- Title: Stars of Cannes hopeful 'Rester Vertical' walk the red carpet
- Date: 12th May 2016
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 12, 2016) (REUTERS) **** WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY **** PEOPLE WALKING ON RED CARPET FROM LEFT TO RIGHT VARIOUS OF ACTORS CHRISTIAN BOUILLETTE, BASILE MEILLEURAT, RAPHAEL THIERY, INDIA HAIR, DAMIEN BONNARD, DIRECTOR ALAIN GUIRAUDIE, LAURE CALAMY AND SEBASTIEN NOVAC POSING FOR PHOTOS ON THE RED CARPET PHOTOGRAPHERS FEET ON RED CARPET / 'RESTER VERTICAL' CAST WALKING UP STAIRS GUIRAUDIE AND CALAMY DANCING PHOTOGRAPHERS VARIOUS OF CAST DANCING
- Embargoed: 27th May 2016 22:39
- Keywords: Cannes Film Festival Rester Vertical Alain Guiraudie
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE AND UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
- City: CANNES, FRANCE AND UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
- Country: France
- Topics: Film
- Reuters ID: LVA0014HI6825
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The first film in competition at Cannes Film Festival was presented on Thursday (May 12), as director Alain Guiraudie and his actors walked the red carpet ahead of the premiere of 'Rester Vertical' (Staying vertical'.
A tale of social decline peppered with raw sex scenes, 'Rester Vertical' has all the ingredients to become a strong prize contender at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Not unlike the Palme d'Or-winning 'Blue Is the Warmest Color', which featured lingering close-up sex scenes between two young women, it is likely to shock, or perhaps outrage.
Guiraudie won the Best Director award at Cannes' Un Certain Regard sub-section in 2013 with the gay thriller 'L'Inconnu du Lac' (Stranger by the Lake), the same year Abdellatif Kechiche won the main competition with 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour'.
The film features lots of coupling, a kind of euthanasia-by-sex between the main character, the 30-something Leo and an old man, and a closeup of a live birth.
"After 'L'Inconnu du Lac' (Stranger by the Lake), let's go see on the side of female sex, a big black hole, the 'Dark Continent' as Freud says, go film it. So there was this question of sex -- more than sexuality, sex really -- to deal with. Sex is a world of pleasure but can also be a world of suffering, and above all it's the matrix which creates life," Guiraudie said.
Leo, a dilettante screenwriter looking for wolves in the Lozere region of France, starts a relationship with Marie, a young shepherdess. They have a baby together, then split, the young boy being left with his father.
Guiraudie navigates between the brutality of real life and the smoothness of dreams as Leo succumbs to degradation.
Sex is a major component of the film.
"Sometimes sex is scary, people have difficulties to manage that, so I thought it was good to have humour around it, so that it wasn't too serious and solemn," said Guiraudie, who seeks to give a light touch to the story with well-placed gags.
Leo eventually ends up living in the sheepfold of Marie's father, in a region where several French hippies moved in the late 1960s. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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