Festivals JOAN DUPONT
| The Un Certain Regard (UCR) competition, which also presents its selection in the Salle Debussy, an adjacent theater smaller than the Palais, has always seemed a kind of plush dumping ground for senior Palm competitors who should know better than to expect to come back, or those who haven't quite made the cut: in other words, a perfectly decent section with a whiff of "they also serve, those who stand and wait." For there are filmmakers who never make it to the competition and have to be satisfied with this honorable mention section.
They are a little like the critics who have worked their way up, over the years, to win the pink badge with a gold dot, and hope this second-best pass is going to get them a seat in the rows reserved for those with white badges—Les pauvres! I feel a kind of solidarity for these people, for I used to be one of them, and since this festival of big films on the disinherited happens to be the world's most elitist, you don't want to scramble for a seat. {niftybox background=#8FBC8F, width=365px} It turned out this year that some magical films were in UCR, where a radiant Isabella Rossellini headed the jury. Their prize went to Rams by Grímur Hákonarson, a marvelous story of two brothers who live next to each other in a remote Icelandic valley, locked to the death in a silent feud. {/niftybox} Their rams, who ensure their livelihood and share their homes, have been contaminated by disease and must be destroyed. The director draws the viewer in to their battle, which is set in a stunning end-of-the-world landscape. I was won over by Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Journey to the Shore (Kishibe no tabi), a tender ghost story about a woman whose husband has drowned and comes back to fetch her; they will take one more trip together, revisiting the people, hotel rooms, and landscapes of their past. She is not that surprised to see him reappear, but she is cautious, as if she feels the fragility of his visit. And he, the ghost, seems to fill the scene with energy and purposefulness that makes you feel that this time, he wants to be with this woman, and to get it right. Neeraj Ghaywan set Masaan at Benares, the holy city on the banks of the Ganges where no outsider can film. It was here,in 2000, that Deepa Mehta had to abandon her production of Water, when protesters burned her sets and threw them in the Ganges. She finally was able to make the film, which dealt with the prostitution of child widows, by filming outside of India. In Masaan, among burning bodies, people are bullied and blackmailed by corrupt police and, separated by caste differences, a girl and boy begin a doomed love story. Masaan won Un Certain Regard's Prix d'Avenir. Brillante Mendoza shot Taklu b ("Trap") among the wreckage of Typhoon Haiyan, focusing on Filipino families whose shattered lives take place on a beach that is also a burial ground. This film, which looks like a documentary but is not, spurred me to take the time to revisit Lino Brocka's brilliant Insiang (1976), being shown in Cannes Classics. Brocka also set his movie in the bas fonds, shooting in eleven days; his was the first Filipino movie to be shown at Cannes. Pierre Rissient, who introduced the film, reminded those gathered of how Brocka, who was on the outs with the dictatorship, and particularly with Mme. Marcos, made his movies in dead heat, each a victory. (In 1982, I interviewed Brocka for Le Monde in Manila, when he lived practically in exile.) {niftybox background=#8FBC8F, width=365px} Another magical film by Thai director and prior Palm winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Cemetery of Splendor (Rak ti Khon Kaen), was shown this time in Un Certain Regard. This one is set in a military hospital in Khon Kaen, the town where he grew up, where comatose soldiers are treated for their disquieting dreams. It is perhaps the most melancholy film he has made. The men are visited by women who watch over them with hopeless faces and who wander out to sit on dusty benches. This is a ghost town.{/niftybox} Thierry Frémaux came by the Cemetery screening at the Salle Debussy to introduce the Palme d'Or winner, translating his speech from English to French, but leaving out the parts that sounded like bad news, such as when Weerasethakul expressed regrets that his country was living under a military junta. |
Frémaux looked as if he didn't want to hear any more bad news. He had, perhaps, just gotten wind of another hit over at the Director's Fortnight. While the official selection rudged on, the Fortnight came up with magical film after magical film, such as Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights and Šharūnas Bartas's Peace in Our Dreams, made in the filmmaker's backyard in Vilnius. As for newcomers, the Director's Fortnight offered Chinese American Chloé Zhao's debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set in the Great Plains and Badlands of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, as well as Turkish director Deniz Gaamze Ergüven's glorious Mustang, winner of the Fortnight's prize—a story of five ravishing sisters, plotting escape from a family fixated on preserving their virginity.
{niftybox background=#8FBC8F, width=365px}Back at the Palais, Frémaux looked lonely on stage. Was he reflecting on how bothersome it was to introduce filmmakers with political agendas? Or how he was going to keep Cannes's cinephile aura while dealing with president Pierre Lescure, whose focus is on snagging new sponsors? And then there was the old problem of the Americans who don't want to come to Cannes because it's not the right season for launching a movie and there's always the risk it will be shot down by the international press.{/niftybox} It was at the Debussy that I talked to an usher who works in the local fire department and volunteers for rescue missions abroad. She had been to the Philippines in the wake of the disaster that had been portrayed in Mendoza's film, and she had just returned from Nepal, where she had gone on a rescue mission with her boyfriend. It was her second trip to Nepal since the disaster. "I wanted to adopt," she said. "I wanted to take a baby home with me." It was quite moving to meet somebody whose life in the real world had crossed with stories seen here on screen throughout these two weeks. Just as I grew misty over her humanity, a man made his way down the row and made a move to take a seat. "I'm afraid you can't sit here," she said, looking at his pink badge. "This row is reserved for white badges only." Fin Joan Dupont First published in Film Comment Joan Dupont, has been reporting on the arts since the late 1970's. She covered the opening of the Pompidou Center in Paris for Time magazine, and wrote profiles on Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eric Rohmer, and Rudolf Nureyev for The New York Times and on Patricia Highsmith, Mark Morris, and Gerard Depardieu for The New York Times Magazine. For the International Herald Tribune, Ms. Dupont followed the international careers of Susan Sontag, Elie Wiesel and Robert Wilson before focusing on film and serving on festival juries, from Chicago to Istanbul and New Delhi. She has written on documentary filmmakers Agnes Varda and Raymond Depardon, as well as on new faces on the scene. She interviewed Claude Chabrol on location in Berlin the week the Wall came down, Sergio Leone in his Roman villa and Alain Resnais over coffee in Paris. Ms. Dupont also reports on the new cinema from the Arab countries. During the emergence of Asian cinema, she wrote on Wong Kar-wai from Toronto, Edward Yang from Taipei, Ang Lee and Michelle Yeoh on the set of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Beijing, and Gong Li and Maggie Cheung from Cannes. Ms. Dupont first covered the Cannes International Film Festival for a program of daily interviews produced by Sygma Television and broadcast on Canal Plus: she caught Lars Von Trier's debut, Jean-Luc Godard at his peak, and Rainer Fassbinder's last days. For the past decade, she has reported extensively on the festival for the IHT, reviewing the films and interviewing famous players and fresh talent. Ms. Dupont lives between Paris and New York |
