The Minutes, the Hours

Showing at Cannes: The Minutes, the Hours, directed by Janaína Marquéz Ribeiro

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

Yoli has always lived with her mother in a humble neighborhood of Havana. One day, a man invites her out and she decides to wait for him rejecting, for the first time, her mother’s company.

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

Showing at Cannes: Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, written and directed by Sophie Fiennes

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

The film bears witness to German artist Anselm Kiefer’s alchemical creative processes and renders as a film journey the personal universe he has built at his hill studio estate in the South of France. In 1993 Kiefer left Buchan, Germany for La Ribotte, a derelict silk factory near Barjac. From 2000 he began constructing a series of elaborate installations there, comprising 48 buildings, a labyrinth of tunnels, bridges, lakes and towers. Traversing this landscape, the film immerses the audience in the total world and creative process of one of today’s most significant artists. Shot in Cinemascope, the film constructs visual set pieces alongside observational footage to capture both the dramatic resonance of Kiefer’s art and the intimate process of creation. This polarity - in terms of scale, sensibility and time - animates the film, creating a multi-layered narrative through which to navigate the complex spaces of La Ribotte. Here creation and destruction are interdependent; the film enters into direct contact with the raw materials Kiefer employs to build his paintings and sculptures - lead, concrete, ash, acid, earth, glass and gold...

Draquila - Italy Trembles

Showing at the Cannes Film Festival: Draquila - Italy Trembles, directed by Sabina Guzzanti

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

Why do Italians vote Berlusconi? The violence of propaganda, the impotence of citizens, questions of the economy, illicit power relationships...

And a catastrophe: the city of L'Aquila devastated by an earthquake... all these combine to show how the young Italian democracy has been subdued. The caricature of Berlusconi - one of the director’s most celebrated impersonations - strolls through Aquila’s refugee camp and wanders the deserted town like an emperor at the end of his reign. A town devastated by an earthquake - the perfect location from which to recount Italy’s drift into authoritarianism, the mess of blackmail, scandal, swindles and inertia of the political classes, the media and the citizens, that have paralysed the country. Why do the Italians vote for Berlusconi? Why do they consider democracy an unsuitable system of government? Aquila - this magnificent city laid low by an earthquake - will give us the answers. Why did the proud people of Aquila exchange their most precious commodity - their community, a dynamic town full of students and works of art - for a little apartment in a dormitory town, furnished by Berlusconi? Why did they believe TV propaganda rather than the evidence of their own eyes? And how did it happen to others too, as quickly and as deceitfully? Who was leaning on them? The days of Berlusconi’s reign seem numbered: it’s time to search through the rubble and draw what conclusions we can.

Guzzanti's website is here.

At Cannes: Countdown to Zero

Showing at Cannes: Countdown to Zero, directed by Lucy Walker

Adrienn Pal

Showing at Cannes: Adrienn Pal, written and directed by Agnes Kocsis

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

Piroska is an overweight, alienated nurse who can’t resist cream-filled pastries. She works in the terminal ward of a hospital; her life is surrounded by death. One day she sets off to find her long-lost childhood friend. While tracing her recollections, she embarks on a paradox-filled voyage within her own memory and the memory of those she encounters.

The Tree

Showing at the Cannes Film Festival*: The Tree, directed by Julie Bertuccelli

*But not in competition, because among the films in competition, not one is directed by a woman. How... interesting. Feminism: totally unnecessary.

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

After the sudden loss of her father, 8-year-old Simone shares a secret with her mother Dawn: her father whispers to her through the leaves of the magnificient tree by their house. Simone is convinced that he’s come back to protect her family. Soon, Simone’s three brothers and Dawn also take comfort in the reassuring tree. But the new bond between mother and daughter is threatened when Dawn starts dating George. Simone moves into the treehouse and refuses to come down. With branches infiltrating the house and roots destroying the foundations, the tree seems to be siding with Simone. Dawn refuses to let the tree take control of her family...

The film's website is here.

Andrea Arnold Shares Jury Prize Win

Congratulations to Andrea Arnold, whose Fish Tank won the Jury Prize at Cannes, sharing the laurels with Thirst, directed by Chan-wook Park.

A clip from Fish Tank:

Cendres et Sang

Opening today at Cannes: Cendres et Sang, written and directed by Fanny Ardant

Fanny Ardant, French film legend, steps behind the camera for Cendres et Sang, a juicy-looking family drama. Synopsis from the film's website:

Exiled from her country since her husband's murder ten years earlier, Judith lives in Marseille with her three children.

After having refused to see her family for years, Judith, in spite of her fears and secrets, allows herself to be influenced by her children's wishes and accepts an invitation to their cousin's wedding. They set off to spend a summer in the old country, discovering their roots and their past. But Judith's return revives old hatreds between rival clans. The spiral of violence is inexorably set in motion, blood will tell...

A couple of clips seem to be making the rounds as well...

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo

Showing at Cannes tomorrow: The Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, directed by Isabel Coixet

Isabel Coixet is a Spanish director whose best-known films in the US are My Life Without Me (starring Sarah Polley, a director in her own right) and Elegy (starring Ben Kingsley). The Map of the Sounds of Tokyo debuts at Cannes tomorrow, so here is a synopsis from the film's website:

Ryu is a solitary girl whose fragile appearance is in stark contrast with the double life she leads, working nights at a Tokyo fishmarket and sporadically taking on jobs as a hit-woman.

Mr Nagara is a powerful impresario mourning the loss of his daughter Midori, who has committed suicide. He blames David, a Spaniard who runs a wine business in Tokyo.

Mr Nagara's employee, Ishida, was silently in love with Midori and hires Ryu to murder David.

A sound engineer, obsessed with the sounds of the Japanese city and fascinated with Ryu, witnesses this love story which searches the shadows of the human soul, reaching deep into places where only silence has the power of eloquence.

Here's the trailer (definitely not safe for work):

Altiplano

Showing at Cannes tomorrow: Altiplano, directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth

 

Synopsis from the film's website: War photographer Grace, devastated by a violent incident in Iraq, renounces her profession. Her Belgian husband, Max, is a cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, the villagers of Turubamba succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. Saturnina, a young woman in Turubamba, loses her fiancé to the contamination. The villagers turn their rage on the foreign doctors, and in the ensuing riot Max is killed. Saturnina takes drastic measures to protest against the endless violations towards her people and their land. Grace sets out on a journey of mourning to the place of Max’s death. Altiplano is a lyrical and probing film about our divided but inextricably linked world.

 

 

La famille Wolberg

Showing at Cannes tomorrow: La famille Wolberg, written and directed by Axelle Ropert

Synopsis from the Cannes website:

He can deliver a breathtaking speech on the American soul to flabbergasted schoolboys, get mixed up in the private lives of his citizens, and even get his 18-year-old daughter to swear that never, but never, would she leave home. Meet Simon Wolberg, mayor of a small provincial city, madly in love with his wife, an interfering father and provocative son. This man is driven by an obsession with his family. Which leads him to test the force and fragility of these bonds.

La Pivellina

Showing at Cannes tonight: La Pivellina, written and directed by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

From the film's website:

Abandoned in a park, the two-year-old girl Asia is found by Patti, a circus woman living with her husband Walter in a trailer park in San Basilio on the outskirts of Rome. With the help of Tairo, a teenager who lives with his grandma in an adjacent container, Patti starts to search for the girl's mother and gives the girl a new home for an uncertain period of time. La Pivellina is a film about a cosmos of outcasts in present-day Italy: a moving tale of courage and discrimination, of loss and togetherness, a look behind the corrugated-iron fence of a gated community.

This is the couple's first feature film; there is an interesting interview with them here.

Jaffa

Showing at Cannes today: Jaffa, directed by Keren Yedaya

From the Cannes website:

In the heart of Jaffa, a city nicknamed "the Bride of the Sea" by the Israelis, Reuven's garage is a family business. His daughter Mali and his son Meir, as well as Toufik and Hassan, a young Palestinian and his father, work there for Reuven. No one suspects that Mali and Toufik have been in love for years. As the two lovers are secretly making their wedding arrangements, tension builds between Meir and Toufik…

Keren Yedaya won the Camera d'Or in 2004 for her film Or (My Treasure).

Trailer (with French subtitles):

Lost Persons Area

Showing at Cannes today: Lost Persons Area, directed by Caroline Strubbe

Not too much information available about this one on the web, though the synopsis from the film's own website pops up quite frequently:

Bettina and Marcus, a passionate couple, life in a canteen in the middle of a vast field with endless lines of pylons. Marcus, trying to set up his own business, works as a foreman in the maintenance of these power-lines. Bettina, bored and longing for a better life, runs the canteen for the workingmen. Their 9-years-old daughter Tessa, wanders the industrial area, looking for bits and pieces to occupy her mind, skipping school whenever she can. When Marcus hires a Hungarian engineer, Szabolcs, to become part of his company, their unconventional way of living takes a new turn. A tragic accident although will shatter everyone’s pursuit of happiness. 

Lost Persons Area is a story about people lost in the meanders of life.

On a side note, I love that someone whose first language is probably Flemish taught me that "meanders" can be used as a noun. You learn something new every day.

Bright Star

Debuting at Cannes Film Festival today: Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion

Jane Campion has the distinction of being the only woman ever to win the Palme d'Or (The Piano), and one of only three women to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director (also The Piano).

From the Cannes Film Festival website—

London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet, John Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion. This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she unimpressed by literature in general. It was the illness of Keats’s younger brother that drew them together. Keats was touched by Fanny’s efforts to help and agreed to teach her poetry. By the time Fanny’s alarmed mother and Keats’s best friend Brown realised their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept into powerful new sensations, "I have the feeling as if I were dissolving", Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats’s illness proved insurmountable.

So sad! Time Out London and the London Evening Standard have weighed in so far, and the New York Times ran an article about the film today.

Fish Tank

Debuted at Cannes Film Festival yesterday: Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold

Hard to find any US reviews of this, as it just got shown at Cannes, but this story of the relationship between a 15-year-old girl and her stepfather has been getting rave reviews from the Brits. While waiting for Fish Tank to be released over here, you might want to stick Red Road, Arnold's first feature, in your Netflix queue.

Update - Here's a much more thorough synopsis, from the TIFF website:

Andrea Arnold's pure, potent Fish Tank is many things: a taboo-breaking love story, a searing portrait of working-class Britain today, a film Ken Loach could have made had he been born a woman. But above all, her film is a girl's own fantasy. Arnold began exploring the precise perspective of a woman's desire in her terrific debut, Red Road. With Fish Tank, the view is broader and the focus even sharper.

Mia is a tough, wiry teenager with a mouth like a sailor and only one way to escape the brutality of her daily life: she dances, always by herself with her headphones on, and always to the point of ecstasy.

She has a lot to escape. Her mother is a bottle-blond party girl who favours skirts shorter than her daughter's, and men on the rough side. One day she brings home her latest catch, Connor, who is played by Hunger's Michael Fassbender. He soon proves irresistible.

Once Fish Tank sets its dangerous premise in motion, it observes its characters with generosity. The environment may be harsh, but Arnold's approach is lyrical, even loving.While the story goes to some dark places, Arnold never strays from her spare, beautiful aesthetic. Shooting in old-school 1.33 aspect ratio, she composes her frames with rigorous symmetry. The effect is to bring the simple order of a fable to the seeming chaos of Mia's life.

Even better, Arnold lets the sociology remain unspoken. The fact that Mia's mother must have had her as a teenager, that alcohol fuels so much of the characters' bad behaviour, that Mia adopts rage as a cover for more complicated feelings – these are left to the viewer to infer. Instead, Fish Tank focuses on getting the details of Mia's life right – contrasting her love of rapid-fire dance music to her mother's reggae and Connor's Bobby Womack soul, for instance – and on following her desire wherever it goes.