So many films, so little time

Shorter entries for these next two days. In all of the chaos of getting the most out of the last few days of the festival, I have a) not had time to write (at least not anything but reviews for class) and 2) forgotten some of the smaller anecdotes about my days. The films, as always, are the most important part, and you’ve probably seen that my days follow generally the same patterns anyway: wake up, eat breakfast in/not in a café, take the train that’s running late…

Lauren

22 May 2007

I saw one of the worst and one of the best films of my life on my mother’s birthday. I got up not too early and added a bowl of half-eaten granola to the stack of dirty dishes in our sink before I headed to Cannes to see Death Proof. I know, “Why on earth would you do that? You HATE Quentin Tarantino!” I’ve always thought it’s important to know what you’re talking about, especially if you’re disagreeing with it, and I figured I might have some fun seeing the longer version of Death Proof before the obnoxious premiere later that night. And I hadn’t researched my options well enough to know if there was anything better to do that morning.

About the best I can say for the film is that it had a bitchin’ soundtrack. There’s never been any doubt for me that Tarantino has some talent behind the camera. The shots he creates can be gorgeous, and if he is ripping off other people’s material (which he is) he usually does it in a way that’s very entertaining. I did like Kill Bill, and I at least thought that Sam Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction was hilarious. But, for me, Death Proof could not do enough tricks to interest me in a dead story. All the violence and fast-talking that made his other films look edgy and fun were pointless with two sets of nearly identical, vapid characters and no payoff in the plot department. And I know that grindhouse films never had good plots or complex characters. That argument in Tarantino’s defense does not work for me. He has somehow conned most of my generation, and even the Cannes Film Festival for crying out loud, into thinking he’s an auteur of our times, a “good filmmaker.” He owes them a little more than a glammed-up piece of garbage. His saying that grindhouse films, and other sorts of admittedly fun trash, are “classics” is making people have bad taste, end of story.

Ugh! I had to cheer myself up with a bit of shopping before I came back to JLP to write a review. I wish I could talk about one of the fun stores I went in, but I got my sister a present there and it would totally give away my brilliant gift-getting skills! I did take another trip to FNAC, my new favorite place because of its relatively cheap, uncrowded café on the roof, and seeing the comic book of Persepolis on the shelf reminded me that I needed to see the film the next day. I also browsed through almost all of the little alleyways between the Palais and the Miramar, the Croisette and the train station—basically all of Cannes where the festival is taking place. BTW there aren’t a million Sephora stores like I thought. I think there are only two that take up a whole building floor apiece and have entries on two streets.

I cleaned up at my second-favorite begging corner near the merry-go-round and got into the premiere of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly with Samantha. We watched the red carpet scene on the big screen in the theater (air conditioning! a girl’s—and sweaty Frenchmen’s—best friend in the rising Mediterranean temps). The cast and director’s team released boxes and boxes of orange and blue butterflies before they came in the theater, and after one of the butterflies landed on an actress’s eyelash and refused to get off for a few minutes the director scooped it up and brought it inside, to the horror of the jumpy Lumiere usherettes. I felt sick for the first quarter of the movie because it was filmed from the main character’s perspective (if you haven’t heard about the film, it’s based on the book former Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote by blinking one eye, the only part of him not paralyzed by a stroke he had at age 42). Soon, as “Jean-Do” got used to his new lifestyle and decided to free himself from his “locked-in syndrome” through his imagination, the film expanded to encompass his memories and his beautiful perspective on the landscape around his hospital. Jean-Do’s perseverance alone was staggering, but the optimism of his therapists and stenographer, and especially the grief of his 92-year-old father, had me misty-eyed throughout the movie. I still cannot imagine what the incident was like for Jean-Do and his family, but the movie made me feel like I had lived it to the greatest extent that it could. The ovation afterwards lasted over 10 minutes, and even though my hands went numb I kept clapping louder and louder. Wonderful, wonderful movie that I hope will win the Palme d’Or and that everyone back in the States will get to see.

23 May 2007

Samantha and I had kept the plan under wraps, but we were going to go to Cap d’Antibes to snoop around the posh Hotel du Cap and hopefully see the diving board into the ocean, the poodle graveyard, and stars staying there (Brangelina and the cast of Ocean’s Thirteen, to name a few). However, I woke up feeling really sick! I took a very atypical nap an hour after I waking up, and after she’d walked a quarter of the way to the Cap and back we went into Cannes to get some McDonalds and get to begging for tickets.

I made a killing at my typical corner at the Palais when I hooked for tickets to the 4:00 pm show of Persepolis. You know how prostitutes in movies always have their own “turf” and get ticked when other people invade it? That’s me and my shaded corbeille/orchestra tent corner and all of the old French people who try to get tickets there without signs as cute as mine. I got my first ticket within ten minutes (record time!), and even though they usually seem to smell the first ticket on you and refuse to give you another one for awhile I snagged one for Chris as well. Samantha had procured one for herself at her own spot, and we got in with plenty of time to find center seats at the edge of the balcony for a perfect view of the only animated film in competition.

Persepolis has gotten a bit of press recently because Iran did not want Cannes to screen it. It’s about Paris-based author Marjane Satrapi’s experiences growing up in/leaving/returning to Iran in the 1970s and ‘80s, during all of the upheaval with the shah of Iran. Basically, Iran went from being relatively Westernized under an oppressive ruler to suddenly very religious (with women having to wear veils and everything) under an even more oppressive revolutionary regime. There was a lot of suffering, and while the film didn’t mince words on that front it was tempered by Satrapi’s cute sense of humor. The film perfectly matches up with her original comic book, and the young Marjane in the film was adorable! There was just as big of an ovation for this as there was for Diving Bell, and it was really touching to see how moved Satrapi was. It must be a profound thing to put your life before so many people and to have them embrace you like that. One of the voice actresses stuffed a jasmine flower down her shirt (an in-joke from the movie that I’ll let you enjoy when you see the film), and everyone was waving and shouting and reaching out to pat her on the back as she finally left the theater.

We went back to JLP to write some more and eat food that didn’t cost as much as all the designer clothes on the Croisette, but about half of the group went back for the movie on the beach. It was so nice and warm for most of the evening, but I stole a blanket anyway (ha!). We got there with time to spare and made a full UGA row, taking turns with each others’ passes to go out for food at the snack bar. The film was Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, a strange but very cool, semi-autobiographic film. Even though it didn’t have the title song in it to jazz it up a bit, I could see why it won the Palme d’Or. But with all of these weird choices showing up as past winners on the screen on the beach, what weird film will take the prize this year?