Day: May 13, 2015

The last time a documentary presented an argument suggesting that Courtney Love was in some way responsible for or a contributor to the 1994 shotgun-suicide death of her then-husband Kurt Cobain was Nick Bromfield‘s less than conclusive Kurt and Courtney, which I saw at Sundance in 1998.  From a producer friend:  “I asked Broomfield at a friend’s party if there was anything he left out of Kurt and Courtney.   He immediately lowered his voice and said, “Yes, something I found out later. Courtney had him cremated and put in a jar which she then put in a small backpack. She wore the backpack everywhere she went for years.”  Wait…Love wore a backpack to parties and premieres?  Producer: “I said ‘she wore him? Why?’  And he said,  ‘Because she finally had him.”

A sizable number of foo-foo Cannes critics have creamed over Matteo Garrone‘s Tale of Tales following Wednesday evening’s 7 pm screening. These responses have struck me as overly obliging, to put it gently. Due respect to Garrone (Gomorrah) and 17th Century Italian author Giambattista Basile, whose “Pentamoronem,” a collection of 50 dream fables published posthumously in 1634 and 1636, inspired many classic fairy-tales we’re all familiar with, but for all its compositional delights and atmospheric richness, Tale of Tales is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing save that Garrone is a highly skilled, grand-vision director.

Yes, I enjoyed the fact that the three tales are adult-angled, which is to say dark, gloopey and completely unrelated to “happily ever after,” and I felt satisfied by their perversity as far as it went, but they don’t lead anywhere or echo anything — they’re just diseased and obsessive and aggressively illogical little sagas about royals who want what they want and then have to pay for their obsessions or blindnesses or over-reachings.

Out of the original 50 they seem to have been chosen by Garrone more for their confounding perversity than anything else. And I’m saying this as a fan of Fellini Satyricon (’69), which at least seemed to be saying something about the libertine culture of the late ’60s whereas Tale of Tales seems to be about nothing more than the fact that Garrone and his team had zilch to say. Except maybe that life is full of pitfalls and trap doors and at the end of the day the odds are that you’ll wind up fucked if you resort to magic to solve your problems.

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Gus Van Sant‘s The Sea of Trees, which has been acquired by Roadside Attractions, will debut at the Cannes Film Festival the day after tomorrow — Friday, 5.15. A not-euphoric-minded American guy (Matthew McConaughey) travels to Japan’s Aokigahara forest with the intention of sinking a razor-sharp blade deep into his lower abdomen. Or maybe to hang himself…what do I know? He eventually meets up with a Japanese guy (Ken Watanabe) who’s arrived at the base of Mt. Fujiyama for the same reason. I’ve written this same synopsis seven or eight times now. I’m presuming along with everyone else that Roadside will be giving Trees an award-season release.

Following this morning’s 10 am screening of Emmanuelle Bercot‘s La Tete Haute (which is nothing special — not bad but a bit of a snore), I went home to file and maybe grab an hour’s nap before hitting the 2 pm Cannes jury press conference (i.e., co-chairs Joel and Ethan Coen, Rossy de Palma, Xavier Dolan, Sienna Miller, Sophie Marceau, Jake Gyllenhaal, Rokia Traore and HE’s own Guillermo Del Toro). When I returned to the pad around 12:15 pm I figured I’d get the nap first (I awoke this morning at 3:45 am) and then file. I sank to the bottom of the pond and woke up three and a half hours later. It’s now 6:05 pm and I’m racing to finish this post before catching the 7 pm showing of Matteo Garrone‘s Tale of Tales. [Update: It’s now 6:18 pm.] The best quote of the conference came from Gyllenhaal when he said that each juror had been divided into either the Joel or Ethan team. “We are not allowed to talk about who is in what group,” he said. “[It] was based purely on personality.” Second best quote from GDT: “I feel that we are not the judges. We are here to defend the works we appreciated against other jurors.” I’m presuming that Guillermo is going to be a big fan of Yorgos Lanthimos‘s The Lobster because it’s a kind of surreal Bunuelian social-criticism deal and because it includes transformations from humans into animals…yes! Animals in clothes.

Ethan, Joel Coen during today’s pre-press conference photo call.

(l. to r.) HE’s own Guillermo del Toro, Sophie Marceau, Rokia Traore.

Yesterday morning (or early last evening in Cannes) a Ramin Setoodeh-authored Variety interview with Cate Blanchett came online, and the immediate takeaway was that Blanchett, the star of Todd Haynes‘ lesbian-themed Carol, said she’s had relationships with women “many times.” She didn’t specify if these dalliances happened before or during her marriage to Andrew Upton, but it’s an intriguing confession any way you slice it.

Quote: “When asked if this is her first turn as a lesbian, Blanchett curls her lips into a smile. ‘On film — or in real life?’ she asks coyly. Pressed for details about whether she’s had past relationships with women, she responds, ‘Yes…many times’ but doesn’t elaborate. Like Carol, who never ‘comes out’ as a lesbian, Blanchett doesn’t necessarily rely on labels for sexual orientation. ‘[I’ve] never thought about it,’ she says of how she envisioned the character. ‘I don’t think Carol thought about it.'”

Add to this beliefs about Blanchett’s Carol costar Rooney Mara having known similar intrigues, and you’re talking about a possibly interesting on-screen chemistry.

Not to mention (a) the script of Carol having been written (and re-written and re-written) by “out” playwright Phyllis Nagy, (b) the casting of “out” Carol costars Carrie Brownstein and Sarah Paulson, (c) the film having been produced by the same-oriented Christine Vachon and directed by Todd Haynes, and you have…I don’t know what you have or how good Carol will be or anything. But at least you have a good portion of the creative team coming from a similar place.

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