After the brief joy of actually being able to get a table for (a horrendously overpriced) dinner on the Croisette, Cannes is now overflowing with industry types and interlopers, all keen to get within caressing distance of poor Lupita. Last night saw the official opening ceremony which brought out all of the stars along with their obsessive snappers.
Now that the screenings are here, it’s a case of tactical scheduling. While it’s important to see the shoo-ins, it’s also worth checking out the oddities. Cannes audiences are a vocal lot, known for booing films as varied as Terrence Malick’s divisive The Tree of Life and Quentin Tarantino’s Palme d’Or-winning Pulp Fiction, and we’ve already heard them loudly jeer, shout and leave dramatically. No boos yet but boowatch is in place. Updates to come.
The big film
Last night’s big press screening was for Tale of Tales, Matteo Garrone’s pitch black portmanteau of fairytales which sees the Italian director of Gomorrah and Reality take a drastic shift in tone. The film features a variety of fever-dream craziness, from Salma Hayek eating the heart of a sea monster to Vincent Cassel having sex with an old hag to Toby Jones keeping a giant flea as a pet.
While it might have seemed like just a curio to some (including members of our team – Henry Barnes called it “a knackering load of old toot”), others raved, such as Peter Bradshaw who awarded it five stars, calling it “fabulous in every sense”. The general consensus was thumbs up, with a few reservations:
TALE OF TALES (B-) Apparent moral: only one woman may be happy at a time. Transporting at best, toe-curling at worst, never dull in between.
— Guy Lodge (@GuyLodge) May 13, 2015
TALE OF TALES: Garrone's INTO THE WOODS, only vastly better shot. Less perverse than expected, but quite entrancing. #Cannes15
— Justin Chang (@JustinCChang) May 13, 2015
The Tale of Tales (Garrone): Pasolini does Monty Python and the Holy Grail, ish? Funny, troubling & bubblingly strange. Loved it #Cannes2015
— Robbie Collin (@robbiereviews) May 13, 2015
At this morning’s press conference, the truth behind Salma Hayek’s gruesome and much-discussed heart-eating scene came out ...
“The heart tasted disgusting,” said Hayek. “He [Garrone] wanted it to look exactly like a real heart inside, so a doctor would recognise what I was eating. It was [made of] pasta, candy – all kinds of disgusting things. I was gagging”.
At the moment, it’s the most nuts film of the festival but Yorgos Lanthimos’ romantic drama The Lobster might steal that title away very soon ...
The opening ceremony
The reviews for Catherine Deneuve’s social drama Standing Tall, aka La Tête Haute, have been muted, including three stars from Peter Bradshaw, so last night’s big premiere was more abut the wide range of A-listers in attendance than, you know, the film and that. Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Watts and jury members Jake Gyllenhaal and Sienna Miller were some of the biggest stars pouting on the red carpet.
While yes, the parade of beautifully dressed stars was a big deal, we got to enjoy a shit ton of FIREWORKS from our flat (a Rust and Bone-recalling singsong of Katy Perry’s Firework happened straight after).
The pleasant surprises
Outside of the competition, two excellent new films also impressed us over the last 24 hours. Yesterday Peter Bradshaw went to see the soft-hearted yet utterly charming Our Little Sister, which he gave four stars, and called “swooningly lovely”. It’s the new film from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda and tells the story of the relationship between three adult sisters, with a surprising lack of conflict. It’s just been picked up for release in the US by Sony Pictures Classics, suggesting a possible breakout hit.
This morning, Andrew Pulver enjoyed The Anarchists, a French police-infiltration thriller, which he also gave four stars, and called “vastly entertaining”. It stars Adèle Exarchopoulos and Tahar Rahim as anarchist and undercover cop in turn of the century Paris.
The jury
Yesterday also saw the press conference to introduce this year’s starry jury, who revealed a number of interesting tidbits, in-between the standard “excited just to be here” babble. The Coens confessed to having little interest in TV with Ethan saying he hasn’t watched it in decades, Guillermo del Toro joked that he was only allowed on the jury because he’d lost some weight while lolster Jake Gyllenhaal claimed he will watch all of the films with his eyes closed! What a lot.
The (lack of) parties
Following on from a set of films that is noticeably edging away from some of the glitzier choices in recent years, this year’s festival is also cutting down on the infamous parties that its traditionally been known for. Vanity Fair, who usually plot an extravagant Cannes bash, has decided not to bother this year, Lionsgate, who has become known for its annual Hunger Games shindigs, has also stepped aside while tonight’s big Mad Max: Fury Road screening is being followed by “a dinner party” which, unless you happen to be sitting in-between Hardy and Theron, sounds not mad whatsoever.
The big ticket is set to be Calvin Klein’s Women in Film party which always attracts the crowds and given the high caliber of female acting talent in attendance this year (Watts! Nyong’o! Blanchett! Moore!), expect it to be a big headline-grabber. But with just 200 names on the list, the intimate villa setting will be difficult to crash.
The selfie ban rule-breaker
Momento #selfie per @salmahayek dopo la #conferenzastampa di #IlRaccontoDeiRacconti ed è subito #social #TaleOfTales pic.twitter.com/TeJZPZMjxW
— 01Distribution (@01Distribution) May 14, 2015
Ever since festival head Thierry Frémaux banned selfies on the red carpet, we’ve been waiting impatiently for a star to ignore said rule and let narcissism take over. The first one to be on Frémaux’s merde list? Salma Hayek, who used this morning’s Tale of Tales press conference to take an ambitious selfie with a group of anarchist journos. Her punishment awaits.
The growing buzz
A film that’s suddenly being talked about an awful lot is actually one not showing in the festival but in the market (see below for what that actually means). An Open Secret has been billed as the film “Hollywood doesn’t want you to see”, which might make it a tough sell for distributors. It’s a documentary about sexual abuse in the film industry and it made headlines today after cuts were made to remove references to certain Hollywood heavyweights. More on this one later in the festival.
The “wait, what?” film
As well as the more publicised side to Cannes, where hand-picked international films are screened, there’s also a somewhat murkier underbelly known as Le Marché du Film. It’s the world’s biggest sales market for distributors to snap up films, which range from the buzzy (Whiplash director Damien Chazzelle’s musical La La Land) to the scuzzy (10 Days in a Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story starring Christopher Lambert and Kelly Le Brock).
Yesterday, we spotted a digitally overhauled John Travolta on the front of Variety for I Am Wrath, a Taken-aping thriller where he plays a man avenging his wife’s murder. The nightmare-giving poster is alarming for a number of reasons: firstly, the film has only just started production (promoting films this early at the market is common practice), secondly, it looks a hell of a lot like this Jack Reacher poster and thirdly, who is wearing that John Travolta mask/wig? More oddities to come ...
The brutal poster
Sucks to be Christophe Lambert #brutalcannesposters pic.twitter.com/XWCd8k8rQH
— catherine shoard (@catherineshoard) May 13, 2015
The future
Tomorrow sees the first screening of the previously mentioned drama The Lobster, which is set in a world where single people must find a soulmate within a certain amount of time or they get transformed into a wild animal of their choice. It stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C Reilly. Tomorrow also sees the first official screening of Irrational Man, Woody Allen’s latest which stars Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone.
That’s all for today as we have more films to casually judge and more selfie-taking stars to name and shame. See you tomorrow.
- This article was amended on Thursday 14 May 2015. We mistakenly mentioned that Birth was booed at Cannes when actually it was Venice. This has been corrected.
