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Cannes Diary

Entry Three: Wednesday, May 15, 2002  --  Page Two

We’re back at the Unifrance booth and, sure enough, it’s still completely closed with that ominous sign in front of us. At least now, though, there are about six other people waiting in front of it with the same annoyed look on their faces that we all have. We sit down and begin the wait, something that we would become very familiar with, but we had no idea quite how long we would be waiting today. We chat with the two guys we followed from the Palais, Huck and Ben, and complain about the apparent cluelessness of about everyone in charge of this Festival. Huck is a producer working in London trying to develop a couple of scripts, some big budget ones waiting for more star power and a couple of smaller ones to tide him over in the meantime. We talked shop and he espoused his idealistic hopes to try to encourage a new style in English cinema, producing more offbeat, independent fare such as Swingers and Happiness and less standard English dour dramas. Ben is a young writer also working out of London who also writes for a variety of online movie sites. 9:00am turns into 10:00am and still there’s no sign that this wait will come to an end any time soon. Eventually, a security guard strolls over and simply removes the sign from the wall. Heh, so I guess it’s no longer 2:00pm, luckily. He tells us that it’ll open up around 10:30am, at this point an hour and a half after the other ticket area opened to the public. We wait...and wait...and wait...and 10:30am comes along...and 11:00am...and now 11:30am (every time we hear that the booth is supposed to open soon, Lisa and I chime in with a "Maybe," which soon became our mantra in this line). Everyone is antsy and extremely annoyed at this point. A sizable line has grown behind us and everyone is upset that no one seems to know what’s going on (even a man in front of us starts banging on the wall of the booth in annoyance). The security guards simply shake their heads at our questions. But then, finally, at 11:35am, the booth opens up and we’re finally allowed to head in to get our tickets. I walked out, simply amazed that this long, long line actually had a happy ending at the end of it. Honestly, I didn’t believe until we had the tickets in our hands that we were actually going to get them. I figured that, hours after waiting in line, they’d come along and tell us that, while indeed this was the place to get tickets normally, none would become available until tomorrow and, oh, by the way, Opening Night tickets are long gone. Overtired and drained from the last few hours, we walk back over to McDonalds and sit down and wait until Noon, when we heard that most of the others were going to meet.

So now, finally starting to feel like the Festival is actually beginning now that we have our first tickets in our hands, we decide to head to the Riviera to see our first movie. There’s a very thin selection of movies for today, but we find one that looks somewhat interesting and head over to see it.

Her Island, My Island
Japan, Directed by Itsumitchi Isomura
Riviera 3: 05/15/02: 01:30pm
(**) of four
Time slept during: a minute or two here and there during the movie

A woman returns to the home she left years before and deals with her changing family and the news she needs to share with them in this slow, quiet Japanese drama. Kuriko returns home from Tokyo, looking to make peace with her family as she shares with them the news that she’s getting married. We move with her as she talks with old friends and we learn about the old life she left years before. Despite the intelligent compositions and the carefully placed symbols, the movie proceeds at an exceedingly slow pace, making it very difficult for the viewer to keep their attention on everything. The movie slowly layers on different parts of Kuriko’s past, but the viewer never feels very grounded in the story. What kept my attention during most of the movie was trying to guess at a major twist in the end that never materialized. For what is essentially a rather simply story, the movie dwells on itself too much and doesn’t involve the viewers nearly enough. Someone with the patience to really try to throw himself deep into the movie may find himself rewarded, but I was left feeling that a little more was needed to wake up the quiet pace and really hold my interest. These pacing issues will likely keep the movie from ever having a theatrical release in the US--I’m sure there are many other Japanese dramas that would deserve it more than this one would.

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The huge crowd assembled for Opening Night

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