French Newspaper Article

And the translation by Janina:

Meeting with an Enthusiast

There are meetings (or encounters) without importance, others that are unforgettable.  It is in the second category that it is necessary to classify this encounter that took place on the 7^th of May at the home of Colette Fauchié, a  passionate bicyclist.  She and her friend Yvon Mevel—an Alsatian who is by birth a Breton born in Oran, speaking in English— entertained a friend of Yvon, George Christensen, an American from Chicago, Illinois.  They were also joined René Cumer, President of the local bicycle club.

During the last 26 years George has rejected all of what makes up an ordinary life including the constraints, the compromises and the lure of gain. His studies as a journalist bored him. He discovered three passions: libraries, the cinema and the bicycle. He establishes his itineraries around these three things: thus to be at Cannes by the 14^th of May to see as many films as possible while camping near La Crosiette. After his arrival at Charles De Gaulle airport, he followed an indirect circuit to Cannes, which brought him to Degagnac (by chance via Tulle May 6!) to see his friend Yvon, and to pass by Graulhet later to see a memorial dedicated to Poulidor. He has promised to be on the Champs d’Elysseés for the arrival of the Tour de France.
 

In between? He will make a detour to Belgium to visit the memorial dedicated to Stan Okers, before attending the departure of the Tour de France at Liège.  Perhaps he will make a detour to the US where he gives university lectures about his travels, providing him his airfare and the 7 euros a day he spends on food which he carries  on his bike along with his tent and four panniers.

For each country he visits, his phenomenal memory allows him to remember the place where he slept (always outside), and the culinary specialties.  His preference is for Cassoulet, Cous-cous and Quiche Lorraines. His blog (which he writes every day in a library) is thrilling.

Cannes Day Twelve The Awards

Though Carlos Reygadas didn't win the Palm d'Or, he won the next best thing, the best director award, an award that often goes to the best film from a divided jury.  This jury wasn't brave enough to go that far and went with the very safe choice of Hanake's "Amour," a very average film that any film-maker could have made. Reygadas could have been given the best director award here for his second film "Battle in Heaven" seven years ago, but he was too young and unknown for that jury to make such a choice.  But this nine-person jersey, spearheaded by three most accomplished directors, Nanni Moretti, Alexander Payne and Andrea Arnold, clearly recognized the brilliance of  "Post Tenebras Lux," the most distinguished directing of any of the films here.

Both Ralph and I watched it for a second  time earlier in the day and appreciated it even more.  It is a film that isn't so easy to piece together on the first viewing, though one can't help but be impressed by its great cinematic flair.  There is much more of a narrative to the film than we had at first detected.  And we will both be happy to see it again, hopefully at Telluride over Labor Day weekend.

It seems as if no jury at Cannes can get all seven of the awards it doles out right.  There is always at least one big surprise.  At first it looked as if it was going to be giving Ken Loach's "Angels Share" the Jury Prize for the third best film, the first award given out.  Although it is a fine film, it has little of Loach's usual social commentary and is little more than light entertainment. It is very unusual for a jury to give such a film an award. 

There were a handful of other equally entertaining films with much more substance and depth that could please multiplex audiences as well as those of the art house--"Rust and Bones," "Mud," and "Killing Them Softly," none of which were given awards.  The biggest surprise of those three was "Rust and Bones" being overlooked, especially with Emmanuelle Devos on the jury, who had starred in two of "Rust and Bones" director Jacques Audiard's films. "Rust and Bones" could have been given any of several awards--best actor, best actress, best screenplay or any of the three best films.

One can not deny jury favoritism. English actor Ewen McGregor no doubt pushed for Loach's film.  And Italian Morreti, president of the jury, no doubt had his way awarding the Italian feature "Reality" the Grand  Prix award for the second best film, a real shocker.  It certainly wasn't.  Its director Matteo Garrone was the beneficiary of similar  national favortism with his last film at Cannes, "Gomorrah," which also won the Grand Pruix.  There was a very strong-willed Italian director on that jury who saw to it that the two Italian films in Competition that year won awards, that and Sorrentino's "Il Divo." 

In the press conference after the award ceremony Payne was asked how he could overlook the seven films in Competition that had a North America influence, none of which won an award.  Payne shook his head in despair at the question, not wishing to accept the insinuation that he had a responsibility to award a film from his country.  National favoritism also is obvious in the reviews from "Screen" magazine's panel of ten international journalists.  The Brazilian was the only one to give fellow countryman Walter Salles's "On the Road" a four star review, with just about everyone else giving it two stars or less.  Lars Von Trier was similarly blessed with a four star review from the Danish representative a few years ago for  the much reviled "Antichrist," everyone else hating it.

Five of the seven award winners had all won previously at Cannes.  Only the best actor and actresses were first time winners, as is usually the case.   It was most thrilling to see the two young Romanian actresses from "Beyond the Hills" given the best actress award.  The jury really had to like that film to violate the taboo of giving a film two awards, as its director Cristian Mungiu was given the award for best screenplay as well.  It was the second award of the evening given out.  Mungiu was clearly disappointed in having to accept it, as he was hoping he had been invited back to the awards ceremony for another "Palm d'Or" to go along with his for "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days."  Pedro Almodovar had a similar reaction a few years ago with "Volver," another film that won for its cast of actresses as well as screenplay.  That year "Volver" had the highest rating from the critics.  Rarely though does the film with the highest rating from "Screen's" panel win the Palm d'Or.  This year is an exception, though "Amour" was tied with "Beyond the Hills" with a 3.3 out of 4.

The biggest relief of the evening was that the jury did not give "Holy Motors" an award or pull a real surprise and give "On the Road" or Kiorstami's film something.  But I had faith in Payne to get things right and Moretti too.  Moretti had previously served on the jury in 1996.  Gilles Jacob, the festival's long-time director, wrote in his memoirs published a year ago, "Citizen Cannes," that Moretti stood up for a film that year that deserved the Palm d'Or against the initial wishes of the rest of the jury.  Jacob, sits in on the jury deliberations, though tries to keep his mouth shut, was very grateful for Moretti's strength and good sense.

When it came down to the last two awards to be given for the two best pictures we knew that Hanake was going to get one of them as he was most evident sitting in the audience. Since "Rust and Bones" had yet to receive an award, there was the possibility that this jury might right the wrong of several years ago when Hanake's "White Ribbon" was given the Palm d'Or over Audiard's "A Prophet."  But that was not to be.

When "Realty" won it meant I would have to skip the closing night film "Therese Desqueyroux" by Claude Miller starring Audrey Tatou, as "Reality" was coincidentally screening an hour later and I had yet to see it, just one of the two Competition films I had missed.  The other was the Opening Night film "Moonrise Kingdom."  I came within two minutes of seeing it earlier in the day.  People were still trickling into the Bazin theater for its 4:30 pm screening when I arrived 15 minutes earlier.  I quickly ducked into the bathroom next door.  When I came out the "Complet" sign had been posted.  I wasn't overly upset as it meant I could go upstairs to the Bunuel theater and see the Reygadas film again.  Intuitively I knew that is what I should have wanted to do anyway.  As always, I do not get upset when I am turned away from a film, rather accepting it as an opportunity to see something else.

Though I saw 73 films this year, including 21 of the 22  Competition films and 10 of the 20 in Un Certain Regard, there were a few I regretted missing.  One was "7 Days in Havana" a compilation film by seven directors including Gaspar Noe.  Ralph saw it, as he is an ardent Noe fan as well, but he couldn't recognize which of the seven segments was Noe's, so it didn't seem as if I missed anything of significance.  He said the only segment whose director he could identify was the one by Emir Kusturica, as he starred in his.  He played himself attending the Havana film festival and not wishing to fully participate in it. 

I was also sorry to miss an animated feature with Werner Herzog as the voice over and also a documentary on the foremost editor of film trailers narrated by Jeff Bridges.  But one can't see everything, though I certainly give it a good effort.  I had more seven film days this year than any year before, largely thanks to a more conveniently located Internet outlet for my daily postings. If I didn't have that obligation I would have watched "Amour" for a second time today giving it another chance to impress me.  As it was, it was only a four film day, the only day of less than six. 

"Amour" was one of four films scheduled to play in the 1,068 seat Debussy theater on repeat Sunday, the largest of the four theaters for the repeats.  The others have seating of 400, 350 and 300.  The top-seeded films were "The Angel's Share," "Holy Motors," "Amour" and "The Hunt."  Keller attended "The Hunt" screening.  He said there was a riot among those waiting to get in and horse-mounted police were called in and people were arrested. 

The lowest seeded films, the films the festival directors thought had the least  interest, playing in the 300 seat Bunuel were "On the Road," "Like Someone to Love," "Mud," "Post Tenebras Lux," and "In the Fog."

I began the day with "Beyond the Hills," one of the three films I was most looking forward to seeing when the festival schedule had been announced a month ago along the the Reygadas film and Dolan's film.  This true story of a young girl who comes to a small monastery to visit a friend of hers and take her away was not as powerful as the director's Palm d'Or winner, a near impossibility, but it was still a most impressive film. 

It was only fifteen minutes between the end of this film and Kiarostammi's "Like Someone in Love."  If I didn't get in I had no back-up film.  I would go fulfill my Internet duties and then see Hanake's film.  But there were barely 100 people who cared to see it.  This story of a Japanese student who moonlights as a hooker was very slight and dull.  It has an element of mistaken identity similar to "Certified Copy," but is a pale imitation.

I  had been turned away from "Reality" three times early in the festival. It was surprising there was so much interest in it, as the reviews had been very tepid.  It seemed highly unlikely the jury would award it anything, so I wasn't regretting very much that I had missed it.  Despite my low expectations, I found the film more enjoyable than I thought it would be, though still not worthy of the Grand Prix. It was one of two films I saw on this final day of the festival with someone going slightly mad.  One of the girls in "Beyond the Hills," frustrated at not being able to pry her friend from the monastery, goes into such fits that she is hospitalized.

In "Reality" it is a husband and father of two girls who becomes unhinged.  He has a very exuberant and outgoing personality even for an Italian.  He sells fish from a stand in a town square.  He thinks his winning personality will earn him selection to a reality television that will make him rich and famous.  He has an hour-long audition that goes very well.  He's so confident of being selected, he convinces his wife that he should sell his fish stand.  When he isn't selected, he suffers a great downward spiral.   It is an entertaining comedy-drama, but not as fine a film as "Rust and Bones" and a few others.

Once again Cannes was a great twelve days of cinema.  Even Keller came to agree that it was a privilege to be here.  This year did not have the greatness of last year, but still it was a reassuring testimony to the state of cinema.  There were a remarkable number of very fine films.  I'll be back and so will Ralph.  Not so sure about Keller though.

Cannes Day Eleven

All went as planned with no excess crowds or unexpected circumstances preventing me from knocking off four Competition films in a row, two that received their premieres today and the two that premiered yesterday.  It was a risk to skip Cronenberg's "Cosmopolis" yesterday with the hope that I could see its repeated screening today, but I got away with it.  If I had seen it yesterday though, it would have made for a pair of Competition films centered around a guy driving around a big city in a stretch white limo in a dream sequence of a movie.  Yesterday it was in Paris, today in New  York.  I didn't much care for yesterday's drive, nor today's either.  The script might have been sitting in Cronenberg's drawer for fifty years, dating back to the era of Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd.

A young, big-time executive wishes to drive across a traffic-clogged, not-so-safe New York to get a hair cut.  He has security guards jogging alongside his car.  Rats are on the verge of becoming a unit of currency replacing the gold standard.  The guy stops a couple of times to have breakfast and then lunch in a small diner with his young wife who isn't as interested in sex as he is.  When he takes off his sun glasses she comments, "I didn't know you had blue eyes."  She asks him to tell her something.  He says, "When I was four I figured out how much I would weigh on each of the planets."  Several times during the movie  he comments about having an asymmetrical prostrate.

Keller and Ralph were awaiting me at the day's first screening of "Mud" by Jeff Nichols, winner of Critic's Weekly last year with "Take Shelter." I hadn't seen Keller in several days.  It was good to see he had stuck it out, rather than leaving early in frustration as he had been  threatening.  "Has Cannes won you over?," I hopefully asked.  "No, but I've made my peace with it," he said.  He had been spoiled by the ease of Telluride, the only other festival he has attended, and the quality of its films, with such a limited schedule compared to most festivals.  After ten days he had somewhat figured out the lay of the land here, but wasn't willing to admit to being a full-fledged devotee such as Ralph and I.

"Mud" offered up remarkable performances by.a pair of teen-aged boys who befriend a man wanted for murder played by Matthew McConaughey, who is hiding out at a secret spot of theirs on an island in the Mississippi.  He is awaiting the arrival of his girl friend payed by Reese Witherspoon.  He murdered her husband, rescuing her from a marriage gone bad.  Along with the police, a group of Texas vigilante friends of the murder victim are in pursuit as well.  The dialogue is crackling and the plot gripping.  Various sub plots are all cautionary tales on idolizing women.  This could win the award for the best screen play.

My two other Competition films were genre pieces from Russia and South Korea.  "In the Fog" takes place on the Western front during WWII amongst Russian peasants. One of them is arrested by the Nazis.  They threaten to hang him unless he agrees to a confession.  Against his better judgement he decides to live, but then is ostracised by his community for seeming to be a collaborator.  This is another of the Character in Deep Shit films that have come to dominate the festival.

A young administrative assistant in "The Taste of Money" wallows in at least shallow shit after he allows himself to be seduced/raped by the 70-year old woman who runs a huge family corporation.  Corruption and sex dominate this slick, but irrelevant film.

Ralph, Keller and I slipped into the awards ceremony for Un Certain Regard before dashing to the Director Fortnight's Award winner.  Jury president Tim Roth lamented the impossibility of selecting the winners because the films were all so good.  They always say that, but it was quite true this year.  The three of us were rooting for the Mexican film "After Lucia,"  which won. Roth gave an extra award to "Le Grand Soir" the French black comedy.  He thanked Thierry Fremaux for including a comedy in the schedule, complaining there were so many heavy dramas.

The Director Fortnight's jury must have had a similar reaction, as its winner was the French light-hearted comedy "Camille Rewinds."   It started out like an all too-typical French film on a film set, but then veered off into slightly original territory when the lead actress, a 40-year old, returns to her parents home and slips into a time warp going back to being a 16-year old.  She goes to school as her 40-year old self and connects with her classmates who are still themselves.  She doesn't want to have anything to do with her old boy friend, knowing how he treated her, abandoning her after accusing her of being his ball-and-chain.   This was a refreshing dose of lightness after the many heavy films, but not necessarily exceptional cinema worthy of an award.  At least she rides her old bicycle on occasion, but my enjoyment of the movie was deflated by  a couple of crashes, once hitting a car and  another time just having the bike slip out from under her, giving me a start and a gasp each time.

The traditional final screening of the festival before Sunday's repeat of all the Competition films and the Closing Night film was a Director Fortnight's film at the Arcades at 10:30 pm.  "Fogo" was a largely dialogue-less documentary on a mostly barren, rugged  island off the coast of Newfoundland with just a few residents and their dogs. This was a very questionable example of minimalism with very little explanation of what the movie was about.

We were all eager for Sunday's schedule of Competition films.  I couldn't have been happier with the line-up as the four I have not seen are all playing in different time slots, allowing me to see them all.  Ralph was not so lucky. Two of the  three he missed are playing at the same time and at the same time as the Reygadas film, which he wanted to see again.  And that will be his choice.  Its hard to believe the festival is drawing to a close.  It flew by faster than ever.  As Ralph and I walked along Antibes after "Fogo," Ralph commented on how much he loves this experience, every aspect of it, and will most certainly be back next year for his third time.  I will be celebrating my tenth.  Yes it has been another fabulous immersion in the world of cinema.

Cannes Day Ten

Today's matching set of films were two films  in Competition that were a series of episodes rather than straight forward narratives--a sublime Mexican film "Post Tennebras Lux" from Carlos Reygadas and the rather ridiculous French entry "Holy Motors" by Leos Carax.

One of the many characters in the Reygadas film asks "Will Mexico ever win the World Cup."  If he had asked the question, "Will a Mexican film ever win the Palm d'Or?," this film could be the answer.  Reygadas came close with his last film "Silent Light," losing out to "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days."  "Post Tennebras Lux" is easily the most ambitious and original of the Competition films screened so far and will be hard to top.  From the very opening scene with a little girl running through a field of cows, this is a film of wondrous images and poignant slices of life, each segment dealing with a concern that weighs upon someone or is of importance to them. The segments include an AA meeting in a shack, a sex club in a high-tech setting, trees falling, dogs fighting, prep school boys playing rugby.  Its lack of narrative flow drew boos, Ralph said, at the press screening in the Palais, but there were none from my audience.

An aging actor drives around Paris in a stretch white limo putting on various costumes complete with facial masks and then slipping out into public to put on an outrageous performance in "Holy Motors," a hallucination of a movie.   He dresses in a vinyl suit with luminous white bulbs and performs a crazed dance. He joins up with a troop of accordionists in another segment.  In another he runs through a cemetery like a deranged centaur eating flowers and biting off the hand of a woman interrupting a photo-shoot. The photographer likes his beastly look and recruits him for his photo-shoot, but he ruins it by running off with the model.  It was sensely bizarre.

My day also included a matching set of Un Certain Regard films, both most wrenching, anxiety-ridden portrayals of characters in deep shit, not unlike the kindergarten teacher and student yesterday in the  Danish and Mexican films.  After seeing them back-to-back I was almost ready to call it a day.   "Our Children" opens with a woman in a hospital bed asking if the corpses of her four young children can be sent to Morocco.  The conclusion of this film is no secret, a mother so overwhelmed by her life, she kills her four young children.  She is transformed from a young woman very much in love, happy to be given a wedding proposition, to a slave of a wife.    Her husband is Moroccan and she is Belgian.  They live in Belgium.

A car salesman with a conscience is caught up in horrible mess when he flees the scene of a hit-and-run accident that leaves the victim in critical condition in the French film "3 Worlds".  He makes the idiotic decision to visit his victim in the hospital.  He is in a coma.  A woman who witnessed the accident, but didn't get his license number is at the hospital at the same time and finds his visit strange so tails him and guesses who he is.  She confronts him in his office at the car dealership where he has just been promoted to run by his soon-to-be father-in-law.  The plot gets more and more complicated with moral dilemmas left and right, but they all are credibly developed.   This was surprisingly plausible and most gripping.  It was another movie about a character caught in a predicament that one wouldn't wish on anyone except his worst enemy.

Colombian street youths in "La Playa DC"  are also caught up in lives of desperation.  This was a most realistic portrayal of their lives focusing on three brothers.  One has just returned to Colombian after spending some time in Canada as an illegal immigrant.  He says whenever he returns to Colombia he wants to leave almost as soon as he arrives.  His younger brothers would like to accompany him as he does by stowing away on a freighter.  They are trying to save the money by various hustles.  This was another film affirming the great relevance of cinema and its power to  insert others into worlds they know nothing about.

The same could be said for "Aqui Y Alla" a Mexican film that won the award for the best film in Critic's Weekly.  It could be the first of three Mexican films to win their respective categories along with "After Lucia" in Un Certain Regard and the Reygadas film in Competition, and none of them focusing on the drug cartels that dominate the news out of Mexico these days.  This was a very quiet, understated film taking place in a Mexican village with a cast of  non-professionals all playing themselves.  A 40-year old father of two teen-aged girls he hardly knows has just returned from a prolonged spell of working in the US.  He became a musician while there and tries to make a career of it back in his village.  Its not so easy, so he picks up whatever menial work he can find.  In the mean time he and his wife have another child.

Along with all the day's Great Cinema was a sensational "Master Class" on directing conducted by the highly respected French film critic Michel Ciment interviewing Philip Kaufman, attending the festival with his film "Hemingway and Gellhorn;"  Unlike yesterday's Master Class with Norman Lloyd this one played to a full house, with people turned away.  Kidman was among those attending.  When I walked past her sitting in the first row I was immediately stunned by her remarkable aura, unlike any I've experienced.  I've had close contact with quite a few actress at Telluride--Laura Linney, Tilda Swinton, Charlotte Rampling, Penelope Cruz, Catherine Deneuve, Meryl Streep-- but none had such star power.  It was a stark contrast to Kaufman, a most regular guy. Ciment actually commented on what a pleasant fellow he was, in contrast to the stereotypical assertive, forceful director personality.

This two-hour session including clips from many of his films--"The Right Stuff," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Henry and June" and his latest.  It began with a clip from his first film, "Goldstein," which won an award at Cannes in 1964.  The clip showed an older Jewish man dancing out on a pier in Chicago.  Kaufman grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago, wishing to be a history professor.  He found that career too stifling so went to Europe to be a novelist.  There he discovered French New Wave cinema and returned to Chicago to make his own version with 40,000 dollars.  Once again I was thrilled to have sacrificed a movie for this extraordinary and enlightening session.

Cannes Day Nine

Today was highlighted by a pair of first-rate, deeply unsettling films, each featuring a decent individual victimized by a malicious assault on their character that turns an entire community against them in a most vile and reprehensible manner.  One was a 40-year old, somewhat depressed, divorced guy who teaches kindergarten in a small Danish town.  The other was a teen-aged middle-class girl who has just moved to Mexico City from Puerto Vallarta with her father after her mother is killed in an automobile accident.

The Dane is falsely accused of molesting the daughter of his best friend in Thomas Vinterberg's "The Hunt" that screened in Competition several days ago.  The community furor slowly builds, with all but one or two of his friends standing by him, along with his teen-aged son who pays an unexpected visit.  He's driven out of the local supermarket beaten by the burly butcher, one of a gallery of Nordic Viking types with rugged, chiseled features that make up the town's population.  A rock is thrown through his window while he's preparing a meal in his kitchen with his son.  His dog is killed.  He evicts his new girl friend from his house when she expresses her doubts. It gets worse and worse.  The little girl regrets the holy terror she has unleashed and tries to retract her accusation, but no one will let her.  No one would want to be in his predicament, but how can he escape it?

The Mexican girl suffers a similar hell in "After Lucia" when a classmate films the two of them having sex and then posts it on the internet.  Every student in her private school sees it.  Boys and girls make her a pariah.  Two girls wrestle her to the floor and cut off her hair.   A couple of guys follow her into the school bathroom and force their way into her stall with dropped trou and recorders going on their phones.  Unlike the Dane, she has nary a defender.

The other exceptional cinema event of the day was a conversation between 97-year old Norman Lloyd and Todd McCarthy with Pierre Rissient sitting in.  Lloyd is celebrating 80 years in show business after getting his start in the theater in New York in 1932.  His first film role was in Hitchcock's "Sabateur" in 1942.  There were no film clips as usually included in these "Master Classes" as there was no holding Lloyd's stories back of working with Hitchcock and Welles and Elia Kazan and Chaplin and Kubrick and countless other cinema legends.  He was a tennis playing partner of Chaplin's before he recruited him for "Limelight."  Also in the audience at this seminal event were Alexander Payne and Abbas Kiarostami, both introduced by Thierry Fremaux.  McCarthy's fellow critic and Telluride regular Scott Foundras also knew this was an event not to be missed  even though the the 300-seat Bunuel theater was only two-thirds full.

I sacrificed seeing "Beyond the Hills" the Romanian film I'm eager to see for it, putting that off until Sunday.  I did catch up though with two other Competition entries, "The Paperboy," which had its debut today and "In Another Country."  "Paperboy" was the fourth film with Hollywood connections in Competition, the most in a while, all very stylish and full of star-power.  This too oozed with lots of pizz-azz and sterling performances by Nicole Kidman as a gorgeous bimbo who has fallen in love with the creepy John Cusak, imprisoned and facing the death penalty for killing a cop.  Two reporters from the Miami Herald have come to this small  very racist southern town to try to save Cusack.    Every character is given outrageous eccentricities that go way too far, undermining the credibility of the story.

Rather than outrageous, over-the-top behavior, the characters in South Korea's Sangsoo Hong's movie are  always awkward, semi-buffoonish nebbishes.  That was the case once again in "In Another Country."  Even Isabelle Huppert, who is featured in the three separate segments of this film, is forced to behave in such a manner.  There is an occasional laugh and commentary on the human condition, enough to make Hong's films Competition regulars.  Like Kaurasmaki films his are an acquired taste for his small cult of devotees.

I squeezed in "Le Grand Soir" after Gary mentioned that it has a delightful cameo from Gerard DePardieu playing a seer who predicts the future peering into cups of sake.  Its not a Cannes festival without seeing Depardieu,  and I had managed to avoid him in the over 50 films I have seen so far.  He was a delight in this dark comedy of two brothers of polar opposites, one a mattress salesman and the other an unemployed punk with a mohawk haircut who goes around terrorizes innocents begging for money in supermarket parking lots, even hopping into their cars and refusing to leave until they give him some of their food, even a mere container of yogurt.  His brother suffers a breakdown and is fired from his job and joins in his brother's antics.

"Sightseers" was an even darker comedy.  It would make a good companion piece to "God Bless America."  A British guy and his new girl friend go off in a camper and become serial killers.  It was quite humorous until one of their victims is a touring cyclist, though one who was pulling a space age capsule trailer that he sleeps in.

This over-the-top comedy was quite a contrast to the Cannes Classic reprisal of George Launter's French '60s gently spy spoof "The Great Spy Chase."  Launter was wheeled on stage for a lengthy introduction.  It almost went on so long that Ralph and I were among the last handful of people to get into "Sightseers" immediately afterwards over at the Arcades to end another Great Day of Cinema.

Cannes Day Eight

The films continue to come in pairs--yesterday two on trash, today two Belgian road movies.  One was a last minute market addition that I wouldn't have known about if I had found Ralph in the 60th Theater for the "On the Road" morning screening.  He was 30 people ahead of me in line, having arrived at 7:30 to be the first so he wouldn't have to contend with line budgers and the subtle positioning that goes on while everyone is waiting to be let in.  I prefer an extra half hour of sleep, trying to get six hours.

There was a several minute gap between the time Ralph was let into the theater and I, as it was filling fast with press spill-over that had priority over us.  It was down to letting us  second class citizens into the theater in increments.  Ralph and I always sit in the upper left hand corner of the theater for a quick exit, but I didn't spot him when I entered as the theater was nearly full and he missed seeing me.  So rather than having a debriefing while we waited for "On the Road" to start I was able to read "Screen" magazine and discovered "Torpedo."  Its brief synopsis described it as a 35-year old guy, whose life is in disarray, wins a dinner with Eddy Merckx.    All of a sudden "Torpedo" replaced "On the Road" as my most anticipated movie of the day.

And after the disappointment of "On the Road"  I knew it could be the best movie of the day as well.  I've read everything Jack Kerouac has written and many other books on the Beats and have lived the life and know all the characters well.  Walter Salles has been working on this movie for years but he failed to capture the manic energy of Neal Cassady that drew Kerouac and many others to him.  Kerouac writes of their benzedrine-fueled conversations that went on and on as they drove cross country, often through the night, thriving on the joy of being on the road and their freedom from the constraints of the mainstream. There was none of that here.

Kerouac sought out mad characters and the madness in life. And he succeeded, though Salles did not. This was a most drab portrayal of their lives.  It was almost as if Salles was at pains to demystify the Beats, portraying them as characters to pity rather than to emulate or admire.  Sean Penn much better portrayed the zest of being free and on the road living all sorts of different experiences in "In the Wild" than this did.  Kerouac was a writer seeking experience and continually jotting notes.  He had to be thrilled to be living the life he was, collecting material and meeting up with Cassady and many of his friends.

When the representative of "Torpedo" handed me a flier for the film, as often happens at the small market screenings, I asked him if Eddie Mercix was in the film.  His English wasn't good enough to understand my question.  I was happy to see in the opening credits that Merckx was given thanks for his participation and he is seen early on at a furniture store that is conducting the contest to win a dinner with him.  There is a catch to winning it though and the guy who thinks he has won the dinner is denied his dinner.  He was so much looking forward to it, he goes to extremes to get it, kidnapping the store owner and driving across the country to Merckx's next appearance.  He enlists the help of a former girl friend to pose as his wife and grabs a ten-year old neighbor to be his son.  When the kid tells him he doesn't know who Eddie Merckx is, he can't believe it and  says he ought to be arrested. Ample homage is paid to Merckx throughout this comedy for it to qualify as a bicycle movie even though  the only bicycling is teaching the ten-year old how to ride a bike.

The other Belgian road movie was two hitch-hikers who link up.  One is a mysterious young woman with blank eerie eyes who admits she has recently been released from "a loony bin."  The other is an aspiring actor who is captivated by her, even though he has a pregnant girl friend.  She leads him into all sorts of mischief.  She is a very unsettling character.  He tails her for  a while and then she turns the tables and tails him back to his girl friend. 

"Hold Back," a most realistic French film about Algerians and blacks in Paris and racial stereotypes, also had unsettling characters who had me wondering "what next."  The movie opens with a black man proposing to an Algerian woman.  No one in their families is in favor of their marriage, though none of the family members have met either of them.  The Algerian has many brothers.  They are so upset a friend offers to kill the black. I was lucky enough to see this fine film as I hadn't been able to get in to "7 Days in Havana," a movie I much wanted to see as Gaspar Noe was one of the seven directors who contributed an episode.

The most entertaining movie of the day was Ken Loach's "The Angel's Share," an almost whimsical tale of English working class blokes in trouble with the law who pull off an incredible heist of some whiskey worth a million pounds.  There was some grim darkness to this, a subject  Loach can not avoid, but it was largely an enjoyable fairy tale that offers hope for humanity rather than the usual despair that Loach dishes up.

"Journal de France" was another movie I was greatly looking forward to, as it was described as the photographs of six years of travel around France by noted French director Raymond Depardon.  That was only an incidental part of the movie, as it was mostly a retrospective of his decades of documentaries of trouble spots around the world, mostly in Africa.  They included an interview with a French woman who was held hostage for a couple of years while she was being held, an interview that got him in trouble with the authorities.  There was also 60 seconds of silence from Nelson Mandela shortly after he was released from prison.  There were only a handful of set shots of small town France and several short segments of driving on winding rural roads that I know so well. 

Cannes Day Seven

I made my first dabble in to the Critic's Weekly and Director's Fortnight sidebars today in repeat screenings, one recommended and the other because I was shut out of the Debussy at the end of the day and had no other choice.  I didn't realize "Augustine" was a Critic's Weekly selection otherwise I would have waited to see it on awards night, as it could well be its winner.

But seeing it now adds another film to the emerging festival theme of inappropriate, or, at least, ill-advised, sex.  Augustine is a young French servant girl  in the 1800s who has unexplained epileptic fits. She is being studied by a doctor.  He puts her on display for colleagues, inducing her fits by hypnotizing her.  He wishes to disprove the theory that such fits are evidence of being a witch.  The two of them give into their animalistic urges and fall into each other's arms and go all the way, leaving the doctor very disturbed.

If I had the time for a think piece I could write about all the other instances of such behaviour in the close to 50 films I have now seen--a priest and a social work in the Argentinian film "White Elephant", an undercover cop getting a blow job from a prostitute he is investigating in "Code "37" and his superior, a woman, having sex with a witness to a crime she is investigating, all the flabby 50-year old women in "Paradise" having sex with young Africans...

Sex got the illustrator Tomi Ungerer in trouble when this prominent children's book writer started also doing erotic drawing, resulting in all his books being banned from libraries in the 1970s.  He made for an extraordinary subject in the documentary "The Tomi Ungerer Story--Far Out Isn't Far Enough."  He was most articulate and has had an extraordinary life.  He grew up on the France/Germany border during World War Two before coming to America in 1956 with just 60 bucks in his pocket, making the most of the Land of Opportunity.  I was glad that Gary of Telluride recommended this. "Far out isn't far enough" was just one of his mottoes along with "don't hope, cope" and "expect the unexpected."

That was the first of four documentaries for the day.  I saw "The Last Projectionist" not by recommendation, but at the request of projectionist Kirk from Chicago. This UK production interviews a handful of long-time projectionists, five of them gathered around a table, and several others interviewed in their theaters, talking about their love of their dying profession.  They weren't as passionate or as interesting as Tomi Ungerer.  More than half the film is about the present state of movie theaters in the UK, focusing on a couple of small renovated theaters with deluxe seating.

I also saw a pair of documentaries on trash, one that had played earlier in the festival in an Out of Competition slot, shot by the German-Turkish director Fatih Akin, who won a best script award from the festival a few years ago.  "Polluting Paradise" didn't receive the best of reviews, but I had an interest in it not only for its subject but also its location, a small Turkish tea-growing town overlooking the Black Sea.  Akin spent five years following the story of a town converting an abandoned copper mine into a dump.  It faced opposition from the very beginning.  It put a stench in the air that revolted all the residents and even the fishermen at sea.

"Trashed" had even more star power behind it (Jeremy Irons) and was also granted a prized Out of Competition slot.  Irons not only narrated the film but also served as a roving reporter going to dump sites all over the world--one just outside of Beirut along the Mediterranean, Iceland, the huge swirl of garbage in the middle of the Pacific, Indonesia, San Francisco and elsewhere.  Irons was there to introduce the film, looking as suave as ever.

The star of the day though was Brad Pitt, on the red carpet for "Killing Them Softly."  I was there for its nine am press screening in the 60th Anniversary.  Pitt plays an enforcer who is summoned to New Orleans to find the people behind the robbery of a super high-stakes poker game.  Like "Lawless" earlier in Competition this is a very polished and sharply written genre piece with loads of stylized violence and entertaining low lives.  There was one tension-filled scene after another.

My seventh and final film of the day was the Director's Fortnight "3" from Uruguay.  It was at the Arcades, which meant no English subtitles.  I have one such experience each festival.  I could cope well with this film, picking out a few words of the Spanish dialogue and much of the French subtitles.  The dialogue wasn't too complicated in this story of a teen aged girl who is just awakening to her sexuality, giving hand jobs to her boy friend and flirting with somewhat dangerous guys a little older than her.  The lead gave a superbly convincing performance.