I never thought I'd hear myself say it but... I'm dying for a romantic comedy. Here I am at the Cannes film festival, lucky me, and I actually found myself emailing a couple of girlfriends back in London suggesting an outing to Sex and the City on my return (yes, even though I know the chances are it'll be a lot of drivel).
Why? Well, we've been lucky enough to see some very good films but, frankly, the effect on the mood has been deeply depressing. They have ranged in tone, I'd say, only from harrowing to plangently wistful. At the top end was Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas' Linha de Passe, which charts the attempts of four poverty-trapped brothers in Sao Paulo to escape their circumstances. It's a lovely film, actually - more Central Station than Motorcycle Diaries. But, as you might expect from a story set in some of Brazil's worst slums, not exactly the jolliest tale you've ever heard.
Then, on Friday night, there was Tyson, James Toback's fascinating documentary about the heavyweight. I'm no boxing fan though and I found Tyson's journey from bullied, brutalised kid to an immature world heavyweight champion to a convicted rapist fantastically hard to take: his childhood memories involved such cheering sentiments as, "I didn't have to worry anyone was going to bully me again... I knew I would fucking kill them if they fucked with me." And then there's the matter of his sexual politics. Of his ideal woman, he said: "I want to dominate her sexually... like a tiger watches his prey after he's wounded it." Right on, Mike.
The most gruelling pair of films, though, were Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman's accomplished animated documentary attempting to summon up lost memories of his time as a young soldier in the Israeli army during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982; and Hunger, Steve McQueen's debut feature, with rising star Michael Fassbender as an emaciated Bobby Sands during 1981's Maze Prison hunger strike. The latter film I watched through my hands, as scenes involving horrific beatings of inmates, thick daubs of excrement, piss-filled prison corridors charted Sands' grotesque decline into starvation. Folman's film was utterly harrowing too - you'll have to see it to realise exactly why. That said, it did have a wit and charm about it, and was at times very funny. Technically and aesthetically it was also a joy.
Even though Waltz left me speechless with horror as I left the cinema, in the long term there's still something essentially cheering to the spirit about having seen a really good movie.
