- Title: FRANCE: THE HIGHLIGHTS FROM WEEK ONE OF THE 51ST CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
- Date: 13th May 1998
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 18, 1998) (REUTERS) JOHN HURT SAYING, "IT'S A BIT LIKE OSCAR TALK, IT'S EVERYONE'S FAVOURITE PASTIME - IF YOU THINK OF THIS, I'VE HEARD SEVERAL DIFFERENT THINGS. THE FAVOURITE SEEMS TO ME TO BE KEN LOACH'S FILM BUT THEN JOHN BOORMAN SOUNDS LIKE IT COULD STAND A GOOD CHANCE." (ENGLSIH) CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 15, 1998) (REUTERS) PAN TO PALAIS DU FESTIVAL GUESTS ARRIVING PHOTOGRAPHERS KEN LOACH (GLASSES) ARRIVES PETER MULLEN WEARING KILT, TWIRLING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
- Embargoed: 28th May 1998 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA3VY3M679RLOH1IMJNBL3D7HHT
- Story Text: Macabre, grotesque, baffling -- one week into the world's most prestigious film festival and the bizarre mix of movies is fuelling heated debate.
This year's line-up, billed as a critics' dream, has stoked fury, admiration and blank incomprehension.
Worlds apart from Hollywood's blockbuster industry, the French festival has this year been dominated by films about cross-dressers, dysfunctional families, crazed drug trips and abused children.
So far, Australian director Rolf de Heer is the only director to win a standing ovation with "Dance Me To My Song", a powerful and poignant love story of a handicapped woman, played by Heather Rose.
The film, whose strength lies in its vivid portrayal of the feelings of Julia, Rose's character, has been tipped since its screening last week as a frontrunner for the Palme D'Or, the festival's top prize.
"Dance Me To My Song" is de Heer's second try at the top Cannes prize."The Quiet Room", the tale of a mentally retarded boy locked up in a room by his mother, was snubbed by the Cannes jury and the public in 1996.
But other Cannes veterans are waiting in the wings.
"It's a bit like Oscar talk, it's everyone's favourite past time," said actor John Hurt."There's Ken Loach ("My Name is Joe") but then John Boorman ("The General") stands a good chance." British director Loach's Golden Palm entry is yet another saga about the British working class.
The film, about an unemployed reformed alcoholic who runs Glasgow's worst football team to help out the neighbourhood kids, is a sensitive and deeply human tale with the unmistakable leftist political stamp of the director of "Land and Freedom" and "Raining Stones".
Enthusiastic applause greeted its screening, pushing it into the ranks of the favourites for top accolade.
Boorman's latest movie, "The General" is a dour study of Martin Cahill, one of Ireland's most notorious criminals.
Over the course of 25 years, Cahill from Hollyfield, Dublin, is said to have stolen 40 million pounds sterling in cash and stolen property.Ireland's leading actor Brendan Gleeson plays Cahill and U.S.veteran Jon Voight plays the Inspector in charge of convicting him.
Boorman, whose latest film is shot in black and white, scooped Cannes' Directors Award in 1970.
But it wouldn't be Cannes without controversy.One film which has courted critics' rage -- and sparked a walkout -- is Terry Gilliam's "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas", an adaptation of Hunter S.Thompson's novel.
Critics described the film as a two-hour-long bad trip -- a crazed voyage by two junkies rampaging through Las Vegas, strung out around the clock on mescaline, LSD, cocaine, ether and booze.
Johnny Depp, who plays a Hunter S.Thompson clone and his comrade in debauchery, Benicio Del Toro, vomit, defecate and ransack luxury hotel suites, turning them into sewers.For some critics, it proved just too much although others consider it a favourite.
Another film has attracted critics' ire but also widespread praise.
Italian director Roberto Benigni has brought a gentle comedy "Life Is Beautiful" (La Vita E Bella) to the festival.
But some say its subject -- Nazi concentration camps -- is no laughing matter.A Jewish journalist called his work "a scandal", but Benigni defends his work as a testament to human capacity for love and survival.
Frontrunners aside, the end of the world is high on the agenda after premieres of a batch of futuristic films about millenial angst.
But amid the rarefied atmosphere of cinema intellectuals, Hollywood actor Bruce Willis suffered the end of his own world on the Cote d'Azur.
Guests at a preview of the apocalyptic "Armageddon" laughed out loud during a particularly emotional scene when his character leaves his daughter (Liv Tyler) to save the world.
A humiliated Willis begged critics not to prejudge the as yet unfinished film, which is not in competition at Cannes.
Asked what he would do at the end of the world, the downtrodden star answered "probably take some heroin".
Other apocalyptic films shown here include Australian Alex Proyas' "Dark City", a brain-teasing special effects movie starring U.S.actors Kiefer Sutherland and William Hurt and Britain's Rufus Sewell.
The film has already been well received in the United States after its Los Angeles premiere in February.
One of two Taiwanese entries depict a comic but catastrophic advent of the millenium.
"The Hole" by Tsai Ming Liang takes place six days before the end of the century in an oppressive and rainy Taiwan gripped by a strange epidemic that makes people crawl around like cockroaches and flee light.
The film features the music of Grace Chang, one of Taiwan's leading stars of song and dance.
Two Danes are responsible for bringing a more experimental flavour to Cannes.Lars Von Trier's "Idiots" epitomises the Danish "new wave".
In the film, the idiots are a group of 20-somethings who share on interest: idiocy.With a large house as their base, they spend all their spare time together exploring the hidden and less appreciated values of idiocy.
But these Danish movies have inspired both admiration and loathing.Made in the Danish "Dogma" style, they follow strict rules founded in 1995 by Von Trier and his fellow countryman Thomas Vinterberg who is screening his entry "Festen".
According to the directors' charter, films must be set in the present, use a hand-held camera and have no score, no special lighting or filters and no credit for the director who is not supposed to impose his point of view.The camera moves and swerves violently, the image is often grainy and out of focus.
Vinterberg, another favourite for the Golden Palm, brings "Festen" ("The Celebration") to Cannes -- a disturbing tale about the crumbling of a family idyll when dark truths of the past are revealed.
Critics are delighted by the new blood on the scene this year in the form of first-time directors.One of them is 18-year-old Iranian Samira Makhmalbaf, the youngest director ever invited to show a film here.
Her film "The Apple" (not in competition) is not only drawn from a true-life story of 12-year-old twin girls locked in their house since birth but the people involved play their own characters.
First-time director French director Erick Zonca brings to Cannes "The Dreamed Life of Angels", the only first film in competition and an intimate tale of the friendship and complicity of Marie and Isa, two young unemployed women down and out in Lille.
Until Martin Scorsese's jury decide top honours on May 24, pundits will be left guessing.
But directors beware.It is an unwritten rule that success at Cannes means a flop in the box office. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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