Sunday Cannes Day 5
Subject:
Like it or not what Cannes is mostly about is star gazing, especially Hollywood stars. Even though the French like to think they invented the Seventh Art and have a contingent of their own home bred stars such as Isabelle Huppert and many others what the red carpet (Tapis Rouge) neck craners hope to catch glimpses of are some Authentic Hollywood celebrities and Cannes offers that in far larger doses than any other festival. It is almost hard to keep track of the Hollywood parade of stars but merely a few who have already graced the red carpet here include Will Smith, Nicole Kidman, Kristen Stewart, Jessica Chastain, Julianne Moore, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Kirsten Dunst, and that's just a small sampling. However, there are stars and there are megastars.
Two such megas were here on Sunday, day six.
On day six It was all about two American senior megastars Clint Eastwood (86), Dustin Hoffnan (70) and a new view of Jean-Luc Godard by Oscar winning French director Michel Hazanavicius.
Eastwood was here to present a master class and the event was so clogged by accredited journalist queuing up as much as two hours in advance here in the grand palais that several hundred including yours truly were finally turned Way. To find out if Clint had anything earthshaking to say about his career one will need to consult the Nice-Matin in the morning or the trade papers which float around all over the place.
Hoffman, looking quite well,preserved under a bog of white hair was in the cast of the competition film "The Meyerowitz Stories" directed by Noah Baumbach with Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler in a highbrow New York comedy that might have been entitled Three Jews Blues. Even though Dustin is by far the old man of this lineup and actually plays the father of Ben Stiller he has the most powerful role in the picture and even ordinarily pushy Stiller was deferentially willing to let Hoffman get all the attention. Been a long time since Hoffman's star making debut as a new college grad in The Graduate, 1967, exactly half a century ago but here he is still radiating superstar charisma at the age of seventy! Could seventy be the new forty? ....
LE REDOUTABLE ,
Michel Hazanavicius, In Competition
This films comes here with high expectations because the subject of the film is Jean-Luc Godard, arguably the most famous and surely the most controversial French film director of the XX. century and until now nobody has ventured or dared to make a biopic about the cantankerous 86 year old cinéaste. Michel Havanacius, director of the 2011 Oscar winning film The Artist has now taken that step and cast popular fast rising actor Louis Garrel as his Godard.
The picture focuses on the making of La Chinoise in 1967 which was a major turning point in Godard's career and featured young actress Anne Wiazemsky whom Godard married after the making of that film. He was then 36 and she was nineteen. It was a stormy marriage following his first marriage to another of his stars, Anna Karina, and only lasted two years when Godard was at the peak of his fame and also the acme of his unbridled arrogance ...which is emphatically presented throughout.
The film is basically a study of the collapse of that marriage and Godard's embracing of Maoist revolutionary politics which completely altered his career trajectory and sharply divided his fan base while destroying his marriage as well. Hazanavicius most successfully captures the atmosphere of the time and the year that this Cannes film festival was closed down by Godard and other New Wavers as a protest against the oppression of the government of Degaulle. He also captures the purposeful naughtiness of Godard films by throwing in female and female frontal nudity arbitrarily, clearly meant as a sly comment rather than a titillation. Other Godardian devices such as obscene grafitti and inter-titles and jump cuts add to the nouvelle vague flavor. Wiazemsky is effectively played played by actress Stacy Martin who was featured alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac a few years back. Louis Garrel was a good choice to impersonate Godard and turns in a commendable job even if it is more of an impersonation than entering the skin of his subject -- which, considering the type of slippery personality Godard actually is, would be an almost impossible job. This is overall a rather light and breezy treatment of what could have been a very knotty and heavy handed film in less skillful hands. Hazanavicius has the ribht touch for this touchy subject
Jean-Luc himself has called the film "a stupid, stupid, idea" -- one would hardly expect him to call any film about himself anything else. For Nouvelle Vague and Godard buffs this film is essential "reading".
Alex Delonian, Cannes
