Cannes. Two Lovers.

"[M]ost of my US colleagues here hated James Gray's new film even more than they did last year's booed-right-here We Own The Night, which I wasn't too crazy about myself," writes Glenn Kenny.

"But I gotta give it up - as earnest and awkward as this loose rethink of Dostoevsky's 'White Nights' can get, it frequently moved me. Perhaps it's something to do with my own past as a fall-hard guy for troubled, difficult women.... Turning away from the crime-steeped mileus of his previous features, Gray aims for a kind of deliberately ache-filled romanticism that no other filmmaker I can think of is particularly interested in today. Good for him, says I."

Updated through 5/27.

"Two Lovers is the third successive James Gray feature to play in Competition at Cannes and it has become harder to discern why the selectors keep such resolute faith with this particular American auteur," grumbles Allan Hunter in Screen Daily. "Two Lovers is a maudlin, melancholic tug at the heartstrings that marks a welcome break from Gray's preoccupation with crime and corruption. It is well-crafted and ably acted but never especially moving and winds up feeling like something from the classier end of the American TV movie spectrum."

"Boxoffice will depend on audiences in the Grand Theft Auto era deciding that the fate of three little people adds up to more than a hill of beans," writes Ray Bennett in the Hollywood Reporter. "The story asks the eternal question of whether it's wiser to pursue the one you love or turn to the one who loves you. It is also a snapshot of the tribal ritual that pits the instinct for loyalty and continuity against the temptation to stride into the unknown."

Updates: For Jeffrey Wells, this is "an attractively composed, persuasively acted but slightly too earnest and on-the-nose drama about romantic indecision. But it's not half bad - a little Marty-ish at times, maybe a bit too emphatic here and there, but nonetheless concise, reasonably well-ordered and, for the most part, emotionally restrained and therefore believable."

IndieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez has a snapshot and quotes from the press conference.

"It's a gem," declares Anne Thompson.

"Polarizing - Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama polarizing, Yankee-Red Sox polarizing - is the best way to describe the reaction to James Gray's "Two Lovers," blogs Steven Zeitchik for the Hollywood Reporter. "At the party after the Lumiere premiere and into the rainy hours of the night, media and viewers decried the things they disliked, and they had many of them: it was dull, it was dour, the plain-Jane choice was too attractive. But a smaller and equally passionate group, of which we were decidedly a part, rallied on behalf of the film."

Updates, 5/21: "Mr Gray tells this story in the key of melodrama, a choice that strikes me as admirably bold, since seriousness in American movies too often seems to grow out of the barrel of a gun rather than affairs of the heart," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Though it takes place in the present, the look and mood of Two Lovers are old-fashioned, perhaps even anachronistic, but nonetheless there is something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions."

"Well acted by Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw, this very New York tale is old-fashioned in good ways that have to do with solid storytelling, craftsmanship and emotional acuity," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy.

Mark Brown meets Paltrow for the Guardian.

"Gray is an intriguing and somewhat lonely figure who inhabits the nebulous middle ground between American independent cinema and contemporary Hollywood." And Andrew O'Hehir talks to him for Salon.

"This is one long toothache of a movie, painfully earnest, not preposterous enough to be enjoyed as camp, and a waste of some very good actors," writes Richard Corliss for Time.

"It'll be too little too late for some, but in its final third, Two Lovers becomes an extremely strong parable about the madness of romantic love, and maybe even its impossibility," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog.

Updates, 5/22: "We can now say that Gray is the filmmaker of negative triumph." Emmanuel Burdeau has a relatively longish entry on Gray and his most recent two movies in Cahiers du cinéma's Cannes diary, but: be warned, he spoils the endings of both.

"Like Eastwood, Gray is an anomaly: He makes throwbacks that seem radical because almost no one makes throwbacks anymore," writes Ben Kenigsberg for Time Out Chicago. "Two Lovers has moments of reckless acting, tentative dialogue and flimsy characterizations - and yet it keeps you guessing, even haunted. It's a case when ambition may outweigh achievement - but strange, bold gestures are part of what Cannes is all about."

Updates, 5/23: "James Gray has exactly what American cinema needs - sincerity," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "Gray deals in melodrama—and male melodrama at that - but treats it with a solemn seriousness that makes one believe again in the earnestness of American genre cinema."

"Two Lovers is not a great film; it's not even close," writes Matt Noller at the House Next Door. "But it confirms Gray as, I think, one of the most exciting new directors to come out of Hollywood. He's not making movies quite like anyone else around, but whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on who you ask. If you ask me, it's a very good thing indeed."

Update, 5/26: Erica Abeel talks with Gray for the IFC.

Update, 5/27: "A film like Two Lovers is somewhat of a rarity these days," writes Kim Voynar at Cinematical. "This isn't the cheesy romantic comedy that Hollywood would make of this script; it's a darker, intellectual, and thoughtful romantic drama about life and love and the choices we make that sometimes compromise both who we are and who we really want to be."

---

Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

---

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 6:34 AM