Cannes Red Carpet Lineup: Auteur Couture and Formal Turbans

More Cannes fashion madness...

MARGARET: We're back on the red carpet. bringing you the latest in movie star couture though we're a solid ten hours behind the proceedings. (And more since Nathaniel randomly selects gowns from multiple premieres)

ANNE MARIE: So glad I could sweep in at the last moment. I've been enjoying the Red Carpet you, Nathaniel, & Jose have been having over the past few weeks! And the best part of doing a Red Carpet Round up is that nobody throws you out for wearing the wrong shoes!

MARGARET: Cannes in particular always brings in a satisfying range of stylist-curated glam to nonchalant idiosyncracy. Which brings us to Agnes Varda, looking very much herself in... what would you call that ensemble?

ANNE MARIE: Varda chic? Auteur Couture? The advantage of being a living legend presented with awards from one of the most internationally acclaimed film festivals is that you can dress however the hell you want. This is pretty similar to what she wore when I saw her at AFI fest two years ago.

MARGARET: Watch that two-tone hairstyle get picked up by some trendsetting model and suddenly be all the rage among the young & hip.

ANNE MARIE: I have a theory that her hair looks like that because she was dipped in the river Seine like a French Achilles, and the only part of her that wasn't submerged was the top of her head. (This would also be a good time to announce that Agnes Varda will be the focus of next month's Women's Pictures, because we love her almost as much as Cannes does.)

MARGARET:  Now let's look at this collection of ladies bringing the color: Mindy, Sienna, Andie, and Jane. If I squint at the miniature, I can imagine each of their gowns as a fun piece of accent jewelry.

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Cannes Red Carpet 2: Dystopian Glamour + Illicit Flats

We return to Cannes glamour...

NATHANIEL: It has been a full week since the last Red Carpet conversation which is INEXCUSABLE, this being Cannes but the sheer volume of dresses (and I'm not talking about size though there is some of that) but quantity have made it rather daunting. So let's discuss 11 looks today.

Before we get to the lineups, I don't much care for white dresses at events unless someone is getting hitched so Zoe Kravitz is the only one out of an original multiperson white lineup I was going to do. Because I think the extension braids totally complete the look.

JOSE: Rooney Mara corners the market on bridal couture on the red carpet in my opinion, but Zoe looks really nice too! I wish she would've worn this in Mad Max instead of looking so dirty. That movie did nothing for my OCD. I wanted to hand everyone a gallon of Purell

NATHANIEL:  I love that her name in Fury Road was "Toast the Knowing".... LOL. You can't expect toast to not have that scrape off burnt layer though personally i think Zoe and her fellow rogue sex slaves looked pretty immaculate considering the white wraps and that they were riding UNDERNEATH A FUEL TRUCK.

JOSE: They needed more Valentino though! Have they learned nothing from looking glamorous in dystopia? Madonna pulls it off in Ghosttown beautifully...

MARGARET: Zoe clearly understands this, making up for it by rocking Valentino here. In white gowns, especially ones this simple, the pressure is on the hair and makeup to sell the look and she nailed it on both counts.

10 MORE LOOKS AFTER THE JUMP...

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Cannes Actress: Zhao Tao and Jane Fonda

The latest buzz from Cannes is that the Best Actress race is heating up. Or at least speculation is. Marion Cotillard's Lady MacBeth has yet to screen but those that have seen it early are typically wowed. But we know at this point not to expect Cannes juries to point and go "Her! Her!". If there is a Blanchett-Vanquisher out there it may well be Zhao Tao who stars in the "giddily ambitious" Mountains May Depart.

That's the latest from the reknowned Jia Zhangke, a regular at the fest for whom Zhao Tao is a recurring player (Still Life, Platform, A Touch of Sin). Mountains is Zhangke's fourth try at the Palme and though he usually comes away empty-handed, his last attempt A Touch of Sin (2013) took Best Screenplay. Despite the jury completely changing each year Cannes somehow has an Oscar-like sense of momentum wherein you generally move up the ranks as to which prizes you take; longevity wins the Palme. (It's not as simple as that of course but there can be a weird cumulative coronation effect.)

So that makes the Palme race: Hungary's Son of Saul vs. USA's Carol vs China's Mountains May Depart? (Or am I forgetting something that's been similarly ecstatically received?) Typing them out that way it makes Cannes sound like the Olympics of the movies, only annual instead of bi-annual. And maybe it is?

In other Canne actressy news, our friend Kyle Buchanan says that Jane Fonda walks away with Paolo Sorrentino's Youth which stars Michael Caine as a retired film composer.  I'm hearing that Fonda's role is very showy (an old combative muse to Harvey Keitel's director character), but quite small. Nevertheless I couldn't help but immediately picture both Grace (Jane) and Frankie (Lily) as Oscar nominees this year in Supporting (for Youth) and Lead (for Grandma) and how much media fun would that be? Sorrentino had a major Cannes sensation and eventual Oscar winner with his last film The Great Beauty. This one is in English which naturally will give it a leg up with Oscar voters if it opens this year but it's already more divisive which can be a problem. Still love/hate divides are tough to predict with awards. All you sometimes need is the right people on the love side to turn the critical tide around. And anyway when this mixed review called it 'elegant fun' I just thought... doesn't that describe a lot of well received prestige films?

But just to remind us that she's already one of the immortals (with 2 Oscars, multiple classic films, and celebrity outside of acting as well, the legend is assured) here is Jane Fonda looking amazing on the cover of W --  their oldest cover girl ever.

Here's an interesting bit on self-awareness from the W interview: 

One day on the set of On Golden Pond, a film that she coproduced so that she could costar with her father, the legendary actor Henry Fonda, she was fixing her hair when Katharine Hepburn (who played her mother in the film) pinched her cheek and demanded, “What do you want this to mean?” “It was 1981, and I didn’t know what she was talking about,” Fonda recalled. “Back then, I didn’t give my looks a fare-thee-well, and that bothered Katharine. She said to me, ‘This is what you present to the world. What do you want it to say about you?’ Her question has been lodged in my psyche ever since. I now think what Katharine meant was awareness of a persona. She wanted me to consider how I wanted to be seen. Now I pay attention to how I present myself to the world. I realize that it matters.”

Grace and Frankie 5-6: "The Fall" and "The Earthquake"

We're almost halfway through Grace and Frankie, so here's Manuel recapping episodes 5 & 6 of this Odd Couple  actressexual Netflix offering.

The show keeps toying with playing the "Old Lady" card but these two broads are so spry and full of life (so much physical comedy!)

After gently suggesting Grace should dive right into the dating pool by activating an online dating profile, Frankie and Brianna get stoned and urge Grace to drive them for some FroYo where an ill-placed yogurt spill causes Grace to fall, break her hip and need surgery. It’s a thin plot but it’s surprising the amount of pathos the show garners from focusing on Grace’s mortality. Chalk it up to Jane Fonda who even when bed-ridden manages to imbue her character with a winnowing sense of sadness and anxiety. Of no help is Frankie who keeps reminding everyone who’ll hear her how hip surgeries are wont to be awry especially at their age.

Frankie: Dr Paul wants you to suck on this. You have to suck on the inhalation nozzle, and move the balls. Don't worry, I made a sex joke about that and he laughed.

Of course, as with almost all of these early episodes, the storyline is designed to a) showcase Fonda and Tomlin’s talent by b) creating a situation wherein Grace and Frankie realize they’re in the same boat and goshdarnit they might as well make peace with the fact that they’re “stuck with each other.” That said, in a nice callback to episode 4, it turns out that everything we saw was all a split-second Grace hallucination (she actually doesn’t fall as Frankie - surprise! - catches her before she does) most likely fueled by her guilt of having jilted Frankie at the funeral.

lots more after the jump

Best Jane Moment

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Grace & Frankie E4: "The Funeral"

Put on your finest black Willie Nelson T-shirt, cause we're going to a funeral!

abstew here continuing our coverage of Jane & Lily Grace and Frankie. After being separated from their recently gay (well, to our leading ladies at least) and recently shacked-up husbands, the gals must come face-to-face with their estranged spouses for the first time since the first episode. And because they're of a certain age, the gathering naturally happens at a funeral (it's like clubbing for retirees). And nothing says comedy quite like a funeral setting (unless it stars Hugh Grant and is preceded by 4 weddings) and this episode proves it by carrying some pretty heavy dramatic moments and a breakdown from Martin Sheen that shouldn't have made me laugh as much as it did (since he was actually going for heartfelt drama).

The episode begins with Grace interrupting Frankie's art class with ex-cons so that the two can get to the funeral of their mutual friend Larry before Sol and Robert arrive for their "coming out party".

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