Cannes Film Festival | Cannes 2011 Special

Tuesday, 31st May 2011

Cannes 2011: Christophe Honoré interview

Beloved was the closing film of this year’s Cannes, and one that I really liked, being taken with many of the performances and smitten by the movie’s sheer boldness. Plus it can boast the presence of Catherine Deneuve, which is always an asset, never a flaw, for any motion picture. Towards the end of Cannes, I got the chance to speak to the director of Beloved, Christophe Honoré. Here’s what was said.

(0) replies

Beloved

Cannes (Closing Film) – Beloved is an all-star French musical which spans nearly half-a-century in its characters’ lives. Paul Martin is a perennially ill-tempered Englishman with a beaky conk and an ongoing feud with Islington council. This review is an account of what happened when they met.

(0) replies

Friday, 27th May 2011

Cannes 2011: Eric Khoo interview

Yes, I'm still hacking my way through the backlog of Cannes interviews. Trier and Miike down, Beloved director Christophe Honoré is due for Monday (and then some longer interviews I did with the cast and director of one particular movie, which will surface sometime in the not too dim-and-distant). But today is the turn of Eric Khoo, the man behind animated anthology Tatsumi, which played in Un Certain Regard.

(0) replies

Melancholia

Cannes (Official Selection) – It was one of the most talked-about films at Cannes 2011, with Kirsten Dunst carrying off the best actress award (as co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg did for Antichrist two years ago) and director von Trier banned for half of the festival. All the fuss is quite fitting, says Emma Rowley, for a film that sees the world end with a bang.

(0) replies

Le Havre

Cannes (Official Selection) – It flew under the judges' radar in Cannes and had neither controversy nor sex symbols on the red carpet to grab headlines but Le Havre is the hidden gem of the main competition, says Emma Rowley. No surprise, as it represented Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki's fourth nomination for the Palme D'Or.

(0) replies

Thursday, 26th May 2011

The Yellow Sea (The Murderer)

Cannes (Un Certain Regard) – The director of 2008's critically-acclaimed thriller The Chaser has reunited with leads Ha Jung-Woo and Kim Yun-Seok for his follow-up. This time around, drama segues effortlessly into an action pile-up, says an impressed Emma Rowley.

(0) replies

Code Blue

Cannes (Directors' Fortnight) – Urszula Antoniak's film, whose title references the hospital code for a patient in need of resuscitation, follows a lonely nurse who believes that death is sometimes the kindest treatment. The writer/director herself calls it “challenging”. Emma Rowley agrees.

(0) replies

Takashi Miike, director of Cannes 2011 contender Hara-Kiri - Death of a Samurai.

Cannes 2011: Takashi Miike interview

Hyper-prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike has become as permanent a fixture on the Euro film festival circuit as Ryan Giggs is fast turning into onto Twitter. And if the response for his Cannes 2011 offering, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, was more muted than that for 13 Assassins in Venice last autumn, then the chance to grab a few words with the man himself was still one I wasn't going to miss.

(0) replies

Wednesday, 25th May 2011

Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, starring Kevin Sorbo and Danny Trejo.

Trash Cannes: the sequel

Obviously, not every movie at Cannes is an artistic masterpiece. Heck, some real dreck even sneaks its way into the main competitions (hi, Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty). But it's out in the Marché du Film, the movie marketplace, where the true cine-madness lurks. From Cupid Dog to Dino Mom, from Bong of the Dead to Dear Friend Hitler..., come with me on a trip into the deranged realm of the Trash Cannes.

(0) replies

Tuesday, 24th May 2011

Joachim Trier, director of Reprise and now Oslo, August 31st.

Cannes 2011: Joachim Trier interview

I am now back in London following the finale of this year's Cannes Film Festival, and also following a hellish flight home on a plane that appeared to have been purchased for a suitcase full of cash from a Chechen warlord. But I'll still be posting Cannes-y material this week, as I've a plethora of interviews that I didn't have time to write up while at the festival. First up is Norwegian director Joachim Trier.

(0) replies

Monday, 23rd May 2011

Heaven on a beach

Not wishing to be too spoiler-tastic, but anyone reading this who has seen one particular movie at Cannes 2011 will understand to what the title of this blog refers. For anyone else, simply suffice to say that a baffled consideration of sea and sand culture from a unrelentingly pale and pasty Englishman is what lies at the heart of this final blog post from the bestest film festival in the whole of France-land.

(0) replies

Day 12: Sunday, 22nd May 2011

Cannes 2011 awards

The 2011 Cannes film festival has just wrapped up and the Croisette is filled with the sound of (drunken) revelling. We've just come out of the press conferences for the jury and prize winners, which followed hot on the heels of the awards ceremony. Below, we've got the list of winners and some comments from the jury.

(0) replies

This Must be the Place

Cannes (Official Selection) – We've all seen the on-set pics of Sean Penn looking like an overgrown goth, now we finally get the chance to run the rule over Paolo Sorrentino's English-language debut. We, in the latter case, meaning Paul Martin, 'cause he's the bloke that's reviewing it, like.

(0) replies

Day 11: Saturday, 21st May 2011

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Cannes (Official Selection) – Via his blood-spattered multitude of movies, director Takashi Miike has cut out more intestines than most over the years. Now he gets to do it in gloriously gory 3D. Paul Martin dons those silly little glasses. Again.

(0) replies

Keep on trucking – an interview with director Pablo Giorgelli: UPDATED

Cannes (Critics' Week) – Argentinian film Las acacias is the debut feature from director Pablo Giorgelli. charting a lonely truck driver's trip from Paraguay to Buenos Aires with a mother and child as passengers. Giorgelli snagged two of the Critics' Week prizes (the ACID/CCAS support award and the Very Young Critics' Prize) as well as the prestigious Camera D'Or, for a first-time filmmaker across all categories. Earlier in the week, we interviewed Giorgelli, who explained how his protagonist's journey was a metaphor for his own.

(0) replies