Director Pablo Trapero scored a home run with the first of two Argentine films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this year. “Leonera” (Lion’s Den) put a believable, complex character into harrowing circumstances and made sure that the audience stayed on her side. The film opens with a blood-spattered Julia waking up in an apartment that has become a crime scene. Soon thereafter, she’s hustled off to prison where she eventually gives birth to a son. Is she guilty? We’re not sure. The film’s ambiguity avoids a simplistic “Innocents Behind Bars”  message movie. Her jailhouse life is credible without trying to be a sociological study and her ultimate redemption (through her child, of course) manages to be gently surprising. Tighter editing would have helped the film’s pace which drags at times but the performances are always compelling. … Continue reading →

The 61st Cannes Film Festival, led by jury president Sean Penn, is starting to shape up. Does it seem very last minute for a festival starting in three weeks? It is. This year more than any other was marked by last minute crises over if and when certain films would be finished. Clint Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh contributed to the suspense; their entries were confirmed only hours before the announcement yesterday. And we still don’t know which films will be opening and closing the festival! Here’s the list of the films in competition: “Uç Maymun” (The Three Monkeys): Turkey: Nuri Bilge Ceylan “Le silence de Lorna”: Belgium: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne “Changeling”: USA: Clint Eastwood “Un Conte de Noel”: France: Arnaud Desplechin “Adoration”: Canada: Atom Egoyan “Waltz with Bashir”/ Israel: Ari Folman “La Frontiere de l’Aube”: France: Philippe Garrel “Gomorra”: Italy: Matteo Garrone “24 City”: China: Jia Zhangke “Synecdoche, New York”: USA: Charlie Kaufman “My Magic”: Singapore: Eric Khoo “L Mujer sin Cabeza”: Argentina: Lucrecia Martel “Serbis”: Philippines: Brillante Mendoza “Delta”: Hungary: Kornel Mundruczo Linha de Passe”: Brazil: Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas “Che”: USA: Steven Soderbergh Il Divo” : Italy: Paolo Sorrentino “Leonera”: Argentina: Pablo Trapero “The Palermo Shooting”: Germany: Wim Wenders Stay tuned for more news about the festival including my secret advice for seeing festival films without a badge. And it’s legal! See more about visiting Cannes, France.