Cannes double: Tender Son – The Frankenstein Project and Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs)

Cannes (Official Selection and Un Certain Regard) - A pair of movies from the two primary competitions at Cannes, both featuring filmmaker characters played by their directors, both being unconventional takes on outside source material, and both focusing on emotionally disturbed central characters. Paul Martin checks out a gloomy twosome.

Taking what is by far the superior of the two films first (though that is as much an indictment of the disastrous shortcomings of the other as it is a ringing endorsement of this one), Tender Son – The Frankenstein Project arrives courtesy of Hungarian director and actor Kornél Mundruczó. And this new movie represents the first occasion on which Mundruczó has stepped in front of his own cameras, as he takes on the role of Viktor. At least in terms of the character's profession, Viktor inhabits similar territory to Mundruczó himself, as a successful film director. Fresh off a stage adaptation of Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, he is in Budapest to cast his latest production, setting up auditions in a crumbling old building currently lived in by an old acquaintance (Lili Monori).

Now, before I proceed it should be noted that Tender Son features what is quite possibly the most abrupt shift in tone I have witnessed in a movie, switching from a broad comedy to a dark drama within barely the duration of a frame. Certain members of the audience in the screening I was present at seemed a tad confused, with one character death being greeted with applause from one viewer; this clapping in turn earned its own amused applause for its sheer inappropriateness.

Back to the story: as Viktor contends with the kind of comically useless auditionees that Simon Cowell's bank balance is built on, he spies a teenage boy who has wandered into the building off the streets, a long-faced youth who is as complete a portrait of woe as you could ever imagine. Eager to test the dramatic potential of his discovery, Viktor promptly sets him up in a staged love scene with Tünde, stepdaughter of the woman who welcomed the casting sessions into the building. Amusement follows as this miserable, seemingly misanthropic young men fends off every attempted amorous advance, to the point where he is effectively running away from a girl trying to kiss him. But then comes the jarring gear-change, as Tünde meets with an untimely end. As the snow falls, revelations emerge about the boy, Rudi, and how he came to be at the building in the first place.

Director Mundruczó and co-writer Yvette Bíró hand an 'inspired by' credit to Mary Shelley for her Frankenstein, their film being a contemporaneous re-telling of the tale of creator trying to control his lethal 'offspring'. Given this confessed debt to Shelley, it is fitting then that most of the events in Tender Son occur in an amazingly evocative gothic structure, equal parts beautiful and terminally decaying. Despite the bleakness of the scenario, the film actually looks rather wonderful, with credit due to DoP Mátyás Erdély, particular for some of the later scenes which take place in the stunning snowscapes of Austria.

It is certainly a less than perfect film that's a little sluggish in places. It is a grim affair too, with precious little cheer on offer – though there is tenderness in the bond forged between Rudi and Magda (Kitty Csíkos), a young girl who lives in the old building. And Rudi makes for an interesting central figure; an amoral force of nature, as fascinating and deadly as the whiteout of the Alpine blizzard.

Rating on a scale of 5 maniacal cries of “It's alive!!”: 3

Release date: TBC
Directed by: Kornél Mundruczó
Written by: Kornél Mundruczó, Yvette Bíró
Cast: Rudolf Frecska, Kornél Mundruczó, Lili Monori, Kitty Csíkos
Rating: TBC
Running time: 105 minutes

Fascinating is not a word anyone could ever be tempted to use to describe Lodge Kerrigan's Rebecca H. (Return to the Dogs). Not unless they are morbidly fascinated by how such a conceited streak of donkey tackle ever got made in the first place. When the sole redeeming aspect of a feature is that it lasts for a mere 71 minutes then you know you're neck deep in the doo-doo. As it transpires, every single 60-second block of Kerrigan's movie passes like an eternity, so crushingly tedious is the on-screen action.

The whole sorry mess starts with Rebecca Herry (Géraldine Pailhas), a Parisian woman obsessed with Grace Slick of '60s 'cisco chancers Jefferson Airplane (she also squawked out the Mannequin theme song, Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship, but the less said about that the better). Rebecca is plotting a move to Monterey with a view to becoming a singer in her own right, but her brother, Jérôme (Pascal Greggory), believes this dream is more rooted in fantasy than reality, and he expresses concern about her mental state.

From that beginning we move to a sequence featuring Kerrigan, Greggory and Pailhas as themselves, at a press conference discussing a proposed Slick biopic entitled Somebody to Love. After the conference is over, Pailhas makes a personal confession to Greggory. The film then takes another step back; the Pailhas and Greggory who just conversed are revealed as fictionalised versions of the acting duo. Kerrigan steps in and advises his performers, before the confession scene, or bits of it, are redone a further three times. How frightfully postmodern. How frightfully pretentious.

The film proceeds to switch between Pailhas and the character of Herry, the brief running time being wastefully gobbled up by interminable scenes of the actress wandering around with no discernible direction and for no discernible reason. The longest of these one-take follies concludes with the camera stopping and Pailhas simply wandering off out of shot; the only reasonable conclusion being that the cameraman has nodded off due to monumental boredom.

I have to say I thought this argument had been fought and lost nearly 40 years ago, the notion that “I am an artist, therefore anything I create is therefore both art and immensely interesting” (which resulted in a fantastic amount of unwatchable crap in the late '60s and early '70s) having been ultimately bested by the common sense directive which states your output should have at least one salient point of merit. That Kerrigan seems to have missed this memo is one thing, that the Cannes organisers have chosen to indulge his useless directorial doodlings is quite another. The only conclusion has to be that the footage included of Pailhas on the red carpet at the festival was a bit of promotion they couldn't resist trumpeting.

Rating on a scale of 5 white rabbits: 1

Release date: TBC
Directed by: Lodge Kerrigan
Written by: Lodge Kerrigan
Cast: Géraldine Pailhas, Pascal Greggory, Lodge Kerrigan
Rating: TBC
Running time: 71 minutes