Day: May 16, 2015

After I posted my Twitter reactions to Carol I did the town a bit. I stopped by the Sea of Trees party at Baoli Beach and spoke to Megan Ellison, Pete Hammond, Vulture‘s Kyle Buchanan, a couple of others. Walked way down to the eastern tip of the beach and back, maybe a couple of miles. Three films, a press conference and a party tomorrow — Maiwenn‘s Mon Roi at 8:30 am, the Carol salle de presser at 12:30 pm, a 5:30 pm buyer’s screening of Pablo Larrain‘s The Club at the Star Cinemas, Joachium Trier‘s Louder Than Bombs at 7:15, and finally the big Carol soiree at 10 pm, also at Baoli Beach.

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A last minute instinct guided me to an 11 am Salle Debussy screening of Ida Panahandeh‘s Nahid, a compelling if slow-moving Iranian family drama, instead of Asif Kapadia‘s two-hour Amy, which screened at the same hour at the Salle Bunuel. I don’t know if I made the “right” decision or not, but I figured I’d either catch Amy tonight at 11:30 pm or on a movie-streaming channel before long while the Iranian film might not be available for some time, Asghar Farhadi‘s long-delayed About Elly being one example.

Sareh Bayat, Pejman Bazeghi in Ida Panahandeh’s Nahid.

I was certainly reminded by Nahid of a frustrating reality in both a real-world and dramatic sense, which is that the cards are heavily stacked against divorced Iranian women looking to win permanent custody of their children due to strict nuptial laws that favor fathers, even if the dad in this case is an off-and-on junkie with a gambling problem. The burden is still on the mother to prove she is morally worthy of raising a child.

This plus a decision by Panahandeh and screenwriting partner Arsalan Amir to more or less snail-pace the story and make their titular lead character, movingly portrayed by Sareh Bayat, a prideful if overly secretive and too-stubborn woman, and you have a film that feels right and rooted but at the same time one that taxes your patience. Mine, at least.

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I don’t like it when people ask “are you okay?” or “are you all right?” I always say “I’m fine, thanks” but what I really mean inside is “you’re bothering me.” They’re showing concern, of course, but deep down they’re offering a comment about themselves, i.e., “You look like you’ve been through something unsettling, resulting in a somewhat weakened or inebriated or dishevelled appearance that we find vaguely disturbing so…uhm, how’s your equilibirum?” My silent response: “I’m fine, thanks, or I was until you asked.” I prefer to hear, if anything, “So you’re good?” Those three words translate as “you seem well enough and even though you may be a teeny bit off-balance right now you’re strong enough to deal with it, I’m sure, so….you’re cool, right?”

I especially hate hearing “are you all right?,” partly because this is what the characters in those awful middle-class Irwin Allen disaster movies (The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Swarm) always asked each other at regular intervals, and so that’s an unwelcome association. But “are you okay?” rankles equally.

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I could go crazy today and jam in four films, but I’m not going to. Well, I might. The wild card is Alice Winocour‘s Maryland, which I might catch tonight at 9:30 if my blood is up. Locked in for sure are Asif Kapadia‘s Amy (as in Winehouse), which screens at 11 am and has a somewhat longer length than usual for a portait-of-a-celebrity doc (127 minutes). A 90-minute break for writing and then, at 4 pm, comes Gabriel Clarke‘s Steve McQueen: The Man and The Mans, which is being hoo-hahed as possibly something more than just the sum of its parts.  It concerns the ordeal of making of Le Mans (’71) and how it didn’t quite work at the end (partly due to director John Sturges quitting early on) and which seemed to break McQueen’s spirit to some extent. And then at 7pm the curtain rises on the big one — Todd Haynes‘ Carol, which may emerge as the festival’s latest power-hitter…or not. And then I’ll go somewhere and write a review. More than enough for a Saturday.