Cannes. Liverpool.

"After years at sea, a middle-aged sailor returns to his home in deepest Tierra del Fuego and finds his past coming back to haunt him in Lisandro Alonso's supremely accomplished Liverpool," writes Robert Koehler in Variety.

The film "continues the Argentine helmer's fascination with solitary men at work (La libertad) or a mission (Los muertos), while elegantly encapsulating a massive family saga. Much will be made, on the Croisette and beyond, about how Alonso... seems to be inching toward more traditional filmmaking. That would be somewhat misleading..."

Updated through 5/22.

"This will be a guaranteed turn-off for most viewers, but the auteur's small army of devoted admirers... will see this fourth feature as a subtle refinement of his gaunt style," writes Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily. "Like Alonso's other films..., Liverpool holds the attention, as long as you're willing to enter something like the trance-like state that it requires. But it also keeps the viewer at a distance, discouraging emotional involvement and withholding all but the most basic info rmation. Liverpool is the road movie at its sparest and most down-to-earth."

"Painfully slow and inexplicably dull," counters Ray Bennett in the Hollywood Reporter.

Directors' Fortnight.

Update: "It's my first encounter with Alonso, and I'm told his earlier movies, La Libertad in particular, are quite good," blogs the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "This one struck me as a Béla Tarr movie left to die in a snowbank."

Updates, 5/22: "Alonso's brilliant, slow-burning simplicity creeps slowly but definitively, and its impact continues to entwine itself after its scenes of brutal disinterest and deeply repressed unhappiness routinely proceed past," writes Daniel Kasman in the Auteurs' Notebook. "It is a sign that Liverpool is not nearly as banal as it seems."

"Of course, the film is exactingly photographed, with its cool images of rural southern Argentina, and mystifying in the way it withholds its story, but ultimately, Liverpool is a pain to get through and richer in retrospect," writes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE.

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 12:31 PM