Ron Holloway, Berlin, 30 May 2006
Flying home from Cannes on the same plane with German director Volker Schloendorff, who had paid a short complimentary visit to the Riviera, I queried him for his impressions of the festival under the twin leadership of president Gilles Jacob and artistic director Thierry Frémaux. “If I had known before how strong the Directors Fortnight was, I might have consider entering my new film on the Polish Solidarity movement here instead of waiting for Venice.” My response was a bit too facetious for the occasion: “You could have entered Streik! (Strike!) in any section at Cannes and come out a winner!”
In short, this year’s Cannes film festival offered the committed cineaste a diverse display of world cinema. Each of the traditional sections – Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors Fortnight, Week of the Critics – offered enough to keep one busy the entire week. The new sections – Cannes Classics, Midnight Screenings, tous les cinémas du monde – proved to be just as tantalizing. And the Film Market was crowded with journalists who wanted to sneak a preview of Kim Ki-duk’s Shi gan (Time) (South Korea), the opening night film at the upcoming Karlovy Vary film festival. Indeed, the Cannes palette was rich in novelties and discoveries.
Frank Otto’s Trip
Was it a presentation in the Film Market? Or a Special Event organized by Berlin-based entrepreneur Jürgen Schau? Whatever. Only a pesky, whipping, blowing mistral wind-storm prevented Frank Otto’s Trip from becoming the event of the Cannes showcase. As it was, some 500 guests showed at the indoor Majestic Barrière beach site to submerge themselves into an audiovisual experience conceived by Hamburg media artists Frank Otto and Bernt Koehler-Adams. Programmed as an experimental assemblage of music and film, the “trip” at Cannes was more on the musical side, although an overall team of musicians, artists, designers, and filmmakers were initially involved. If the presentation had taken place at the end of Majestic pier – as originally planned, where the show could have been viewed by hundreds up and down the Croisette – the Trip would have been the talk of the festival.
Improvisation is at the heart of this multi-media plunge intended to “remix your experience.” The key premise is to link four separate films running simultaneously on a split-screen to original musical compositions that allow live performers, singers and musicians, to navigate their own way through the overall experience. Each of the four films, plus segments of others, were commissioned productions shot over the past couple years. One film is an eye-catching silent-movie melodrama, another is an underwater sea exploration, a third (track 2) is a fast-moving ride on the Berlin Underground, and the wrap, titled Playing Planet, is a whirlwind trip to Africa, San Francisco, and the Philippines. The unifying element is the soundtrack, which both supports and extends the appeal to the individual as he or she constantly “remixes the audiovisual experience” to fit their personal taste. Tripping with Frank Otto has to be seen more than once to grasp the depth of the experience.
Out-of-Competition
The visit of Al Gore to the Croisette to attend the out-of-competition screening of Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth (USA) caused a stir and some open-ended speculation on whether he might be considering a rerun for the office of President. According to the press book, Al Gore has given his multi-media, spread-sheet, slide-show lecture on global warning over a thousand times at a lecture tour and on his own cable TV channel. Perhaps Davis Guggenheim’s documentary is too smooth and generous in his promotion of a “new” Al Gore – humorous, earnest, caring and worried – but the message comes across without a hitch and free of political finesse. If you too were not concerned about unpredictable twisters, rising flood waters, melting glaciers, stifling heat waves, among other increasing natural catastrophes, then your worse fears will be confirmed after seeing An Inconvenient Truth.
Another highlight was the out-of-competition screening of Paul Greengrass’s United 93, the emotionally charged recapitulation of what happened and might have happened on the fourth highjacked 9/11 United Airlines flight that ended up crashing into a field instead of the intended White House. To Greengrass’s credit, he enlisted commercial airline pilots and flight attendants to play the respective roles, thus adding to the authenticity of the fiction narrative. Computer-simulated plane-bouncing and a hand-held camera (cinematographer Barry Ackroyd) were additional pluses. And on a Sunday afternoon Oliver Stone offered the Cannes public a half-hour sneak-preview of his upcoming World Trade Center epic about the heroism of policemen and firemen to save others in Tower One at the cost of their own lives. The icing on the cake was an introduction by Thierry Frémaux of Oliver Stone’s Platoon (USA), a 1986 Cannes hit that Stone at the presentation called “one of the greatest experiences of my life.”
Another Hollywood director, Sydney Pollack, presented at Cannes Sketches of Frank Gehry (USA), his first documentary – and made only because the eminent American architect, creator of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, asked him as a friend to do him the favor. As the title hints, the film is a compilation of sketches rather than an analytical approach to the architect’s varied career. “Sketches” pretty much describes two other French films in the out-of-competition section. Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane, un portrait du 21st siecle simply follows the legendary soccer player for Real Madrid across the turf on a single day during a famous match. And in Anne Feinsilber’s Requiem for Billy the Kid the focus is mostly a wide-screen homage to Lincoln County’s striking landscape, while on the side comparing the persona of Billy the Kid to that of rebellious French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Why on earth this comparison? Because, says Anne Feinsilber, both myth-enshrouded personalities died at 21.
Midnight Screenings
The midnight screening of gay director John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (USA) was billed as an attempt to bring narrative legitimacy to the porn film industry. Shot on a tight budget over 30 days, it features a cast of nonprofessionals who had signed up for Mitchell’s multi-sex workshop on the premise that everything should go on this sexual battlefield. As much a sad film as it is a playful libido-tickler, Shortbus (the title refers to regular gay-kitsch soirees in a Manhattan underground club) drew additional free publicity by having most of cast hanging around the Cannes bars throughout the festival. When Mitchell himself was asked whether professional actors had signed up for his workshop, he admitted that some did, but nearly all of them quickly exited when the chips were down. Not surprising, because Shortbus is quirky porn and nothing more. Hardly worth of cult status, as some critics have claimed.
Prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To was back in town with Election 2 (Hong Kong/China), the sequel to his Election in the Competition at last year’s Cannes. A Triad action film about the bloody election of a new chairman, the first edition went on to gross an estimated $2 million within weeks after the Cannes premiere. This time around, for Election 2, Johnny To has fatten out the plot and added more psychological depth to the gangster thriller. The rerun reportedly has already grossed $700,000 within four days of its release last April. One now expects to see more of Johnny To at future Cannes fests.
Cannes Classics
Fast becoming one of the major pillars of the festival, Cannes Classics paid posthumous tributes to Carol Reed (1906-1976) and Norman McLaren (1914-1987). Hopefully, the restored prints of Reed’s The Way Ahead (1944), Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) will make the rounds of several international film festivals. In my student days I was inspired to study cinema after seeing Odd Man Out a dozen times at the Clark Theater in downtown Chicago. How wonderful to see a restored print of this British classic!
In the section’s documentaries on cinema, it was also a distinct pleasure to view Marie Génin’s Il était une fois… Rome ouverte ville (Once Upon a Time… Rome, Open City) (France) and Sam Pollard’s John Ford / John Wayne: The Filmmaker and the Legend (USA). The former reviewed the making of Roberto Rossellini’s neorealist classic shot under the noses of the Germans during the last days of the occupation. The latter is particularly noteworthy for puncturing the hero bubble of draft-dodger John Wayne while his mentor John Ford was serving in the Navy. In one teasing narrative segment about the making of They Were Expendable (USA, 1945), the story of the defeat of American forces in the Philippines in 1941-42, we hear how Ford forced Wayne to correctly salute a superior officer with the catcall to do it over and over again until he gets it right. Wayne in Ford’s eyes was anything but the war hero he portrayed in countless Hollywood films.
Un Certain Regard
Since 1978, a separate jury has been nominated by the festival to award a key film in this back-up section to the Competition entries. The Main Prize was justly awarded to Wang Chao’s Jiang chen xia ri (Luxury Car) (China/France), the third film in his trilogy on the “dark side of Chinese society” that began with The Orphan of Anyang (2001) and continued with Day and Night (2004). The story of an elderly school teacher who returns to Wuhan in central China after 40 years to find his long-lost son, the journey in Luxury Car is triggered by the wish of his ill wife to see her son once more before she dies of cancer. Upon arriving in the city, he first pays a visit to his pregnant daughter and tries to repair that relationship too as best he can, although he knows that her job as an escort is along the same lines as the hooker she shares an apartment with. The old man is finally helped in his search by a retired cop, who suffers the same pain of a missing son. Luxury Car confirms Wang Chao, whose roots are found in the working class, as one of China’s leading auteur directors.
Just as impressive was Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes (Australia), an aboriginal tale set in the forbidding Arafura Swamp in northern Australia that’s infested with crocodiles. The photography alone of this tropical swamp-and-bush country was enough to guarantee a Special Jury Prize. Ten Canoes is a mythical, ancestral tale told in flashback, as though the contemporary story of a young man who covets his brother’s third wife is as old as the indigenous tribe itself. By contrast, Garin Nugroho’s Sarambi (the direct translation is Veranda, or a meeting place for family and friends) documents the aftermath of the tsunami tragedy that hit the Indonesian province of Aceh on 26 December 2004 and cost the lives of more than 200,000 inhabitants. Aided by three other directors and four cameramen, Sarambi chronicles the lives of survivors without resorting to sentimental pathos. Indeed, some sequences are profoundly poetic.
Paz Encina’s Hamaca Paraguaya (Paraguayan Hammock) (Paraguay/Argentina/Netherlands/France/Spain)) is the first 35mm, all-Paraguayan feature film since the 1970s. Commissioned by theater director Peter Sellars for the New Crowned Hope Festival and the Vienna Mozart Year 2006, its general theme is keeping hope alive in spite of all. The setting is Paraguay during the Chaco War of 1932-35 between Paraguay and Bolivia. Two old people are waiting on their small farm for some news from their soldier son, even though their meandering conversation hints that he may no longer be alive. Nothing else happens to enliven the static long takes in which they sit on a hammock and quarrel to pass the time away. Still, this first feature by a promising young femme talent showed enough class to merit a FIPRESCI International Critics award.
Two films from Eastern Europe drew strong critical praise as well. In Catalin Mitulescu’s debut feature Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii (The Way I Spent the End of the World) (Romania/France) the end of the Ceausescu era in 1989 is viewed through the eyes of Eva (Dorotheea Petre) a 17-year-old girl, whose fatal mistake was accidentally tipping over a bust of the dictator at her school – an offence great enough to get her kicked out and sent to a reformatory. There she plots with a lad from a dissident family to escape to freedom by crossing the Danube, a plan however that unravels before it even takes shape. Dorotheea Petre was awarded Best Actress by the Un Certain Regard jury.
Tajik director Jamshed Usmanov, internationally known for his folksy Flight of the Bee (1998) and Angel on the Right (2002), hit paydirt again with Bihist faqat baroi murdagon (To Get to Heaven You First Have to Die) (Tajikistan/France). A tongue-in-cheek voyeuristic tale about a lad who can’t make love to his young bride, the problem is partially resolved when his sophisticated city cousin decides to help. When the lad finally does hit it off with a married woman at a factory, who should happen along but the irate husband with apparent links to the local mafia. Deadpan humor keeps To Get to Heaven You First Have to Die moving along at a light pace with some neat dips and turns in the plot.
György Palfi’s Taxidermia, whose Hukkle (Hiccups) (2002) won him a trip to Sundance, shared top award honors at the Budapest Festival of Hungarian Films last February. Set in three political time periods – the Second World War, the Communist dictatorship, and present-day capitalist Hungary – the title refers to the surprising taxidermist finale of a weird grandfather-father-son relationship. Partly horrorific, occasionally pornographic, uncomfortably violent, and completely crazy from beginning to end, Taxidermia begs description – indeed, it is as unorthodox as it is perverse.
Directors Fortnight
Hajdu Szabolcs’s Feher tenyer (White Palms) (Hungary/Canada), awarded the other half of the Gene Moskowitz Prize at the Budapest Festival of Hungarian Films, is a scrutinizing portrait of methods for training young gymnasts for the Olympics. Drawing on autobiographical experiences and factual material to weigh the pros and cons of subjugating promising teenage athletes to rigorous training methods that leave scars long into adulthood, the film comes alive during the flashbacks to a time when a sensitive lad is terrorized by a sadistic trainer. Even his parents fall under his spell, who only think of the fame of a prodigy showered upon themselves as well. Some years later, after a career-ending accident, the one-time prodigy is training youths in Canada for an international tournament. His methods, at the start, are not much different than those he suffered under in his youth. So, one wonders, what’s the point of the film?
Corneliu Porumboliu’s written-and-directed A fost sau n-a fost? (12:08 East of Bucharest, aka Did It Happen or Not? in direct translation) (Romania) was one of the discoveries of the Cannes festival. It’s December 22 in a small Romanian town east of Bucharest, and 16 years have passed since the “revolution” that dispensed with Ceausescu. For the anniversary the head of a local TV station decides to invite two discussion partners to find out where they were during the uprising, and whether or not they had participated in the protests on that early afternoon before the city hall. One is a history teacher who drinks too much, the other is a lonely retiree who is planning to play Santa Claus for the neighborhood kids. The fun begins when proand-contra phone calls come pouring in to confuse the memory lesson all the more. A political spoof with unexpected humorous twists, 12:08 East of Bucharest deserves a long festival run.
An angry feature-length cartoon, Anders Morgenthaler’s Princess (Denmark), was the talk of the upbeat Directors Fortnight. Reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (USA, 1976), the loose gun in this case is a missionary priest who returns home to look after the 5-year-old daughter of his deceased sister, a porn star, known in the profession as “The Princess,” who died of drug abuse. Upon realizing that the little girl has already been abused by her foster parents, the ex-monk decides to wreak revenge by destroying all the porn films his sister starred in. He begins by issuing a warning to the Paradise Lost porno company, then resorts to violence when his threats go unheeded. Princess, budgeted at a reported $1.2 million, was inspired by Japanese anime productions. On thematic material alone, it also deserves a long festival run.
Stefan Krohmer’s Sommer ’04 an der Schlei (Summer ’04) (Germany), scripted by Daniel Nocke, reunites the writer-director team that scored with Sie haben Knut (They’ve Got Knut) (2003), a satire about apolitical “revolutionaries” set in the loose-living 1980s at an Austrian ski-lodge. This time, the resort is a sailing paradise on the Schei River in northern Germany where it empties into the Baltic Sea. The entourage embraces a sexually liberated couple who are joined at their vacation idyll by their 15-year-old son and his 12-year-old Lolita girlfriend. As if that is not enough to make a few marital waves, along comes a young handsome sailing lothario, who apparently is looking for some tender companionship too. Martina Gedeck, as the distraught 40-year-old mother, gives a fine performance as a woman caught between her errant emotions and her shaken sense of responsibility. The summer vacation ends on a tragic note.
Two thrillers were plugged with advertising largesse in the Directors Fortnight. Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (South Korea) is an $11-million-dollar science-fiction thriller about a Loch-Ness-style sea monster that terrorizes the good people of Seoul on the Han River during a torrid summer heat spell. The special effects alone are said to cost $4.5 million. Result: a monster half as scary as the Great White Shark and somewhat comical with his whip-around tail. It’s the efforts of a half-witted family to defeat “the host” that makes for suspenseful entertainment. By contrast, Bill Friedkin’s Bug (USA), a psycho-thriller set in a motel room, explores the limits of paranoia. It begins when a mysterious stranger spots a tiny bug in the lady-friend’s bed that may or may not be part of an evil military experiment. Soon the bug is magnified into weird connotations of attacks upon the persona, dragging both parties into a maelstrom of delirium. Bug, marking the return of Hollywood veteran Bill Friedkin to Cannes, was voted a FIPRESCI International Critics Award.
Week of the Critics
Matthias Luthardt’s Pingpong (Germany) drew some warranted attention as one of the two German entries across the board at Cannes. A coming-of-age story, it depicts the pain of an angry 16-year-old after the suicide of his father. Sent to live with relatives in eastern Germany, he feels more isolated than ever. But it is summer, and sexual urges can find an avenue of release when the youngster encounters a mature woman with yens of her own. A give-and-take game of pingpong with all the members of the family begins.
Agnes Kocsis’s Fresh Air (Hungary), awarded last February the Sandor Simo Prize for Best Debut Feature at the Budapest Festival of Hungarian Films, proved to be a hit in the Week of the Critics as well. The story of a fragile relationship between a mother and daughter, their obsessive daily rituals in a crowded but tidy apartment eventually drive both to rebellion although they seldom talk to each other. The mother, who works during the day cleaning subway toilets, is scorned by her daughter for the lavatory odors she brings home with her, simply because the former is forever scrubbing her body while the latter flaunts her desire to become a fashion-designer. What unites them is a mutual liking for an Italian TV crime series. And, in the end, Agnes Kocsis hints that there is no way out of their shared crises except living together and making the best of it.
Tous les cinémas du monde
Launched last year to accommodate overlooked films from seven national cinematographies, the nod in All the Cinemas of the World this time around went to Russia, Israel, Singapore, Switzerland, Venezuela, Tunisia, and Chile. Cineastes with a yen for Russian cinema could catch Alexei Uchitel’s art film Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (Dreaming of Space), awarded at Moscow last year, and Fyodor Bondarchuk’s war actioner 9 rota (The Ninth Company), the biggest box office success of the past season.
And if you’ve never seen a film from Singapore, there was a modest collection of shorts and features on display, including Jack Neo’s light comedy I Am Not Stupid Too. At the same time, a prominently located Singapore stand was magnanimously supported by government officials. Why they don’t invest in their own internationally recognized Singapore International Film Festival under the enlightened leadership of Philip Cheah and his team, is another question altogether. Are their cultural leaders that afraid of quality festival cinema?