Cannes Monologue: Secrets and Lies

Andrew with a Cannes edition of our monologue series...

The 2014 Cannes Film Festival begins tomorrow and The Film Experience is doing its part to keep things Cannes focused with our list of favourite Palme D’Or winners, Diana’s upcoming coverage on the ground, and more. To continue the party let's turn to the Palme D'Or winner that topped my own team ballot, Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies (1996).

Brenda Blethyn plays Cynthia Purley, a woman who spends much of her time jabbering away (often incoherently). Like Anne Baxter, featured last week, it’s Brenda’s domination of her scenes that fool you into considering her scenes are more monologue-driven than they actually are.

[18 year-old spoilers follow...]

Secrets and Lies has a fine ensemble but it's impossible to look away from Brenda Blethyn's fantastic turn even when you want to - Cynthia can be draining, even overwhelming and exhausting to watch. Cynthia's arc is composed from a string of breakdown scenes wherein she's reacting to family secrets and issues and they are all pitched perfectly. The one which is most significant comes midway through the film when she meets the daughter she gave up for adoption some decades ago when she was a teenager.

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Team Top Ten: The Best Cannes Winners of All Time

Amir here, to bring you this month’s edition of Team Top Ten, a monthly poll by all of our contributing team at The Film Experience. Cinephiles all around the world turn their attention to the south of France in May as the most prestigious film festival in the world gets underway in Cannes.

The festival’s history is a rich one, full of interesting cinematic and political narratives. It’s an event that has celebrated the best in cinema and operated as a launching pad for emerging artists as much as it has played games of politics and festival world favouritism. Still, when all is said and done, the list of Palme d’Or winners can rival any list of the best films ever made.

With this year’s edition of the festival just about to begin, we thought it would be a good time to revisit the past and choose our Top Ten Favourite Cannes Winners of All Time. For this poll, we’ve excluded the first two editions of the festival (1939, retroactively awarded to Union Pacific, and 1946, when the top prize was shared between 11 films.)

There is really no easy way to select the cream of the crop here, because these films are already... well, the cream of the crop. Consider the eight films that finished behind our top dozen: Pulp Fiction; Dancer in the Dark; Viridiana; 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days; Farewell My Concubine; Secrets & Lies; The Tree of Life; The Pianist. Not to mention masterpieces like Black Orpheus, Wages of Fear and Rosetta that placed outside the top 20. The point is that this is the highest echelon of films awards so the standards are high and margins are slim. Some of you will surely disagree with our ranking, but we welcome that. Let us know what you think in the comments.

THE BEST CANNES WINNERS OF ALL TIME
a non-definitive poll which begins with a three-way tie for tenth

10= La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)

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Podcast: Cannes Preview

On this week's podcast Nathaniel R (The Film Experience) grills Cannes enthusiast Nick Davis (Nick's Flick Picks) on the difference between the competitive slate, un certain regard, and director's fortnight. We discuss the complete competition lineup for 2014 and answer reader questions, too. 

00:01 Jane Campion and her jury
04:30 Un Certain Regard vs. Director's Fortnight 
08:00 Camera D'Or & The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby 
13:00 Ronit Elkabetz & Ryan Gosling's new films
16:00 Olivier Dahan's Grace of Monaco troubles 
18:00 The Competition Lineup
With sidebar chat on Olivier Assayas, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Mike Leigh, Dardenne Bros, Xavier Dolan, and Mike Leigh
37:30 Which directors should Cannes take a break from?
39:45 Hilary Swank and Best Actress
42:45 Nick and Nathaniel name least favorite Palme D'Or Winners
46:00 Juries of yore: Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Sally Field, Kathleen Turner, Quentin Tarantino

Who could have ever imagined this trio? Cannes 2004

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. As always you should continue it in the comments so we can feel you out there in the dark. What's your favorite Olivier Assayas? Your favorite Dolan? And which Palme D'Or win baffles you?

Related Articles
Cannes Line-Up | Meet the Jury | Jessica Chastain in Vogue | Nathaniel's review of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby Parts 1 and 2 

Cannes Preview 2014

Jane Campion's Gorgeous Cannes Jury

Cannes is but 17 days away and we'll have a TFE team member there this year! Alas it's not me so I'll have to be envious of Diana as she jets off to France in two weeks. We already knew that the brilliant auteur Jane Campion, who regained some cultural caché recently with Top of the Lake (she never lost it with us: Bright Star, hello!) would preside over the jury but this morning the full nine member panel was announced.

Joining Campion this year is a great mix of onscreen talent that happens to include a few people The Film Experience is generally just gaga for from left to right: TFE's favorite Mexican actor ever since Amores Perros, Gael García Bernal;  the future reinterpreter of The Little Mermaid, one of our favorite ladies Sofia Coppola (USA);  former Bond Girl Carole Bouquet will represent the hometeam of France; A Touch of Sin/Platform director Jia Zhangke (China) who I was literally just talking about at brunch yesterday; TFE's favorite Korean actress Jeon Do-Yeon (Secret Sunshine, The Housemaid); the other Mad Dane Drive's Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark); Hollywood star, experimental indie fixture, and Wes Anderson repertory company player Willem Dafoe (USA); and Leila Hatami, the beautiful Iranian star of A Separation.

 I am in a puddle for this jury. LOVE. 

'six links forward and five links back, I got -- I got an angry link'

Vulture Jeff Tetreault, the screenwriter of Bad Johnson, is a go-go boy by night. This is an amusing article
Defamer Lupita Nyong'o chosen to headline this year's People "50 Most Beautiful" issue. Yeah yeah. But can we hear about some new roles? Seriously? What is this insane wait. Why isn't she buried in offers?
Vanity Fair's Hollywood turns out that Naomi Watts Marily movie Blonde is back on... only now it will star Jessica Chastain. Basically every actress is rumored to or will play Marilyn Monroe at some point in her life
USA Today congratulations to Jodie Foster. The actress just married her girlfriend after a year of dating
Variety Cannes by the numbers with directors from 25 (Xavier Dolan) to 83 (Jean Luc-Godard) in two women in competition this year
THR oh jesus Christ. Hollywood can't leave any franchise alone. They're talking about reviving Flash Gordon now.

Playbill Opening night of the Hedwig revival on Broadway with Neil Patrick Harris
Towleroad Andy Towle was also there in the first row

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS SAT ON MY FACE LAST NIGHT AND I LOVED IT

Variety it's really happening. They're remaking Ben-Hur (1959) which won 11 Oscars. No film is safe! (That said, Ben-Hur was also a remake of a silent epic so...)
Mark Ruffalo is tweeting photos from the set of Avengers: The Age of Ultron
Coming Soon weird news: Meg Ryan will be the voice of future Greta Gerwig on How I Met Your Dad

Tonight's Watch
Screen Junkies gets really cheeky supercutting all the F words in The Wolf of Wall Street. But not those F words