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Cannes 2015: More Must-See Films From the Festival

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A Todd Haynes sandwich with Rooney Mara on the left, Cate Blanchett on the right

A Todd Haynes sandwich with Rooney Mara on the left, Cate Blanchett on the right

It’s never been easier to follow the Cannes Film Festival from the comfort of one’s couch. You can debate about whether that’s a good thing or not — but it’s certainly frugal. And, since I wrote a fun feature for Variety editor Carole Horst from this very well-worn spot in which I talked to Christine Vachon, who produced Carol with Elizabeth Karlsen about Vachon’s favorite Cannes eatery, I have skin in the game. About as much skin as can be found on the underside of a Barbie Band-Aid given to a child for dramatic effect for a skinned knee. Anyway, here are more films that have broken out, including Todd Haynes’ Carol.
Macbeth: Ever since I heard from Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard that she was starring in this William Shakespeare tragedy opposite Michael Fassbender — and directed by Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) — I’ve been desperate to see it. Now it’s out. Cotillard’s one of my favorite actresses and Fassbender’s easy on the eyes.

The Lobster: In a dystopian future beyond Match.com, singletons have 45 days to reconnect — or they are turned into animals. Greek Director Yorgos (Dogtooth) Lanthimos’ star-studded exploration of future love features Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, Lea Seydoux and John C. Reilly that was just picked up by Alchemy.  

Youth: Boos and bravos met Italian Director Paolo Sorrentino’s (2013’s La Grande Belleza) gorgeous English-language entry for the Palme d’Or. Michael Caine stars as a famous orchestra conductor contemplating aging in a posh mountain resort. Snapped up by Fox Searchlight for U.S. distribution, the drama also stars Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda, Rachel Weisz and Paul Dano.

Disorder (Maryland): Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust & Bone) stars as a French special forces operative with PTSD hired to protect a Lebanese businessman’s wife (Diane Kruger). Alice Winocour (Augustine) directs this home invasion thriller that has been picked up by Sundance Selects.

Hot bodies in motion: Kruger seeks Schoenaerts' protection

Hot bodies in motion: Kruger seeks Schoenaerts’ protection

Mon Roi: The great Vincent Cassel (Black Swan, A Dangerous Method), who I interviewed for Huffington Post in 2010, and Emmanuelle Bercot (Polisse, Carlos) chart the doomed path of their relationship and marriage without succumbing to good guy/bad guy tropes. (The one you love; the one you cannot keep.) What excites me is that it is directed and co-written by Maiwenn, who directed Polisse, in which she fully submerged herself in the muck of the Paris Child Protection Unit (and won a Cannes jury prize). If you’re curious about that film, check out my late column, Adams on Reel Women, with the editor Nina Hammerling Smith about that French procedural perfect for Law & Order junkies who love subtitles like I do. The You Tube trailer is in French but the charisma is universal:

Sicario: French Canadian director Denise Villeneuve (Incendies) returns with a drug cartel drama pairing Josh Brolin and Emily Blunt. (When Villeneuve’s last film, Prisoners, came out I talked to Jake Gyllenhaal about his role as a detective-with-demons for Yahoo Movies.) THR‘s Todd McCarthy wrote: “The violence of the inter-American drug trade has served as the backdrop for any number of films for more than three decades, but few have been as powerful and superbly made as Sicario.” The title means “hitman” in Cartel slang (and you’d have to kill me for me to reveal how I know that).

Blunt, Brolin, bullets

Blunt, Brolin, bullets

  Cemetery of Splendour: Already being hailed as a masterpiece by no less than the Film Society’s Dennis Lim, this is the first feature from the unspellable Thai Director Apitchatpong Weerasethakul. He won the Palmes d’Or in 2010 for Uncle Boommee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That movie, which I caught up with at the Dubai International Film Festival, felt like being charmed by a snake out of The Jungle Book, a fantastic out-of-body experience wedded to the completely ordinary. This film, just acquired by Strand Releasing, is about — as much as his films are “about” anything — nurses tending to soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness and the dreams, phantoms and spirits this kicks up in a swirl around them at the clinic.     Inside Out: Swimming against my own biases (and those warning voices in my head), I can’t ignore the mad praise for Pixar’s latest from Pete Docter (Up), which premiered at Cannes to, yes, cheers. According to The Wrap’s Steve Pond: “[Docter] has figured out how to pull off a daunting concept, and in the process made a movie as thematically daring as it is emotionally moving.” With Amy Poehler, Mindy Kalling and Bill Hader among the vocal talent, this story of a young woman jousting with her (very vocal) emotions following a move from the Midwest to San Francisco lacks a single Kraft-cheese colored Minion. And for that I’m thankful.   [Read more…]

Adams on Reel Women: Maiwenn Pulls no Punches in ‘Polisse’

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Maiwenn: They're no 'Charlie's Angels' (by Sundance Selects)


Americans want the French with baguettes and berets,” the actress-writer-director Julie Delpy (“Before Sunrise”) told me last month, “The way French people handle sexuality is too controversial for American audiences.” That remark resonated when I watched actress-writer-director Maiwenn submerge herself in the sordid world of the Paris Child Protection Unit. Maiwenn’s ripped-from-the-headlines drama, “Polisse” — a movie that won last year’s jury prize at Cannes — should appeal to anyone needing a “Law & Order” fix. Call it “Paris: SVU.”

[Related: Indie Roundup: ‘Intouchables’ and ‘Polisse’]

Maiwenn plays a supporting role in the ensemble as Melissa, a disaffected upper-class photographer (“I only eat organic”) and mother who becomes intoxicated by the police unit’s urgency. As the officers under her lens confront pedophilia, rape, and child abuse in ethnically diverse Belleville, Melissa loses her objective distance, drawn to an angry but righteous cop named Fred (Joey Starr), who has a wife and kid at home.

Like “Law & Order: SVU,” the movie shifts between the domestic disturbances in the officers’ private lives and the domestic abuse the police confront on a daily basis — and how this screws with their heads. The cases overlap as if they were a season of the TV series compressed into one night: A junkie mother steals back her own baby, another uses sexual methods to put her infant boy to sleep, a grandfather pets his granddaughter’s “kitty cat,” and a male gym teacher instructs a young pupil in a different form of calisthenics in the dubious privacy of a bathroom stall.

One featured subplot follows the fractured work “marriage” of two partners, Nadine (Karin Viard) and Iris (Marina Fois). Nadine deals with her divorce at home; Iris tries to get pregnant while hiding bulimia. Meanwhile, on the job, their daily intimacy coping with unspeakable cases like that of a rape victim’s partial birth abortion of an unwanted fetus shows signs of strain. When their relationship finally implodes, the women sling intimate secrets along with work grievances as their colleagues try to separate them. The confrontation scene is unsparing: Women have their own ways to be crueler than a simple punch in the nose.

[Related: Adams on Reel Women: The Cannes Sex Scandal]

While Maiwenn pays significant attention to the inner lives of the policewomen, they exist within an ensemble where the bosses are male and equally oppressed by the human condition. This is no chick flick. The focus rests on women and men, some flawed, some sick, some smugly evil. And, perhaps, it’s that unspoken parity that makes “Polisse” more radical as a whole than, say, in an overt, telegraphing scene when an irate female police officer has a screaming fight with her male colleagues and yells, “A woman speaks out, and she’s a radical. F**k you!”

Using an existing form historically dominated by male storytellers, Maiwenn achieves a rich, challenging crime drama by dramatizing the storylines of men and women with equal urgency. By its very nature, the Paris CPU combines nurturing and policing — it has cops with a maternal side, treating the abused women and children of Belleville. And, having seen the absolute worst in people among Parisians, these officers look to each other to find the best. Sometimes, they even succeed.

See the trailer for ‘Polisse’: