Cannes Line Up

by Nathaniel R

The Cannes lineup was announced very early this morning (time differences, don'cha know) and we're here to give you details, not just film titles. While TFE doesn't attend ($) we do follow from afar and hope to make the trek some day. The 70th Annual Cannes Film Festival runs May 17th through May 28th.

OPENING NIGHT

Which is a high profile gig but also risky as the knives are often out for a sacrifice to the festival gods to launch the cinextravaganza. 

Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin)
French auteur Desplechin's latest will be released in the US by Magnolia. It stars French A-Listers Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mathieu Amalric, and Louis Garrel and revolves around a filmmaker (Amalric) working on a new picture when his long dead lover Carlotta (Cotillard) returns to life sending his life into a tailspin. If you've never seen Desplechin classics Kings and Queen (2004) and A Christmas Tale (2008) get right to that!

THE COMPETITION LINEUP...

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Almodóvar for 99¢

Heads up. If you ever rent movies from iTunes rather than wait for them to stream, you should know that Pedro Almodóvar's entire filmography (well, absent Julieta of course which is too new) is now available to rent for 99¢ for each film (or between $4.99 and $9.99 to buy, depending on the title). Yes, even Pepi Luci Bom, his first official feature, which has been previously quite hard to come by. There are very few filmmakers in the world with a filmography as consistently rich as his, so dig in. He's my favorite living filmmaker, so I must proselytize when I can.

Perhaps we should do a series? 

Review: "The Death of Louis XIV"

by Bill Curran

Laying in regal and rotting repose, the glorious tendrils of a white M-shaped wig framing his ashen face, King Louis XIV of France, in the year 1717, spends his final days dying atop luxurious satins and attended to by hand-wringing bureaucrats and a largely silent wife in Albert Serra’s (you guessed it) The Death of Louis XIV.

As far as “death trip” movies go, Louis XIV is a quintessential ordeal. Like moths around the flame, the films in this still-thriving trend announce the demise (or prolonged distress) of their subjects up front, with imminence and duration the focus, often with a titular clue to the narrative framework: The Passion of the Christ, Last Days, 12 Years a Slave, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, 127 Hours, Day Night Day Night, Hunger, Two Days, One Night, and Son of Saul, to name but a few...

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ND/NF: "Menashe" and "The Future Perfect"

MOMa and Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual New Directors / New Films festival wrapped up this past weekend. Their goal each year is to celebrate "a group of filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema: daring artists whose work pushes the envelope and is never what you’d expect"  The big tickets this year were two buzzy Sundance titles: the gay drama Beach Rats (a subway misshap prevented me from making the screening - argh!) and the rap comedy Patti Cake$ which will be out in July. The latter prompted a bidding war with Fox Searchlight offering $10+ million. Beach Rats was picked up by a new distribution company called Neon so who knows when it will arrive. Colossal, that Anne Hathaway as a kaiju oddity, will be Neon's first proper release on April 7th. 

At ND/NF we previously reviewed Sexy Durga, Happiness Academy, and Strong Island. Here are the two final films yours truly caught, one being maybe my favorite of 2017 thus far...

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Have you heard of the Platino Awards?

Though The Film Experience likes to track key foreign awards (examples include the Césars, Goyas, and the Golden Horse, in addition to the massive Oscars circus, those groups proliferate just like American precursors do. I've lost track of how many awards that Asian cinema, for example, has. But how about South America? The Platino awards are relatively new. They're now in their fourth year honoring films from the Ibero-America region, which is to say primarily Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, i.e. former territories of Spain and Portugal, plus those countries for good measure.

Here's why we should start paying attention to them: in their short existence they've given Best Film to a truly outstanding picture every single time:  Chile's Gloria (2014) an amazing study of a divorcee rebuilding her romantic life with an Oscar worthy performance by Paulina García (we nominated her here); Argentina's rowdy, funny, Oscar nominated and deeply pleasurable anthology Wild Tales (2015); and Colombia's mystical wonder Embrace of the Serpent (2015) which you already know we're wild about.

Penelope Cruz is one of 37 women vying for a Best Actress nomination (for her new film Queen of Spain)

We don't have the nominee list yet as the ceremony isn't until July. Like the Oscars, they only allow a certain number of contenders from each country (2 or 3 in their case as opposed to Oscar's 1 film per country rule) but their long list includes a lot of Oscar submissions from the past season. Some highlights include Chile's playful fictionalized biopic Neruda, Brazil's critical sensation Aquarius, Almodovar's Julieta, the fantasy A Monster Calls, Paraguay’s father daughter road trip movie called Guaraní, and at least three LGBT titles: Chile's Rara which is an LGBT family drama, the Venezuelan Oscar submission From Afar, and the Cuban political drama Santa & Andres. You can see the complete longlist for Best Film here which will be narrowed down to 5 nominees soon. There are 37 women vying for the Best Actress nomination but we'd be shocked if both Emma Suarez from Julieta and Sonia Braga from Aquarius didn't make it.