French Riviera Travel News

Archive for the ‘Cannes 2009’ Category

Once upon a time the French had a major beef with Disney, grousing about cultural imperialism and the like. No more. For the first time ever an animated 3D film by Disney has taken the prized opening ceremony slot at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is UP, an adventure story about a 78-year-old who flies to South America on balloons only to discover that he has a 9-year-old stowaway.

The film is the brainchild of John Lassetter who has directed or produced such monster hits as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Wall-E.

UP will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 13 and will open in the US and France soon after.

The weather was just right for Cannes: warm, sunny and slightly humid. The paparazzi staked out territory with chairs and umbrellas along La Croisette, waiting for tonight’s opening night ceremony when Jury president Isabelle Huppert and other stars make their way up the red carpet.

Paparazzi along La Croisette during the Festival

The atmosphere seemed more subdued than previous years.  I was surprised that the afternoon press screening for the hotly awaited opening night film, Peter Docter’s Up, was rather sparsely attended. I expected a crowd of journalists eager to see whether the first animated feature to open the festival deserved it honored position.

Not just animated, but also shot in digital 3D, this Pixar production clearly aims to point the way to a new cinematic era and the Cannes Festival is read for it. Maybe.

I hope the technical team has better luck than the one handling another 3D screening today. The premiere of Richard Gabai’s Call of the Wild had to be postponed after the projectionist gave up trying to make the equipment work.

Only modest boats dot Cannes bay; the mega-yachts have yet to arrive

Read more about the Cannes Film Festival.

See trailers from the Official Selection.

Under partly cloudy skies, the Cannes Film Festival opened the Un Certain Regard section of the Official Selection (see more on the organization of the Cannes Film Festival)

The second showing of the day was the Japanese director’s Hirokazu Koreeda’s film “Air Doll”. I read an article a few years ago about lonely men who buy blowup dolls for sex and, yes, companionship. Perhaps Hirokazu read the same article because the film uses that conceit as a springboard for a film that explores the many shades of loneliness. The “air doll” in question first serves as a quiet listener and sex toy before coming to life. She takes a job in a video store (a good opportunity for insider film jokes) before falling in love with the other video clerk.

It sounds dumber than it is. Beautifully filmed and well-acted the movie nevertheless clocks in at 125 minutes, about 35 minutes more than it should. Cut! Cut! Cut! I somehow imagine a dozen film pros screaming at the director to shorten it but he can’t bear to part with even one of his languidly unfolding scenes.

Still, it’s a strong entry and the film deserves an audience.

If the Cannes Film Festival has an (unofficial) theme this year it would be Woman. “The eternal feminine is at the centre of our cinema adventure” says the Official Catalog.  And so, the striking poster based on a scene from Antonioni’s L’Avventura:

And so, jury President, Isabelle Huppert. And even more significantly, a more than token representation of women directors are competing for the Palme d’Or; oldtimer Jane Campion is up against newcomers Andrea Arnold and Isabelle Coixet. See the line-up of competition films this year.

While some contemporary directors confuse actresses with porn stars and doll up prostitutes with pretension (I’m talkin’ to you, Soderbergh, and your “Girlfriend Experience”), it wasn’t always that way. Cleverer directors have found a universality in the female experience.

In 1948 directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger cast Moira Shearer as a driven but conflicted ballet dancer in “Red Shoes”. The Svengali-like director that made Shearer’s character a star dancer insists that marriage is the artistic death of all ballerinas. Yet she falls in love with the company’s conductor. Which will she choose: art or love?

“Red Shoes” stunned the audience at the Debussy Theatre, Friday night. Director Martin Scorcese introduced the film that has just undergone an extraordinary restoration, largely as a result of Mr. Scorcese’s long love affair with the film and friendship with the directors. It was all there just as Powell and Pressburger intended. The 17-minute ballet-within-a-ballet unfolded in a flood of color and movement, undoubtedly the finest ballet sequence ever to be captured on film. There were scenes filmed on the French Riviera over 60 years ago when the Basse Corniche was a dirt track!

In addition to the visual experience, the film poses the question that has bedeviled artists probably since the cave paintings of Lascaux: to what extent does the drive to create exclude a fulfilling personal life? Several years ago, Martin Scorcese gave a Master Class at Cannes and alluded to the toll his career has taken on his personal life (five marriages). One can only imagine the difficulties a woman director faces in trying to get a film project off the ground while keeping a domestic life going.

Near the end of “Red Shoes”  Moira Shearer’s character considers a return to dance against the will of her husband who seems to find marriage to a star ballerina unthinkable.  Lermontov, her company director, tries to persuade her to return saying,  “But you didn’t ask Julian [her husband] to choose between you and his career” “I would never ask him to make such a choice!” she cries. “Then why can he ask you?”

Good question.