CANNES 2009

Assessment from the distance and the influence

TEXT: DANIEL DE PARTEARROYO

We may not have enjoyed the pleasures of this year’s Cannes Festival live, but we’ve been following the wonders that went on its screens (and, also, the ones that walked the Croisette with sun glasses and their hair down, but that’s another thing).

Through a transverse monitoring of different chronicles published at blogs, twitters and more boring publications, we’ve been able to file our natural anxiety for seen it all and get some priorities out.

We’ve been dying to see them, now we trace them on the Internet

Inglourious basterds (Quentin Tarantino): We didn’t need much to increase the hype that must go with any new film by the director of Pulp fiction (1994), especially if it’s a war movie set during World War II, focused on a bunch of Jew soldiers on a mission to chop Nazis into pieces and featuring Brad Pitt making neck’s scars a summer trend. Anyways, Quentin is still dancing and, fortunately, September 18 is getting closer by the minute.

Das weisse band (Michael Haneke):Palme d’Or winner is about Nazism too, but it gets closer to its origins at the beginning of the 20th century. The ingredients are similar to Tarantino’s, thought certainly mutilations and murders are less fun when seen from Haneke’s scalpel. It took home the big prize, so we are expecting a decent opening here.

Antichrist (Lars Von Trier): Cannes’ most hated, insulted and let’s-just-burn-it movie. Neverthless, Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress and the ecumenical jury gave a special mention to its misogyny, so that should make it a must-see, shouldn’t it? Although, possibly, not with your partner. August 21 will be hot. Very hot.

We want to see them, but we can wait

Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee): Doing a chronicle of a festival as hippie-happy and mythologized as Woodstock has its sucrosed risks. Ange Lee had proved he’s capable of the worst and the best (insert your own examples here), but this, it seems, he gets lost in an overdose of split-screens. October 2 will make the star of the summer of love.

Thirst (Park Chan-Wook): The Corean cinema wunderkind, master of cool and Baroque-music choreographed violence, is starting to lose his ability to satisfy movie after movie since Oldboy (2004). Not even the story of a virgin blood-lusting vampire priest seems able to save him. Release date currently TBC.

Agora (Alejandro Amenábar): Oh, well, we didn’t want to see it that bad… It’s more like passing by a car crash –you don’t want to look, but you definitely will when the moment arrives. Thing is, we’re told this accident is, despite its technical skills, too boring and discursive. The astronomy class stars in October.