Postcard from Cannes: The Weekend’s Winners and Losers Inline
Photo: Courtesy of Festival de Cannes1/6Winner: Carol
While uneasy lies the head that wears the crown and all that, the festival now has a frontrunner for the Palme d Or—**Todd Haynes **s beautiful, subtle, and intelligent story of a fifties love affair between a young would-be photographer, Therese (Rooney Mara), and a rich, immaculately put-together, and slightly scary older woman, Carol, played by Cate Blanchett. Wildly applauded at the press screening (a famously tough crowd) and rewarded with the festival s best reviews by a mile, the movie instantly began inspiring Oscar talk. Although I personally found the film a bit too tame—I wanted more juice—Carol gets another iconic performance from Blanchett (shades of Old Hollywood stars like Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson), boasts an equally good one from Mara, who hints at Audrey Hepburn, and confirms Haynes (Safe, Far FromHeaven, Mildred Pierce) as our great director of films about women.
Photo: Courtesy of Festival de Cannes2/6Winner(s): Quentin Dolmaire and Lou Roy-Lecollinet
In Cannes, everyone s greedy for new talent. They found it in My Golden Days by the wonderful French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin, most famous for the film My Sex Life . . . Or How I Got into an Argument. Broken into three episodes, the movie has centers on a story about the young love between the college-age hero, Paul Dédalus (Dolmaire), and a brashly sexy high school girl, Esther (Lecollinet). From the moment they meet in one of the most winning pick-up scenes in today s movie, these two are so sparkling and alive that it ll knock you out. Indeed, everyone keeps asking why the festival let it show up in a sidebar, for it s better than many of the films in the competition. No matter. This movie puts its young leads on the world s radar, especially Dolmaire who has everything it takes to be a star. He s handsome in a Ryan Phillippe or Ed Westwick mold, has an easy, engaging charm, and possesses That Thing, the mysterious quality that makes you want to watch certain actors or actresses even when they re just standing there.
Photo: Courtesy of Festival de Cannes3/6Loser: Louder Than Bombs
Nothing here has disappointed me more than this diffuse drama by the terrific Norwegian director Joachim Trier, who won my loyalty with his first two films, Reprise and Oslo, August 31st. Working in English for the first time, he tells a story about two sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid, who played the youthful Louie on Louie) and a father (Gabriel Byrne) dealing with the emotional fallout of the death of their mother and wife, a war photographer played by Isabelle Huppert. Minute by minute, the film reveals Trier s virtues—a keen eye for penetrating detail, a sly sense of humor, an awareness of individual complexity—yet it never really coalesces into a satisfying whole. It s no disaster, but Trier s portrait of repressed family feelings feels stuck in a rut well-traveled by earlier films like Ordinary People and The Ice Storm. It’s like a better version of something you’d see at Sundance.
Photo: Courtesy of Festival de Cannes4/6Winner(s): Emmanuelle Bercot and Vincent Cassel
The most interestingly divisive film here is MonRoi, by Maïwenn (dig the single name), who s one of the festival s and France s great female hopes as a director. It s essentially a more grown-up version of Fifty Shades of Grey. Bercot plays Tony, a divorced lawyer who meets and falls hard for a rich, funny, sexy restaurateur, Giorgio (Cassel), who s obviously too good to be true. Although he doesn t have a sex cave, he s almost worse, an unreliable man who, when he s not being irresponsible, is fun to be with, great to sleep with, and really good with their son. This is a classic scenario of what s historically been called a "women s picture"—a good woman falls for a man who s trouble—and perhaps unsurprisingly, critical response split sharply on gender lines. While female critics were drawn by Tony s not-quite-fatal attraction to Giorgio, male critics almost unanimously viewed it with dismissive disdain. Not to betray the manly code or anything, but the guys are wrong. Although the movie s too long (as even its admirers agree), it has a real emotional pull thanks to Bercot s passionate, deeply exposed performance and Cassel s rampaging charisma that—playing his best role in quite a while—makes him the perfect example of the man your mother warned you about.
Photo: Courtesy of Festival de Cannes5/6Loser: Matthew McConaughey
It turns out that Buick commercial wasn t an aberration. In what s surely the worst ever film by Gus Van Sant—who won the Palme d’Or just over a decade ago—and the worst film in the competition, The Sea of Trees stars McConaughey as a bummed-out adjunct professor who flies to Japan to kill himself in a forest near Mount Fuji famous as a great place to commit suicide. He s just about to do it when he spots an injured Japanese guy (handsome Ken Watanabe stuck in a dreary role). When he goes to help, they re soon lost in the forest, where they divide their time between taking plunges onto rocks violent enough to kill an elephant (naturally, they get up and walk on) and sitting around as McConaughey tells the staggeringly dull story of his marriage to his wife Naomi Watts. It all builds to a cockamamie conclusion that s equal parts _Sixth Sense–_style twist and New Age hokum that McConaughey mouths with such breathtaking conviction that you wonder if he actually believes it. Man, is this movie bad. "I was going to walk out," a friend said afterward, "but I wanted to stay to hear the booing." She was amply rewarded. As for McConaughey, he remained the perfect embodiment of Matthew McConaughey. When asked at the press conference about the response, he replied, "Anybody is as entitled to boo as they are to ovate"—a line that had me ovating.
