Kechiche gets annoyed at news conference, Lea Seydoux reflects on working with him

Record ID: 1415287

  • Title: Kechiche gets annoyed at news conference, Lea Seydoux reflects on working with him
  • Date: 24th May 2019
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 24, 2019) (REUTERS) DIRECTOR, ABDELLATIF KECHICHE, WALKING INTO NEWS CONFERENCE FOLLOWED BY CAST OF 'MEKTOUB, MY LOVE: INTERMEZZO' CAST AND KECHICHE AT NEWS CONFERENCE ACTOR SHAIN BOUMEDINE AND ACTOR LOU LUTTIAU TAKING SEAT CAST MEMBER SITTING NEXT TO ACTOR SALIM KECHIOUCHE (SOUNDBITE) (French) DIRECTOR, ABDELLATIF KECHICHE, SAYING: ''If you're taking p
  • Embargoed: 7th June 2019 17:27
  • Keywords: Lea Seydoux Abdellatif Kechiche Cannes film festival
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • City: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Film
  • Reuters ID: LVA001AG9DC99
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: A three-and-a-half hour largely plotless movie set in a nightclub, featuring girls twerking from every angle and a 13-minute explicit sex scene in the toilet, claimed the dubious honour as the most universally panned film at Cannes on Friday (May 24).
    Filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche is no stranger to controversy, with his previous outings -- including "Blue Is The Warmest Colour", which won the cinema festival's top Palme d'Or prize in 2013 - also featuring long, graphic sex scenes.
    But his latest movie "Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo" left viewers up in arms after its late night premiere on Thursday.
    Critics lambasted its obsession with the jiggling bottoms that appear time and time again as its young, hotpant-clad female stars dance for almost three hours of the running time in a nightclub.
    Kechiche shrugged off the criticism on Friday and said he was not bothered that some people had walked out of the screening.
    "If you try something new, a new experience, not everyone is going to be open to that," he told a news conference.
    A follow-up to 2017's "Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno", the film follows a group of friends in the south of France hanging out and partying.
    The camera lingers on the bikini-clad women as they frolic on the beach before the action moves to the nightclub and its thumping ABBA-laden soundtrack.
    Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang said the movie was "the work of an embattled, controversy-seeking filmmaker who has decided to troll his audience".
    The twerking is only broken by a few asides as the friends buy each other drinks, before a long cunnilingus scene.
    "What happens here is nothing more than gratuitous porn," the Hollywood Reporter's Boyd van Hoeij wrote.
    Kechiche said his film, which takes place almost in real time, was an attempt to the shake-up conventions of story-telling in the cinema.
    "There is something mysterious about the body, something fascinating which transports us to another place," Kechiche said.
    Actress Ophelie Bau and actor Romeo De Latour, who took part in the explicit toilet scene, were not present at the news conference.
    When the rest of the cast was asked what it was like working with Kechiche, the director said: "I have experienced too many unhealthy things with the question of 'What's working with Kechiche like? Is he nice? Is he nasty?' so I asked the actors, so they don't have to say that I am nice, to say nothing at all."
    Other actors have talked about his controlling, demanding work ethos, including Lea Seydoux, one of the stars of "Blue Is The Warmest Colour" who has since gone on to star in Bond movies.
    Seydoux, in Cannes for another movie, told Reuters in an interview on Friday that working with Kechiche had been a special experience as a young actress, but said she would not work with him again.
    "It's too intense," she said. "You have to give yourself, body and soul, when you do an Abdellatif Kechiche film, and today I have a life, I have a kid."
    (Production: Christian Levaux, Tom Newey, Sarah Mills)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register