates," writes Bernard Besserglik in the Hollywood Reporter. "No camera movements. No musical soundtrack. No story. No humor. It's tempting to go on: no warmth, no hope, no love, no life. In their prospectus to the media, the filmmakers promise poetry and transcendence. These, like beauty, reside largely in the eye of the beholder. The problem with Better Things is that, beyond the community of festival-goers and hard-core arthouse buffs, there are likely to be few beholders."

Update, 5/20: "Perhaps overly obtuse and glacially paced, the film shows a keen photographic eye and cinematic riskiness," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE: "In one scene, Hopkins abruptly cuts all ambient sound, allowing the stark dialogue to come powerfully to the fore. There's even less narrative here than Afterschool, as it's more concerned with imbuing a feeling, of pain, loss, and hopelessness. As the voice-over repeats, 'Why does she think falling in love would make it any easier?'"

Update, 5/23: "It's almost impossible to describe the feeling of watching the film with an audience for the first time," blogs Duane Hopkins for the Guardian:

For two years you have been solidly working on the movie. You get so used to watching and analysing the film from a technical point of view that the instant pull of viewing it alongside a new, objective audience turns it back into an emotional experience. For months and months you watch and discuss the film with a group of producers and financiers that number no more than 10, so to suddenly hand the film over to a few thousand strangers is a very intense period of discovery; at once exciting and humbling. You hear every single piece of sound design anew, all the directorial decisions you have made are instantly shown in a new light. You try to gauge the changing perceptions and emotions within the cinema but you know that it is impossible. You have to be patient and wait till the end while enjoying rediscovering the film yourself. It is only now that the relationship between the film and its real audience truly begins.

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

Posted by dwhudson at May 18, 2008 6:15 AM