As the fest folds its tent, in this tepid market American distribs have failed to make a major buy. Last year, after all, Miramax bought
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for 3 million and
James Gray's We Own the Night brought 11.5 million. This year IFC went on a buying spree, picking up at least six titles. And last minute, SPC acquired two.
Overall, the fest has been a letdown, complete with bad weather, and a large helping of miserablist films depicting social and economic evils. Some good, solid films; no great, magical ones. On the plus side, the internationalism of Cannes enables you to see provocative auteurist works with subtitles that, given the crowded U.S. market, may never come stateside.
Delta by Hungarian
Kornel Mundruczo is a mesmerizing
Bela Tarr-esque fever dream of a brother-sister couple who build their own refuge in the middle of the insular area's shimmering waterways, only to be destroyed by the villagers' hostility toward their "unnatural" union. From the young Swedish filmmaker
Ruben Ostlund comes a provocation called
Involontaires. Stitching together a series of vignettes that eventually yield a thematic unity, the film portrays people who engage, for a variety of reasons, in games of coercion.
This year also saw the repeated use, or abuse of auteurist tics and smart-alecky mannerisms that should be rationed out or proscribed. They are:
Shooting from the waist, groin, or knees down
Protags with expressionless faces
Plots so subtly drawn you can't tell who did what to whom when or where
As for the human component to the festival, Cannes is like a microcosm of the larger society -- at least a snobby, elitist, royalist one -- in its strict stratification into castes. Apart from the celebs and mysterious money men who wag the tail of the festival, the working writers covering the event form their own non-porous sects. It's not about black/white, rich/poor, nice/shit, Christian/Jew -- it's about perceived status. The whole thing is so oppresive, I needed to fly home to rescusitate my self-esteem. One cocktail hour I'm gracing the Macedonian Film Fund blowout with my presence, segueing from gin to white wine, when a fellow writer confides he's found peace of mind by no longer aspring to mingle with the A-listers (the white badge crowd with bold face bylines). "It's as Aristotle said, People of like status want to hang out with each other. So I no longer try to have dinner with -- " He names a bold name. Now, my bona fides as a cynic are in good order, but I say, "What about if people just simply like each other? Regardless of "who" they are?" "No, it doesn't work that way," my friend insists. "Anyway, I'm just quoting Aristotle."
Aristotle? To me it sounds more like baboons. You out there -- what do you think?
# posted by Erica Abeel @ 5/24/2008 02:53:00 PM
Comments (1)
erica, you are awesome!
baboons for sure!
or insecure people who need to STILL
get their egos off in an outward way
instead of a conversational jazz dance
of ideas.
it is the money class thing you allude to . . .
people who have money can have power over people,
but they never know why people are really talking to them. Makes for some neurotic bullshit.
#
posted by @ 5/25/2008 2:48 PM
