AN INTERVIEW WITH “SHIT YEAR”‘S CAM ARCHER

By Scott Macaulay

This post was originally published when Shit Year premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. The film opens today at the IFC Center.

It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set of her last film. In an eerily composed performance, Barkin projects the steely emotional control of a woman determined not to descend into the full-blown sadness that seems just a beat away. It’s a performance that reminded me a bit of Tuesday Weld’s similarly dazed heroine in Frank Perry’s under-seen adaptation of Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays. Both films — along with more recent work like David Lynch’s Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive — view Hollywood more as a corrosive mental state than an actual place.

But the film is also about other things that exist beyond the outlines of its plot and its often dead-on dialogue. What those other things are, however, is up to you. Freeing himself of the melodramatic conventions of the midlife crisis movie, or the Hollywood cautionary tale, Archer, shooting in beautiful black-and-white with his usual cinematographer, Aaron Platt, has captured a state that we all pass through at some point in our lives, a time in which the outside world recedes and all we are left with is what’s inside of us — and, perhaps, the company of an exotic space alien (played here by Theresa Randle) who would like to know just what it is that makes us tick.

I spoke with Archer for a few minutes at the American Pavilion in Cannes.

Filmmaker: What … Read the rest

CANNES COVERAGE, CAM ARCHER INTERVIEW NEW ON THE SITE

By Scott Macaulay

With both our “25 New Faces” feature and the IFP’s Narrative Lab coming up, I’ve been kind of backlogged here on the blog. But, I just posted a couple of things: first, Livia Bloom’s recap of Cannes in our Festival Coverage section, and then my interview with Shit Year director Cam Archer, conducted in Cannes after the premiere of his film in the Director’s Fortnight section. And, in a separate post, Bloom wonders why there were not any female directors in Competition in Cannes this year. You can check them out at the links.… Read the rest

“SHIT YEAR” DIRECTOR CAM ARCHER AT CANNES |
By Scott Macaulay

It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set of her last film. In an eerily composed performance, Barkin projects the steely emotional control of a woman determined not to descend into the full-blown sadness that seems just a beat away. It’s a performance that reminded me a bit of Tuesday Weld’s similarly dazed heroine in Frank Perry’s under-seen adaptation of Joan Didion’s Play it as it Lays. Both films — along with more recent work like David Lynch’s Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive — view Hollywood more as a corrosive mental state than an actual place.

But the film is also about other things that exist beyond the outlines of its plot and its often dead-on dialogue. What those other things are, however, is up to you. Freeing himself of the melodramatic conventions of the midlife crisis movie, or the Hollywood cautionary tale, Archer, shooting in beautiful black-and-white with his usual cinematographer, Aaron Platt, has captured a state that we all pass through at some point in our lives, a time in which the outside world recedes and all we are left with is what’s inside of us — and, perhaps, the company of an exotic space alien (played here by Theresa Randle) who would like to know just what it is that makes us tick.

I spoke with Archer for a few minutes at the American Pavilion in Cannes.

Filmmaker: What were the origins of Shit Year?

Archer: After making Wild Tigers I Have Known, the first [movie], I started to feel disenchanted … Read the rest

DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT SLATE ANNOUNCED

Earlier today Cannes unveiled the 24 films selected for its annual sidebar, Directors’ Fortnight. Opening this year with Renaud Barret & Florent de la Tullaye’s documentary Benda Bilili!, the line-up is dominated by first-time filmmakers, 11 in all. One American standout is Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known) who will be screening his latest, Shit Year, starring Ellen Barkin.

Fortnight will take place May 13-23.

Full list of titles below.

FEATURE FILMS
Alegria (Joy), directed by Marina Méliande et Felipe Braganca (Brazil)
All Good Children, directed by Alicia Duffy (UK)
Alting bliver godt igen (Everything Will Be Fine), directed by Christoffer Boe (Denmark-Sweden-France)
Año bisiesto, directed by Michael Rowe (Mexico)
Benda Bilili!, directed by Renaud Barret & Florent de la Tullaye (France) (documentary)
La Casa muda (The Silent House), directed by Gustavo Hernandez (Uruguay)
Cleveland vs. Wall Street, directed by Jean-Stéphane Bron (Switzerland – France) (documentary)
“Des Filles en noir,” directed by Jean-Paul Civeyrac (France)
Ha’Meshotet (The Wanderer), directed by Avishai Sivan (Israel)
Illégal, directed by Olivier Masset-Depasse (Belgium-Luxembourg-France)
The Light Thief, directed by Aktan Arym Kubat (Kyrgyzistan)
Little Baby Jesus of Flandr, directed by Gust Vandenberghe (Belgium)
La Mirada invisible (The Invisible Eye), directed by Diego Lerman (Argentina-France-Spain)
Picco, directed by Philip Koch (Germany)
Pieds nus sur les limaces (Lily Sometimes), directed by Fabienne Berthaud (France)
Le Quattro volte, directed by Michelangelo Frammartino (Italy-Germany-Switzerland)
Shit Year, directed by Cam Archer (U.S.)
Somos lo que hay (We Are What We Are), directed by Jorge Michel Grau (Mexico)
Tiger Factory, directed by Woo Ming jin (Malaysia)
Todos vós sodes capitáns, directed by Oliver Laxe (Spain)
Two Gates Of Sleep, directed by Alistair Banks Griffin (U.S.)
Un Poison violent, directed by Katell Quillevéré (France)

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Stones In Exile, directed by Stephen Kijak (U.K.) (documentary)
Boxing Gym, directed by Frederik Wiseman (U.S.A.) (documentary)

SHORT FILMS
Cautare (Quest), directed by Ionut Piturescu (Romania)
Ett tyst barn (A Silent Child), directed by Jesper Klevenas (Sweden)
Licht, directed by Andre Schreuders (The Netherlands)
Mary Last Seen, directed by Sean Durkin (U.S.A.)
Petit tailleur, directed by Louis Garrel … Read the rest