Gilles Jacob Looks to the Future
The 59th Festival de Cannes (17-28 May 2006) was already preparing for its 60th birthday party in 2007. That’s the impression I got during an all-embracing and far-ranging conversation with Gilles Jacob, festival President and close observer of ongoing events on the Côte d’Azur since 1964, back when he covered the scene as a French journalist from Paris. When I asked him where he housed all the guests and participants at this year’s festival, he replied bluntly: “We don’t!” Adding with a smile: “To fit everyone under the skirt of Cannes during the festival, we would require 10,000 more rooms. That means four times more than what we already have!” Yet, instead of musing over the possibility of reducing the size of the Cannes festival in the future, Gilles Jacob talked about expanding its scope even further. “Right now, we need another screening facility with circa 800 seats.” Then, without me asking why, he added: “We have so many films to show. There’s no other option. I’ve already talked to the government here in Cannes.”
That’s also when the festival president warmed to his favorite theme and underscored in his quiet way the reasons why Cannes is the greatest film showcase on the face of the earth. “Just look at the record,” he stated with a smile. “Anyone can see what’s happened here over the years.” Glancing back over my own shoulder, I noted how he took a two-competition-films-a-day-festival (with a day off for a picnic in the woods) and retooled it into a dozen showcases of quality world cinema. How over nearly three decades as délégué général he had engineered the growth of a dozen innovations. How he molded a closely knit team into a smooth running organization to oversee thousands of productions annually around the globe. At the core of team are Thierry Frémaux (délégué artistique), Christian Jeune (documentation), Christine Aimé (press), the Jacob sons Laurent and Didier, to name just the key people he personally confides in.
Cannes is a labyrinth that few can really navigate well. Ask even veteran journalists to name the sections, and they tend to get lost even with the official program in their hands. No one even has the time to visit them all: Un Certain Regard, Courts Métrages, Cinéfondation, Cannes Classics, Tous les Cinémas du Monde, L’Atélier du Festival (to support projects by young talent), Les Leçons (this year’s lessons: actress Gena Rowlands, film composers Alexandre Desplat and Jacques Audiard, director Sydney Pollack), Exposition (Sergei Eisenstein’s erotic drawings), Cinéma de la Plage (Beach Projections), and La Journée de l’Europe (European Day for Cultural Ministers). All these, in addition to a gigantic Marché du Film with its village of white showtents stretching down the Croisette.
When I asked Gilles Jacob about his dream project – the construction of a Cannes Film Museum and whether it would be ready for the 60th anniversary festival – he countered with a glint in his eye: “It all depends on the architects. First, the money has to be raised. Then, of course, the project has to be opened to a competition – we want the best architect to design the museum. Only after all that can we start with the building itself.” If all goes well, enthused Jacob, “the Cannes Film Museum will be an all-year-around attraction on the Côte d’Azur.”
Preview of Cannes Attractions
The guessing game for the competition entries at the 59th Festival de Cannes was unofficially launched in mid February, when Thierry Frémaux, the délégué artistique (artistic director), paid an unexpected visit to the Berlinale and went on record with an offside comment to inquiring journalists. “Last year, you saw a classic lineup of festival entries,” he said. “This year, you can expect some surprises.” A week later, when I phoned Frémaux at his Paris office as to what sort of “surprises” might be in the making, he countered with a heartfelt opinion that “balance is very important” – meaning that the art of the cinema can be found just about anywhere in the world today. For that matter, “balance” in the official program is the same rule of thumb followed over the past three decades by Gilles Jacob, formerly the festival’s artistic director and now its president. So we are back to square one and had to wait until April 20, when the official Cannes press conference was scheduled.
At that time, the only absolutely certain entry in the official program was the opening night slot reserved for Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou. As much a Parisian event as it was a Hollywood thriller based on Dan Brown’s bestseller, The Da Vinci Code is set partially in the Louvre and stars the same Audrey Tautou of Amélie of Montmartre, one of the biggest box office hits in contemporary French cinema. Further, the American release of The Da Vinci Code had been purposely held back until after the Cannes gala screening on the hunch that the film would surely benefit from the festival brouhaha. This, and the publicity generated by the recent translation of a discovered apocryphal text, the Gnostic Gospel of Judas. Why? Because Gnosticism of the third century is one of the red threads running through both the book and the film, although its presence helped little to unravel the mysteries of the Da Vinci Code. In fact, Cannes critics were never so unanimous in voting the film a flop. No matter. Reports have it that the film grossed $ 77 million over the first weekend in the United States and Canada alone. That, too, must be a Cannes record. American producers will be swarming to get another blockbuster into the 60th Festival de Cannes in 2007.
I Love Paris – 20 x 5
Adding to the francophile flavor of the festival, it was decided early on that the Un Certain Regard section would open with an omnibus collection titled Paris, je t’aime – a so-called “love anthology” with 20 episodes of five minutes each set in all of the city’s 20 districts. The potpourri was codirected by 20 diverse auteurs, among them Joel and Ethan Coen, Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne, Wes Craven, Walter Salles, Olivier Assayas, Gérard Depardieu, Gurinder Chadha, and Tom Tykwer. The producers of Paris, I Love You are none other than Claudie Ossard and Emmanuel Benbihy, who brought Amélie to the screen. Apparently, the idea was to duplicate the red carpet festivities of opening night by laying out a blue carpet on the steps leading up to the Salle Debussy when the Un Certain Regard section opened on the night after The Da Vinci Code. Of course, the list of stars who showed for the Paris, je t’aime gala – among them, Juliette Binoche and Fanny Ardant – was enough to choke traffic halfway down the Croisette. Narrating a love story in just five minutes is quite a trick, to say the least. The best episode struck paydirt on the comic side. In Joel and Ethan Coen’s Tuileries the setting is the Tuileries metro station in the 1st arrondissement, with Steve Buscemi (a Coen regular) as the wet-eared American in Paris.
Visit to Versailles
Seldom have Cannes veterans been so right in predicting in advance the core of the Cannes competition. New films by Sofia Coppola, Pedro Almodóvar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Nanni Moretti, Aki Kaurismäki, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, and Ken Loach were on practically everyone’s list. Of course, it was not difficult to imagine that Sofia Coppola’s Marie-Antoinette would indeed bypass Venice to premiere at Cannes instead. Shot on location at Versailles, Marie-Antoinette was a natural for Cannes window-dressing. A stylized story of the Austrian teenaged queen and her dull-witted consort, Louis XVI, it stars Kirsten Dunst – the same thesp who played 14-year-old Lux in The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sofia Coppola’s first feature film. Booed at the press screening, Marie-Antoinette, by all accounts a stunning costume drama, still received a half-dozen à la folie (sheer madness) palms on the Le Français daily voting chart.
The International Jury, however, was not impressed: Sofia Coppola went home empty-handed. Perhaps because nothing of any social or political consequence happens in Marie-Antoinette save for the funny, fanatic, fumbling efforts of the coquettish queen to bed the feeble-minded king and eventually produce a dauphin. Come the déluge, the pair apparently don’t have a clue as to what is going on around them. Marie-Antoinette’s historic line, “Let them eat cake,” thrown in the face of starving peasants, rings as hollow as the film itself. Still, this must be the first instance in film history that Marie-Antoinette is depicted as a naive innocent instead of an uncaring monarch oblivious even to the the evils in her own court. No French director, to my knowledge, has dared to tell her story.
Golden Palm for Ken Loach
The International Jury was full of surprises. Not that anyone would expect anything else by a jury headed by maverick Chinese/Hongkong director Wong Kar-wei. His choice as jury president can be considered a surprise as well. The biggest surprise was registered on the face of British director Ken Loach, who had to be flown back to Cannes for the awards night. This being his eighth run for the Palms, he honestly stated that he didn’t expect to win, particularly since The Wind That Shakes the Barley was positioned at the front of the festival on the very first day of the competition. “All I can say is that the film is not just about the conflict between brothers during the Irish rebellion,” Loach said in an interview. “It’s also about the war in Iraq.” Maybe so, but his comparison between Ireland in 1920 and Iraq in 2005 does seem a bit far fetched. Indeed, the film’s political and social relevance can be found elsewhere. The fact that The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a British director’s view of Black and Tan brutality in a Ireland seeking its independence and about to lose its way in a bloody civil war, that makes for engrossing cinema – and reason enough to win the Golden Palm.
Oldtimers at Cannes, it should be added, rejoiced at the jury decision. I myself happpen to be on hand back in 1970, when Ken Loach’s Kes was presented in the Week of the Critics at Cannes to the collective approval by the writing press. That story of a shy boy in the poverty-striken Midlands whose only friend is a wild falcon, a kestrel he had captured and trained, set the tone for a new realism in British cinema. Last year, at the 58th Cannes festival, Ken Loach was awarded an honorary citation by INTERFILM, the Protestant side of the Ecumenical Jury, for his longtime service of behalf of the disadvantaged and the downtrodden.
Fate of a Favorite
At the awards gala television cameras caught disappointment written all over the face of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Positioned towards the front of the competition, Almodóvar’s Volver (Return) was one of the frontrunners from the start. The story of an apparently deceased mother returning to set matters straight with her two daughters and granddaughter, this warm comedy on the melodramatic side was applauded for 20 minutes at the premiere and brought tears to the eyes of actress Penélope Cruz. Pedro Almodóvar, awarded the Palm for Best Screenplay, voiced an eternal truth when he said after the awards ceremony that “to be the odds-on favorite at the beginning of the festival is bad luck – this is the second time it’s happened to me,” He was referring to the defeat suffered in 1999, when his Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother) was hailed by critics as one of the highlights of the season.
Now, on the second time around, and after opening the 2004 Cannes festival with the personal La mala educacion (Bad Education), Pedro Almodóvar visibly ached to finally win the Golden Palm. Instead, he had to be satisfied with a runnerup screenplay citation, while Penélope Cruz and the femme leads in Return for collectively received the Palm for Best Actress. Why all six actresses in Volver should be equally honored with a Palm, particularly since Penélope Cruz alone merited the standing ovation at the premiere, might be attributed to a moment of fleeting largesse on the part of some jury members. But when that same virus attacked again, and all five actors in Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes (Days of Glory, France/Morocco/Belgium) were collectively awarded the Palm for Best Actor, then acting performances at this year’s Cannes festival appeared to have been decided by a roll of the dice.
War Stories
Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes (Days of Glory – aka Native Born, France/Morocco/Algeria/Belgium), for the most part a plodding war film, was nevertheless regarded as a long overdue salute to Arab soldiers from Algeria and Morocco who had fought in the French army for the liberation of France in the Second World War without receiving just recognition. Scenes of contempt for black soldiers by French army superiors add to the poignancy of the film. One might say that this is a French answer to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998), for the theme in general is sacrifice and pride in a job well done. In an interview Bouchareb himself took pride in noting that his own grandfather had fought on the side of the French during the First World War.
Bruno Dumont’s Flandres (France), awarded the runnerup Grand Prix, tells a numbing tale of war atrocities inflicted on the African population by lads from poverty-stricken Flandres. Recruited by the French Foreign Legion, they are simply sent off to war. Since neither a time nor a place are readily defined, Flandres comes across as a metaphoric statement on the senseless logic on modern-day warfare, in which raw recruits on a patrol can readily lose their humanity and resort to rape and pillage. The scene might just as well be Iraq as the desert of North Africa.
Political Statements
Based on a true story, Israel Adrián Caetano’s Crónica de un fuga (Chronicle of an Escape, Argentina) is the first Argentine film about the country’s so-called “dirty war” (1976-83). Only recently are the facts known about the disappearance of an estimated 30,000 citizens, who were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, and killed by “task groups” commissioned by the Argentine military government. Often, the arrests were just arbitrary choices, as in the case of the soccer goalkeeper Claudio Tamburrini (Rodrigo de la Sema), kidnapped in Buenos Aires in 1977. Together with three other prisoners, Claudio survives mental and physical torture until their escape is made possible during a thunderstorm.
Although You Ye’s Yihe yuan (Summer Palace, China/France) covers Chinese history from 1987 to 2001, the key sequence focuses on the Beijing student uprising on Tiananmen Square in May of 1989 (an event, by the way, that was followed closely on TV by Cannes participants). To Lou Ye’s credit, this is the first time that the Tiananmen Square incident has appeared in a Chinese film, albeit as background footage and narrative material. The primary theme of Summer Palace, set mostly in the dormitories of Beijing University, is sexual freedom with political confrontation with the authorities thrown in on the side. In fact, there is so much open sex in the film that Lou Ye confirmed in an interview that he plans to cut the film considerably to meet current Chinese censorship standards. Whether the film’s political message will survive the cuts is another question.
Auteur Cinéma
Some Italian critics felt that Nanni Moretti’a Il Caimano (The Caiman, Italy/France), a light comedy about Italian Media Mogul cum Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, had been inspired by Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (USA), the Bush-basher that bagged the Golden Palm in 2004. Released in Italy just before the elections, Il Caimano did well at the box office and seem to profit even from Berlusconi’s subsequent showdown with Romano Prodi over a “stolen election.”. At Cannes, however, the film hardly caused a ripple. Conceived as a film-within-a-film, the title referring to an anti-Berlusconi screenplay handed to a reluctant but needy producer, The Caiman only catches fire when on-camera TV footage of the bumbling prime minister hits the screen to enliven a plodding narrative.
Finland’s cult director Aki Kaurismäki, whose international reputation rises with each passing festival, presented the third film in his trilogy on the plight of the working man in Helsinki. The series was launched in Cannes a decade ago when Kauas pilvet karkaavat (Drifting Clouds, 1996), a statement on the unemployed, was awarded at Cannes (Kati Outinen, a Kaurismäki regular, was awarded the Palm for Best Actress). Then, in 2002, Cannes invited his Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past), a poignant tale about the homeless as experienced by an amnesia victim. Now, in Laitakaupungin Valot (Lights in the Dusk), a story of betrayal and loneliness, the film ends on a pessimistic note of sacrifice – and ultimately despair that the innocent will always be exploited by the powers that be. Aki’s familiar ensemble faces are missing from Lights in the Dusk, which may be the reason that the film drew mild applause at the press screening.
Another closing film in an auteur trilogy was eagerly awaited at Cannes. Babel, a biting tale of noncommunication set in three continents, is Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s third (and apparently last) collaboration with talented screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who also collaborated at last year’s Cannes festival with American actor-director Tommy Lee Jones on awarded Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). The writer-director pair’s good fortune began at Cannes six years ago when their Amores Perros (Love’s a Bitch, Mexico, 2000), a multi-layered tale constructed around a street accident, took the Week of the Critics by storm. It was followed by the equally praised 21 Grams (USA, 2003), an interwoven story of love and guilt forged around a transplanted heart. In Babel children play a key role in this overlapping and over-stretched chronicle of stumbling word-play misunderstandings between cultures that leaves inevitably to tragedy. Why in the first place the American pair, played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, are on a tourist bus somewhere in the Moroccan desert is never really explained. And the time gaps in the film, too, don’t seem to interlock the way they should over the two-hours-plus narrative line. Still, Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu well deserved the Palm for Best Director, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
Another front runner for Cannes laurels was Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Iklimler (Climates). As the title hints, Climates is shot in intersecting episodes against the changing seasons of blistering summer, rainy autumn, and frosty winter. Only spring is missing, although Bahar – Turkish for “spring” – just happens to be the name of the female protagonist. The plodding, excruciating tale of a relationship slowly falling apart confirms that Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the most thought-provoking directors working in cinema today. An acclaimed master at probing the loneliness of the soul, Ceylan blends powerful imagery with sparse dialogue in this personal tales of a lost chance and a fatal decision. Climates stars Nuri Bilge Ceylan himself as the university professor Isa (Turkish for “Jesus”), his wife Ebru Ceylan as his loving but wounded girlfriend Bahar. Ceylan has often been compared with Bergman, Bresson, Antonioni, and Tarkovsky. However, when I interviewed him last year at the Cinefan festival in New Delhi about his Uzak (Distant), awarded the runnerup Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes festival, he only wanted to talk about the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Unfortunately, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates was completely overlooked by the international jury at Cannes. But it did receive the FIPRESCI (International Critics) Award. It deserved the Golden Palm.
PRIZES AND AWARDS
Official Competition
Palme d’Or The Wind That Shakes the Barley (UK/Ireland/Germany/Italy/Spain), dir Ken Loach
Grand Prix Flandres(France), dir Bruno Dumont
Best Director Alejandro González Iñárritu,Babel (USA)
Best Screenplay Pedro Almodovar,Volver (Return) (Spain), dir Pedro Almodovar
Best Actress Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Lola Dueñas, Blanca Portillo, Yohana Cobo, Chus Lampreave,Volver (Spain), dir Pedro Almodovar
Best Actor Jamel Debbouze, Samy Nacéri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila, Bernard Blancan,Indigènes (Days of Glory – aka Native Born) (France/Morocco/Algeria/Belgium), dir Rachid Bouchareb
Jury Prize Red Road(UK/Denmark),dir Andrea Arnold
Short Film Awards
Palme d’Or Sniffer(Norway),dir Bobbie Peers
Jury Prize Primera Nieve (First Snow)(France),dir Pablo Aguero
Special Mention Conte de quartier(Neighborhood Story) (France/Canada),dir Florence Miailhe (animation)
Caméra d’Or – Best Debut Film
A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest – aka Did It Happen or Not?) (Romania), dir Corneliu Porumboiu (Directors Fortnight)
Un Certain Regard Awards
Prix Un Certain Regard – Fondation Gan pour le Cinéma
Luxury Car (China/France), dir Chao Wang
Special Jury Prize
Ten Canoes (Australia),dir Rolf de Heer
Best Actress
Dorotheea Petre,Cum mi-am petrecut sfârsitul lumii (The Way I Spent the End of the World) (Romania), dir Catalin Mitulescu
Best Actor
Don Angel Tavira,El violin (The Violin) (Mexico), dir Francisco Vargas
Prize of President of Un Certain Regard Jury
Meurtrieres(Murderers) (France),dir Patrick Grandperret
Cinéfondation Awards
First Prize Ge & Zeta (Argentina), dir Gustavo Riet
Second Prize Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker(Germany),dir Stefan Mueller
Third Prize (ex aequo)
Mother(USA),dir Siân Heder
A Vírus (The Virus)(Hungary),dir Agnes Kocsis
Directors Fortnight
Regard Jeune
Day Night Day Night (USA/Germany/France), dir Julia Loktev
CICAE Art & Essai Prize
Anche libero va bene (Along the Ridge – aka Even Independent It’s All Right) (Italy), dir Kim Rossi Stuart
Europa Cinemas Label
A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest – aka Did It Happen or Not?) (Romania), dir Corneliu Porumboiu (Directors Fortnight)
SACD Award (French Short Film)
Dans le rang (In the Rank), Cyprian Vial
Young French Director Award (Short Film)
Bosilka Simonovitch, Un Rat (A Rat)
Critics’ Week
Grand Prix
Les Amitiés maléfiques (The Malevolent Friendships) (France), dir Emmanuel Bourdieu
Prix ACID
Den Brysomme Mannen (The Bothersome Man) (Norway), dir Jens Lien
Grand Prix CANAL+ (Short Film)
Kristall (Crystal) (Germany), dir Christoph Girardet, Matthias Müller
Prix SACD (ex aequo)
Pingpong (Germany), dir Matthias Luthardt
Les Amitiés maléfiques (The Malevolent Friendships) (France), dir Emmanuel Bourdieu
Prix Grand Cru
Alguma Coisa Assim (Something Like That) (Brazil), dir Esmir Filho
Prize Regard Jeune
Sonhos de Peixe (Brazil/Russia/USA), dir Kirill Mikhanovsky
Grand Rail d’Or (Feature Film)
Les Amitiés maléfiques (The Malevolent Friendships) (France), dir Emmanuel Bourdieu
Petit Rail d’Or (Short Film)
Printed Rainbow (India), dir Gitanjali Rao
Prix OFAJ de la (Toute) Jeune Critique (ex aequo)
Pingpong (Germany), dir Matthias Luthardt
Iron (Japan), dir Hiroyuki Nakano
KODAK Discovery Award (Short Film)
Printed Rainbow (India), dir Gitanjali Rao
FIPRESCI (International Critics) Awards
Competition Iklimler (Climates) (Turkey), dir Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Un Certain Regard Hamaca Paraguaya (Paraquay), dir Paz Encina
Directors Fortnight Bug (USA), dir William Friedkin
Ecumenical Award
Competition Babel (USA), dir Alejandro González Iñárritu
Special Mention
Un Certain Regard Z odzysku (Retrieval) (Poland), dir Slawomir Fabicki