Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

Cannes: Day One

The college dorm I am living at for the duration of the event is two full miles away from the Palais des Festival and the Croissette. It may as well be in St. Tropez.

I knew the Cannes Film Festival was about to begin when I saw two dozen flat bed trucks filled with concrete planters drive by. During the festival, the French police use the planters to block traffic along the Croissette, the boulevard which runs along the beach. That I spotted Henri Behar, the journalist that moderates many of the festival press, inside the Palais a day before the first screening. Things were getting underway.

This morning they actually started screening films at the 58th annual Cannes Film Festival. French filmmaker Dominik Moll's Lemming opened the festival. You might remember Moll from back in 2000, when his film, With A Friend Like Harry was edged out by Lars Von Trier's Dancer In The Dark for the Palm d'Or, Cannes' top trophy.

Lemming screened out of competition, so Moll won't have to worry about clearing any space on his mantle this year either. Granted, even if Lemming had screened in competition the lukewarm response it got from me and all the other journalists attending the festival might mean another film would have created more of a stir. Ironically, Moll said it was the reaction of the international press to his film, more than the Palm d'Or that he coveted. "The actual prize, that's just a cherry on the cake as it were," he stated earlier in the day, "I am delighted that Lemming is able to benefit from the whole setup here at the Cannes festival." I guess it wouldn't have been polite to tell him what all the journalists thought of his film.

Trying to describe Lemming is quite difficult. I don't want to give away too much of a very circuitous plot but let's give it the old college try. Charlotte Gainsborg and Laurant Lucas play a young upwardly mobile couple who move to a new town so he can work as a home automation engineer for Richard Pollock, (played by André Dussollier), a business tycoon. Pollack and his wife invite themselves over for dinner but wind up getting into an extremely personal argument. This manages to upset the young couples wedded bliss. Later that evening, Gainsborg and Lucas find a lemming stuck in the pip underneath their kitchen sink drain. Supposedly this is a metaphor for the insaneness that is about to enter their lives. By morning the lemming, which was thought to be dead, is actually alive and the lives of the two couples begin to become interwoven. Not all for the better. The film, which starts out quite promising, turns into a suspense film with a little supernatural twist thrown in.

Pollock's wife Alice is played by Charlotte Rampling. She's a Cannes favorite and was last seen at the festival in 2003's Swimming Pool. Ludivine Sagnier may have upstaged Rampling in that film (her bare breasts certainly did), but Rampling leaves her mark in Lemming. Some of the British journalists were curious as to why the actress has starred in more French films than British movies lately. "The work that has been interesting in the last few years has come from France," Rampling explained, "Where work comes from doesn't necessarily have to be a nationality. It just so happens that perhaps the last two or three films that I've done that have been particularly powerful have been French."

Speaking of "nationality", you really know you are in Cannes when during a press conference a journalist from some far off country asks a question about their country's films. Whether or not the filmmaker is from that country, or has even ever visited that country, the question will still be asked. This year Moll was asked about an entire continent when a Chinese journalist questioned him about the inclusion of several Asian films in the festival. Moderating the conference, Behar asked the journalist whether Moll looked Chinese.

Behar also moderated the press conference for the festival jury at which he spent at least 15 of the 45 minutes allotted introducing each and every member, at times gushing about their careers for ages. I'll see if I can do it a bit faster. Serbian filmmaker Emil Kusturica is the jury president this year. His film Underground took home the Palm d'Or in 1995. Joining him on the jury are French directors Benoît Jacquot and Agnès Varda, director John Woo, German screenwriter Fatih Akin, Indian actress Nandita Das, actress Salma Hayek, and American author Toni Morrison. See how simple that was. Probably only took you 15 seconds to read all three sentences of introduction.

Actually, Behar is always quite amusing and fun to listen to. One of the best moments during the conference came when he started to introduce what he referred to as "one of the most beautiful women in the world." Hayek, thinking Behar must have been referring to her, quickly pointed to Morrison, who was sitting next to her, as if to say, "but of course he must be referring to you my dear." Morrison did the same, pointing back at Hayek. They needn't bother, as Behar was speaking about Das.

And I want to know who created the rule that every year an actress considered easy on the eyes (and of course the camera lens) has to be included on the jury in Cannes. In 2003 it was Aishwarya Rai and Sharon Stone in 2002. Obviously Salma Hayek was elected this year.

"When you are an actress it is very exciting. But mostly what you have to do is give interviews and when you are a juror mostly what you have to do is watch movies," said Hayek trying to explain how this year her experience differs from when she was here with Kevin Smith's Dogma or Robert Rodriquez's Desperado. "When you come with a film to a festival, most of the learning has already been done through the process of making the film and you are just presenting it. When you are a juror, it is in these moments when the visual stimulation is coming to your brain and it's so rich. You get to see so many amazing movies and see them with a virgin eye and at the same time you get to see the perspective of these amazing people that I have admired for a long time."

Morrison was asked about her cinematic experience, since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize doesn't seem to be enough to qualify you to be on a jury at a film festival "I know my judgment is infallible in spite of the fact that I'm not in the industry," she joked. "So I bring you my infallibility and my enthusiasm."

Rumor has been circulating that Match Point, Woody Allen's latest film is a "masterpiece". Allen has been quoted in the British press where he was speaking very highly of the film. It is due to screen here tomorrow and Allen himself is scheduled to be at a mid-morning press conference. It's all the talk along the Croissette. (I've always wanted to say that last bit.)

May 11, 2005
- by J. Sperling Reich