Cannes Diary: "Foxcatcher" and Best Actor, "Clouds of Sils Maria" and Actresses

Diana Drumm reporting from Cannes for The Film Experience

With the Palme d’Or announcement looming over the Croisette, critics and casual filmgoers are scattering to catch the festival favorites screening throughout the Palais and/or selecting their bets for the Awards ceremony. Yours truly is in a bizarre, hazy limbo between the two, writing up what’s left of my coverage and running to more screenings. Without further rambling, here are two more competition films (an Oscar favorite and an indie to look out for) along with my personal pick for Best Actor. Will Jane Campion and jury agree? 

Foxcatcher
Bennett Miller’s true story drama looks at the relationship between Olympic wrestlers Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) and Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) and American old money heir John E. du Pont (Steve Carell), that would lead to a point-blank murder. Opening with black-and-white footage of a foxhunt (horses, hounds, riding gear) on the du Pont Foxcatcher estate, the film then cuts to Mark Schultz in not quite as posh straits, getting paid $20 to give a speech to an elementary school and chowing down on lukewarm ramen. So when he gets the call that John E. du Pont (apparently an avid wrestling enthusiast despite his status and it being a sweaty arm sport) wants to fly him out to meet, Mark leaps at the chance before getting any specifics on du Pont...  

Click to read more ...

Cannes Tidbits: The Tribe, White God, and Sils Maria

A few more notes from the festival. The big prizes are revealed tomorrow and the festival closes Sunday.

Juliette, Chloe, and Kristen
Sils Maria sometimes referred to as Clouds of Sils Maria  focuses on an actress and her personal assistant and the actresses decision to play a part in a remake of a property deeply connected to her life (which weirdly also exactly describes, at least in part, Maps to the Stars with Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska!!!). Early word is that it's a Kristen Stewart showcase.  This turn of events by no  means surprise me. It's long been a thing which amuses and annoys in equal measure that people ALWAYS lose their shit when a non-prestigious actor suddenly holds their own in a substantive role or movie. (Hell, it's so common that this is even the second time this week following Channing Tatum's raves in Foxcatcher) Of course this "surprise" factor would be significantly reduced if more people paid attention to the actual quality of the acting in any actors career and not just that thing they did one time in a movie or franchise that made them famous. Foxcatcher is hardly the first time Channing has been good and if more people had actually watched and tried to absorb Stewart as Joan Jett in The Runaways, rather than treating it as a indie curio inbetween Twilight movies, they'd know that Stewart had some talent, too. That said I object to the subhheadline in Jordan Hoffman's review in Vanity Fair that says "sticks it to anyone who ever slammed her for Twilight"

....no, no, no. You don't get to erase your bad work as soon as you choose to do good work. Yes, those movies are terrible but she needn't have been terrible in them. Good committed actors rise above bad material all the time, so her dead-eyed numbingly dull performance in that franchise? That's on her. 

Critics Week Winner
The Ukranian film The Tribe has no subtitles, but then it's not in Ukranian either. The ambitious movie is completely in sign language and populated by deaf actors. The audience has to decipher the intricacy by watching the gestures of and emotion of the actors. Just to make sure you're paying attention it also contains graphic sex. Here's a review from Indiewire... and consider our interest highly piqued. 

The Winners of Critics Week
This is a sidebar featuring emerging talent so the features are also eligible for the Camera d'Or

Grand Prize - The Tribe (Ukraine)
Gan Foundation Support for Distribution Prize - The Tribe (Ukraine)
Visionary Award - The Tribe (Ukraine)
Screenplay - Hope (France)
Canal Plus (Short Film) - Crocodile (UK)
Sony CineAlta Discovery Prize (Short Film) - A Ciambra (Italy)

Palme D'og & Un Certain Regard
A Cannes tradition that got very popular when the The Artist broke out big in 2011, this year's winner was a Hungarian feature directed by Kornél Mundruczó called White God and we all know what "God" spells backwards. The movie is about a pack of wild dogs on a rampage and keeps being compared to Hitchcock's The Birds -- I wonder if that's just a snap judgement comparison or a qualitative comparison? Here's a feature at Artsbeat on the well-received film. Apparently Jean Luc Godard's Farewell to Language stars his dog Mieville had to settle for runner up.

White God also took top honors for the Un Certain Regard jury and, like Critics Week, most of the films are from emerging talent and some (though not the winner) are eligible for the Camera D'Or which honors first time filmmakers

The Winners of Un Certain Regard
Best Film - White God (Hungary)
Jury Prize - Force Majeure (Sweden
<-- For what it's worth Ruben Östlund has previously been submitted for Oscar consideration by Sweden 
Special Jury Prize - The Salt of the Earth (USA)
Ensemble - Party Girl (France)
Best Actor -David Gulpilil, Charlie's Country (Australia)
Gulpilil previously collaborated with the same director Rolf de Heer on the Australian Oscar submission Ten Canoes (2006) 

P.S. I do not know why there is not a Best Actress award. I assume the exact makeup of the prizes each year is up to that particular jury.

Posterized: Xavier Dolan

Mommy, which spurred spirited conversation at Cannes (and really wowed our woman on the ground, Diana) and could walk away with a prize this weekend (as literally all of director Xavier Dolan's previous features have but for Tom at the Farm, which went the Venice/Toronto route instead).

Xavier Dolan at the photocall for "Mommy" at Cannes, 2014

I remain perplexed that an international star with this much critical cachet and this many easily marketable elements (young, hot, queer) hasn't found a deep pocketed patron in the world of US distribution, in the way many auteurs do. Think of how Miramax used to favor certain directors or the way Sony Pictures Classics really invested in building the Pedro Almodovar brand. I keep hoping a younger edgier disribution company (my dream: A24) will fall in love with him because with the right promotion and cultivation, he'd have a devout following Stateside. For now, if only here, he'll have to make do with critics and really hard-working cinephiles who attend festivals regularly.  

The Canadian wunderkind just turned 25 and Mommy is his fifth feature in five years. If he keeps up this pace he could have a filmography that's impossible to be a completist about later on. Get in early and sample the goods. They're yummy. Distributors might not have made it easy for you wherever you live, but at least Netflix has been kind. How many of his previous features have you seen?

I Killed My Mother (2009)
Dolan's debut won much acclaim at Cannes including two prizes and became Canada's Oscar submission (it was not nominated). Much film festival chatter and an international release in major cities around the world, EXCEPT THE US, kept the buzz going for another year. Supposedly it hit US theaters this past March (yes, in 2013, four years after taking international cinephilia by storm) but I want proof that it actually happened because it seems like every year since 2009 we were told it was opening. [Available on Netflix Instant Watch]

Heartbeats / Imaginary Lovers (2010)
This unrequited love triangle, available on Netflix Instant Watch, won the "Regards Jeunes" at Cannes and was released in the US briefly in 2011 under its new boring title. [Nathaniel's Review at Towleroad]

Laurence Anyways (2012)
This trans epic, Netflix to the rescue again, ran nearly 3 hours, and was the first that Dolan didn't star in himself. It took another two prizes at Cannes ("Queer Palm" and "Best Actress") and a brief US release in 2013. [Glenn's love for this movie is huge.]

Tom at the Farm (2013) 
This thriller about a young man (Dolan) attending his lover's funeral in the country, only to discover that the lover was closeted and the family virulently homophobic, is still awaiting US release. [Nathaniel's TIFF Review]

HOW MANY HAVE YOU SEEN?

Cannes Diary Day ???: "The Homesman," Or How Tommy Lee Jones Failed at Feminist Storytelling

Diana Drumm is reporting from Cannes for the The Film Experience. 

Based on the award-winning novel (that Paul Newman was attached to for years) by Glendon Swarthout (“The Shootist”), The Homesman is a bizarre, unwieldy Western about 31 year-old spinster Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) and questionable character Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) who are driving three insane women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter) back East for treatment, or at least respite from their literally-maddening frontier lives.  

Or for a convoluted, reference-laden way to generalize it all, think of The Homesman as an inverse of the Robert Taylor-starring not-quite-classic Westward The Women (1951) meets the Glenn Close-starring made-for-TV movie Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991) with the madness and mismatches of Quills (2000, Briggs being the less couth, toned down subversive Marquis) divided by the stunning Western cinematography of Brokeback Mountain (2005, via Oscar nominee Rodrigo Prieto). Apologies, my brain is flooded with movies. 

Scale of Tommy Lee Jones orneriness, gender politics, and star cameos after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Cannes Diary Day 4 Pt 2: Hilary & Tommy Promote "The Homesman"

Diana Drumm reporting from Cannes for The Film Experience

 

At today’s The Homesman press conference, Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank lived up to their public personas, the former as a well-meaning curmudgeon and the latter as diplomatic would be sweetheart. This dynamic was evident when Jones made the off-putting comment that editing is time consuming but “it’s not hard work” and Swank, spotting the possible faux pax in front of a room of international movie press, swooped in by clarifying maybe not for someone like him with his great mind and thoughtful vision, but she’d be lost and that editing is indeed hard work.

Well-trained in the art of dodging cringe-inducing questions, Swank managed to pivot from a meant-to-be-complimentary question about the disparity between her beauty in person and her plainness onscreen to an empowering impromptu speech about the subjectivity of attractiveness. She shared that some people have told her that they found her characters Maggie (Million Dollar Baby) and Mary Bee Cuddie (The Homesman), to be attractive because of their strength. Considering that the film tackles the issues of female subjugation and objectification, it was all the more uncomfortable when multiple professional journalists either commented on her physical appearance or prefaced their question with a comment on her physical appearance.

What did these reporters expect? She’s a movie star at Cannes promoting a film, the very definition of a glamorous day's work. And isn’t that a pretty tired narrative for Swank, dating back over a decade?

To Swank’s left, Jones bordered on ornery, not understanding a number of questions (giving unrelated answers or asking reporters to rephrase) or speaking in vague, sometimes dismissive, terms about cast and production (“The difficulty was the weather.” … “It’s not real research, we’re not curing polio.”).  As for both directing and acting on this film, he deadpanned:

As a director, I can tell you that I do everything I tell myself to do.”

Dodging the more thematic  and film-specific questions, Jones repeatedly answered “The movie speaks for itself,” without further explanation. On a rare upbeat note, Jones did spark to a question about the film’s music (plugging his son, the film’s music consultant) and went into a long-winded explanation about finding era-appropriate tunes and building wind organs.

In response to a HuffPo reporter’s line of questioning about women’s issues in the 1800s (when the film is set) relating to those of today, Jones said,

 I don't think there's a woman in this room that has never felt objectified or trivialized because of her gender. There's a reason for that and a history of that, and I think that's an interesting thing."

A smattering of applause. Jones won back a few of the hearts he may have lost.

Day 1 Arrival & Opening Night | Day 2 Grace of Monaco | Day 3 Mr Turner & Timbuktu  | Day 4 Amour Fou & The Blue Room |  Day ??? The Homesman Review