Cannes Diary #08: Huppert, Damon, "Titane", and peculiar babies...

by Elisa Giudici

Today a dream of mine came true: I was finally able to attend an event with Isabelle Huppert. She is quite popular on the film festival circuit but lately she is working in theatre a lot (right now some Chekhov, just like the protagonist of Drive My Car), so I was so excited to finally meet her at the "Rendez-vous avec Isabelle Huppert" event. Let me fangirl a little. She is truly a charismatic person with a serious attitude and kind smile. Her event had two moderators but they were quite nervous (I totally understand!) so the conversation was a bit repetitive if still interesting. The most iconic moment was when someone asked her if she ever experienced stage fright or if she was ever a little scared by the legendary directors she worked with. She immediately answered that she never feels intimidated by anyone. It is an attitude she is not interested in exploring; I wish my brain would listen and be more like that! On Haneke, she said that he obsesses over realistic movements, and gives actors a lot of boundaries but almost never any advice  on how to act...and she likes it that way,

In these kind of events moderators are crucial to create an interesting dialogue. I am not that much into Matt Damon's filmography but I found his Rendez-vous a memorable experience, too, because the interviewer prepared the list of questions well so that the whole event was engaging. Of course Damon's friendly attitude helped. He is a charming person and knows how to make an audience happy revealing small inside details from his long carrier. 

On to the movies...

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Cannes at Home: Day 8

by Cláudio Alves 

What an exciting day to be at Cannes this must have been. Asghar Farhadi unveiled a new picture to critical acclaim, with some even stating that A Hero is his greatest work since A Separation. In the main competition, Julia Ducournau also presented her sophomore feature, Titane. After Raw, the new film seems like it will continue the director's exploration on the limits of body horror. As for some sidebar prospects, Miguel Gomes opened his latest work in the Director's Fortnight. The Tsugua Diaries was co-directed with Maureen Fazendeiro and represents Gomes' first feature since Arabian Nights. Unfortunately, another project called Savagery remains incomplete since the pandemic forced the production to halt. In any case, for our homebound Cannes alternative, let's explore the past and best works from these filmmakers…

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Linking on Empty

• Washington Post reviews a new book on Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift's friendship
• TFE <--- in case you missed it we discussed every one of Clift's films for his centennial this past fall
• Vulture To say we're thrilled to hear that Todd Haynes will be reuniting with Julianne Moore for his next film, is an understatement. It's a psychodrama called May December in which Natalie Portman will play an actress who is playing Moore's character in a movie based on her scandalous love affair.
• IndieWire Why Brooke Smith is running an Emmy campaign on her own without the studio's blessing (I mean she has a point about paying your dues. But we know from years of experience and category fraud that Hollywood cares very little about non-leads.

Queer horror, Jane Campion's latest, Harrison Ford, fav musicals, Sex and the City, and more after the jump...

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Movie review: "Censor"

By Tim Brayton

Giallo homages, modernising the sordid, stylish vibe of Italy's cultishly beloved, violent and colorful 1970s thrillers, have gone from being an odd little niche project to a veritable cottage industry over the last decade. It takes more than just dousing a movie in candy colors to stand out, and so that's the first thing to praise about Censor, the extraordinarily self-assured debut feature by Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond, is that it has so much to offer. Though it is very candy colored.

The film, currently open in limited release, isn’t exactly a giallo homage, to be honest. Above all else, it's a love letter to the Video Nasties, the notorious list of movies targeted for prosecution on home video by the British government’s Department of Public Prosecutions in the 1980s, when the film is set...

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Tribeca 2021: This "Poser" Sneaks Up on You

by Jason Adams

It is said that our 20s are spent trying to figure out who we are, accumulating likes and dislikes, testing out identities like stage costumes for some great reveal, to be determined. You fake it until you make it, the "it" being some semblance of a self. It's a precarious and unsettling time for a lot of people, and Ori Segev and Noah Dixon's film Poser, screening at Tribeca, does a fine job actualizing on-screen that amorphous state of flirting with emptiness, giving us a slow-burn Single White Female for the 21st century in the process...

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