CANNES - Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 911 is screening right now in two of the smaller rooms for the press.
Miramax is running a press screening of the long cut of Zhang Yimou's Hero, which they're opening later in the summer.
I think about this, realize that Monday is deadline day, and that with a couple of big press screenings going, this is the perfect time to hit the press room because there will be absolutely no lineups for a computer. And, as the people who form demented mob-like scrums never seem to learn, films are not unique, one time only events. There's another screening of Fahrenheit this afternoon, and at least two in the market this week. And it will screen on the final day of the Festival. And if that fails, either Thinkfilm or Lion's Gate will pick it up and it will open this July. Likewise the Zhang Yimou film.
Anyway, back to work.
THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO DO AT A FILM FESTIVAL 1 -- See three movies consecutively in the same venue. I did this on Sunday at the Director's Fortnight over at the Noga Hilton, and what happens is that you come out of the theater and leave the building and come back around the side and wind up in the same line in the same place you were two and a half hours ago. And then you do it again. This gives you a complete sense of futility that even outweighs crossing three films off the old ěto see' list. Speaking of which...
KRONIKAS (Sebastian Cordero, Un Certain Regard) arrives being touted as the biggest movie ever to come out of Ecuador, a mark of odd distinction. It's actually an Ecuador/El Salvador/Mexico co-production and has Alfonse Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) and Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) listed among the producers and a cast that includes John Leguizamo, Damian Alcazar (The Crime Of Father Amaro) and a cameo from the English character actor Alfred Molina, it's not exactly a tiny Ecuadorean movie.
That said, it's a pretty good psychological thriller, with Leguizamo as a hotshot Miami reporter who's covering the police hunt for a serial rapist/murder who has abducted more than 150 children. He saves Alcazar's life -- the opening 15 minutes of the film are a long, stunning set-piece, evidence that this is not exactly director Sebastian Cordero's first film. When Alacazar winds up in jail after accidentally hitting a child with his car, Leguizamo discovers that he may -- or may not -- be the serial killer in question.
Superb performances -- Leguizamo, who is generally underemployed in straight dramatic roles, is exceptional.
Z CHANNEL -- A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (Xan Cassavetes, Out of Competition) is the story of the first American TV service to offer un-cut, commercial free movies, LA's Z Channel, which began operating in 1974 and from the late 70s onward became the brainchild of its movie-obsessed chief programmer, Jerry Harvey, who managed to pry loose from recalcitrant producers things like the director's cuts of Heaven's Gate, Once Upon A Time In America and 1900, in an era before HBO and before the DVD made so-called ědirector's cuts' a code phrase for ěwell, it's longer, anyway.'. Harvey turns out to be a tragedy waiting to happen, and the portrait is painted in part by friends and associates and the tribute is painted by directors whose work was sustained by the service (Robert Altman, for one) and a younger generation that discovered filmmakers there (Quentin Tarantino).
Directed by John Cassavetes's daughter Xan, Z Channel is a sort of perfect film festival mČlange -- it's about film obsessed people, it's financed by one premium pay service (IFC) to talk about another,and it's packed with famous directors. It's the film festival equivalent of a zen koan, or a mobius strip.
THE WOODSMAN (Nicole Kassell, Director's Fortnight) arrives out of Sundance with some serious buzz surrounding Kevin Bacon's performance as a convicted child molester who arrives home after 12 years in prison. It's a spare, decent piece of work -- it's got that 80s Sundance vibe -- tiny, observed stories that movie with a certain deliberate care. Of course it has movie stars -- not just Bacon, who executive produced, but Kyra Sedgwick (though with Bacon as star and exec, how hard can it be to get Sedgwick?), Benjamin Bratt, and a couple of rappers, Eve and Mos Def, who are both good in unexpected ways -- these are straight up dramatic roles, and Mos Def has the most dialogue in the picture.
It's an interesting construction, that doesn't allow any easy outs for any of the characters -- that Bacon's Walter can really only purge his feelings through a climactic act of violence is an interesting comment on how deeply rooted his sickness lies. Bacon's performance is deeply internal -- he creates a character who is defined by his refusal to reach out.
THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL (Asia Argento, Director's Fortnight) -- Speaking of child abuse, and it's hard not to at this Cannes Festival, at least with the viewing choices I've been making, in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, director/star Asia Argento sets out to play the worst mother on earth. Argento, a working actor since childhood, made her directorial debut on The Scarlet Diva, a film which should be shown to every parent who's ever thought of putting their child into acting. Argento hurled herself into her portrait of the artist as a vain, self-obsessed, bi-sexual semi-junkie. In this adaptation of JT Leroy's collection of interlocked stories, she plays the worst mother in the world.
With her hair dyed platinum, Argento looks like a failed attempt to clone Courtney Love, and she's a sexually promiscuous drifter inclined to hook up with guys who will beat or rape her son, played by Dylan and Cole Sprouse (identical twins who played the kid in Big Daddy) pimp her out to truck drivers, run speed labs in their basements. The big question is how did the Social Services people ever decide to take the kid away from his foster parents and give it back to this walking disaster area?
Perhaps they were blind. Or stupid.
It's hard to argue for The Heart Is Deceitful as a good film -- it's hard to argue that for Scarlet Diva, as well. At times Argento directs like a weird cross between Ed Wood and Harmony Korine.
After the screening, a colleague suggested that only a very well-bred person could make such an ill-bred mongrel of a film. But it is a fascinating film to watch. Like a nine car pile-up.
TARNATION (Jonathan Caouette, Director's Fortnight) got a huge ovation after its first screening -- the director and his crew were present. In one of those weird moments of Festival synchronicity, I saw it immediately after The Heart Is Deceitful and thought ěThis is exactly the film the kid from The Heart Is Deceitful would make when he grows up.')
It's a brilliant film in a genre I don't like, the first person, autobiographical home video with inserts from family photo albums to flesh out the titles. (That is to say, you are a stranger, and how exactly how fucked up you are is not really something I want to know. Should you chose to transcend it through fiction, that's another thing altogether.)
Caouette's film is about his family, wherein his grandparents decided that their daughter -- the filmmaker's mom -- really needed to get two years of electroshock therapy in her late adolescence, and the resulting decline of his mother during the filmmaker's adolescence and young adulthood. People who like this sort of thing like Tarnation a lot.
