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Cannes Diary

Conclusion

Days Nine through Eleven of the Festival
Movies: Festival in Cannes, Unknown Pleasures, The Son, Devdas, The Pianist, Only the Strong Survive, The Adversary, and Femme Fatale

At this point, my journal technically ends at its tenth entry. However, my scant notes from the time and some luck should be enough to finish off this epic journey. Most of these movies won't have formal capsule reviews, but I'll try to comment on all of them at least.

This far into the Festival (Thursday), the complete and utter lack of care I've had for my body has started to show and my movie count begins to drop a little bit. Also, as the Festival closes, the number of movies showing each day decreases substantially. At the very least, it means more time to relax and shop like a tourist. I catch Festival in Cannes in the morning and am very disappointed. Director Henry Jaglom may be a Penn graduate, but his film felt very forced and was rather unsatisfying. This type of Hollywood satire/dramedy has been done before and done much better. The rest of the day is wasted away in stores and out in the sun and I soon get ready for the nightly premieres. Unknown Pleasures, by Zhang Ke Jia, is first up and is another slow, ponderous movie. The lack of narrative structure and confusion over exactly what is going on may reflect the listless lives of the movie's protagonists, but it also just kept me bored and confused. Many walk-outs, many minutes slept.

Right after Pleasures was The Son, by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Easily the best film of the day (though that says very, very little when taking account what I'd just seen), it is a very compressed and repressed look at the lingering, conflicted emotions experienced by a man after a family tragedy. The audience is given information carefully and slowly over the course of the film, allowing our guessing to begin on what exactly the relationship is between Olivier (wonderfully portrayed by Olivier Gourmet, who received the Best Actor award in the Festival) and the teenager. The directors tackle their subject matter seriously, avoiding any melodrama that would have sunk the film. My only complaint with the movie is that it almost builds its structure too slowly--the spare facts given the audience sustain us until we learn more, but just barely. A sad, but ultimately hopeful, film.

And, immediately following this was my third film in the Lumiere for the day.

Devdas
India, Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Lumiere: 05/23/02: 10:30pm
(***) of four
Time slept during: About thirty minutes.

A spectacle in every sense of the word, this unbelievably lavish Bollywood production features gorgeous art design and a swirling direction by Bhansali. The songs work well in the movie and don’t distract from the main plot, which is a little bit contrived, but effective for what the movie is. For a first exposure to the world of Indian film, it’s a good one, though the extremely long running time of the movie wrecked havoc on me since it only began at 10:30 at night.


Utterly destroyed after the experience of Devdas, I returned to my room to pass out. The next day brings us to the tenth of the Festival. After picking up tickets again at Unifrance, I grabbed lunch and headed to the Market for our meeting with Menemsha Entertainment's Neil Friedman. The rest of the afternoon again was spent shopping, emailing, and soaking in the sun. After getting the (awesome) gnocchi at Caffe Roma, I got changed and headed to the Lumiere for The Pianist. One of the best films of the Festival, Roman Polanski's new film shows him in top form again, recovering brilliantly from the entertaining, but flawed, The Ninth Gate. The subject matter is familiar, but Polanski incorporates his own personal experiences into the film to create a harrowingly realistic atmosphere. This is aided greatly by a breakthrough performance by Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman (all IMDB on that one, despite my last name). He recently became the youngest person ever to win a Best Actor Oscar and the reason why is on the screen. The pain and terror in his eyes draws us into the film and never lets us go. Polanski should be proud of his work and is more than deserving of his Best Director Oscar for the film.

After the film, I met a few people at a restaurant for drinks for a while, wasting away a good bit of the evening until it was finally time to trudge up the hill towards home.

The next morning, I wake up for my final dawn trip to Unifrance for premiere tickets (sleep is coming soon), head to our meeting, and then to lunch. After spending a little time in the DVD Space in the Market (in the dark, enclosed room with the great sound playing City of Lost Children), I make my way to wait in line for Only the Strong Survive. A documentary on the golden era of soul music by acclaimed filmmakers Chris Hededus and D.A. Pennebaker, the movie is well-made, but does not pull me into its musical spell, like movies such as Ode to Cologne did. It was likely my own musical prejudices, but what can I say. Next up is finishing my shopping and then to see my next film at the Lumiere.

The Adversary
France, Directed by Nicole Garcia
Lumiere: 05/25/02: 07:00pm
(*** and 1/2) of four
Time slept during: None.

A stunningly quiet movie that restrains itself to generate even more power, Garcia’s new movie evokes an atmosphere of quiet dread that maintains itself until the emotional last few minutes. Daniel Autueil, one of my favorite actors that keeps popping up in more and more movies, does an incredible job with a very difficult role. The Badalamenti score haunts the movie well and keep an eye out on the impressively subtle editing. As Autueil’s world begins to fall apart around him, some well-place, but quick jump cuts hint at his growing disconnection with himself and with the world around him. An example of how every element comes together to make this a great movie.


I head back to my room to change and then grab dinner. Afterwards, we start drinking relatively heavily in our room before heading out to our final movie, Femme Fatale. Though I didn't think about it at the time, it occurs to me now that drinking very quickly right before seeing a movie in a comfortable, dark theatre after barely sleeping for two weeks straight is not the best of ideas. I'd like to review the movie for you, but basically, I didn't exactly see it. The first five minutes, the last five minutes, that's it. Seriously. I turned to Danny at the end, though, who only responded, "Sucked. Be glad you were asleep," so I won't complain too much. After all, sleep is a very, very good thing. Since it's nearing the close of the Festival, I say goodbye to Danny (who is leaving early the next day) and then head back to pass out and say bye to Shreevar.

On Sunday, my alarm clock starts ringing at 11:30am and I'm ecstatic just from not having to wake up at 6:30. I go to meet with a few people for lunch and to say goodbye and then head back to start packing. My quandary about leaving is this: my flight is at 6:55 the next day...in the morning. So, I need to be able to get to the airport in the middle of the early morning (since it's a bus or cab ride away). However, the trains and buses don't run early or late enough to get me there anywhere near on time. I can press my luck getting there in the morning or by getting an extremely expensive cab ride...or....I can just go to the airport Sunday night and wait there the whole night until the morning. Sounds ridiculous? It did to me, but I think it was my only option. I gathered my bags together and headed out towards the bus station at around 5:30pm. By 6:30pm, I'm in Nice at the airport...with TWELVE hours to wait. Shoot me.

I drop my bags off in Left Luggage, grab dinner, and start my wait. Highlights include seeing Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas walking through the airport briskly with a phalanx of fans around them, listening to hours and hours of CDs while playing Game Boy Advance while lying across the benches in the terminals, having bizarre, product-of-an-addled-mind, pictures of myself taken by an arcade machine, playing numerous games of Virtual Tennis 2 on one of the only cool arcade games there, pacing and walking around the airport endlessly, and making a staggeringly expensive call from a pay phone without having any idea of the ridiculous cost. Well past the point of insanity and again completely deprived of sleep, I make it to my flight and head off to London, the Festival finally completely at a close.

I feel I should make some sort of concluding remarks here about the Festival as a whole, but, at the same time, I think that these diary entries speak for themselves in their verbosity. The Festival was an amazing time for me and I am incredibly happy that I was able to attend and indulge all of my film nerd tendencies. I hope you've enjoyed reading this adventure--please feel free to email me (marcberz@sas.upenn.edu) with your thoughts or if there are any glaring mistakes or errors. And now, let's finally bring this to a finish.

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