Day: May 21, 2017

Early last evening I saw Michael Haneke‘s Happy End, another of his icy, misanthropic meditations about the corroded human condition. Whatever you may think about the film as a whole, the hypnotic performances by the oldest and younger members of the cast — Jean-Louis Trintignant, 86, and Fantine Harduin, 12 — are worth the price and then some.

I should have gone straight home and tapped out some kind of review, but I wanted the passing satisfaction of attending a fine, opulent party rather than the lasting satsifaction of having filed a well-written (or at least a well-judged) piece. So I took a shuttle up to the lavish Netflix party in the hills above the city and “partied” — stood around, chatted and took pictures while eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping Badoit and Diet Coke.

I got back around midnight, and managed to post some photos of the event, blah blah blah. And now it’s 8 am and I have to catch an 8:30 screening of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which costars Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. And then there’s a Meyerowitz Stories luncheon at noon. I can begin to file about these and other Cannes diversions by mid afternoon, I suppose.

Seemingly terrified of calling a spade a spade or not sounding perceptive or culturally conversant enough, Variety TV critic Sonia Saraiya tapdances around her fundamental reactions to the first couple of episodes of David Lynch‘s Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime, 5.21). But if you boil the snow out of it, the core emerges:

(1) “Twin Peaks: The Return is weird and creepy and slow. But it is interesting. The show is very stubbornly itself — not quite film and not quite TV, rejecting both standard storytelling and standard forms. It’s not especially fun to watch and it can be quite disturbing. But there is never a sense that you are watching something devoid of vision or intention. Lynch’s vision is so total and absolute that he can get away with what wouldn’t be otherwise acceptable.”

(2) “But for every moment that feels fascinating in a new way, there is self-indulgence. The bankable popularity of Twin Peaks also makes for an inexplicably stupid scene at the Bang Bang where the indie-electronic band Chromatics performs to a room of middle-aged townies taking tequila shots. Nothing says rural, small-town, faded glory like an impossibly cool synthpop band. Could it be possible that sometimes, network notes are a good thing?”

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Tonight’s big Netflix party in the fragrant, well-tended hills above Cannes (43 Avenue du Roi Albert) was a perfectly posh and elegant affair, held in a Jay Gatsby-like, faded melon-colored mansion with a beautiful pool, a fountain, palm trees and a glowing globe. Team Hollywood Elsewhere (myself, Svetlana Cvetko, David Scott Smith, Loveless composer Evgueni Galperine) arrived around 9:30; I bailed two hours later but contentedly. What a vibe, what an atmosphere…tender is the night.

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Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s UTA agent Jeremy Barber during this afternoon’s The Meyerowitz Stories press conference inside the Palais.

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The best I can say about Noah Baumbach‘s The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Netflix, 5.21), a dramedy about a Jewish family with the usual anxieties and uncertainties, is that it’s mildly engaging. It gets you here and there. It mildly diverts.

Especially when things get testy or cryptic or flat-out enraged (i.e., 40ish brothers Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler trying to beat each other up, paterfamilias Dustin Hoffman ranting at a fellow diner in a restaurant who’s been putting his stuff on Hoffman’s table). Plus Stiller has a striking emotional breakdown scene, the likes of which he’s never before done.

But this mostly Manhattan-based ensemble film (with detours to Rhinebeck and Pittsfield) just isn’t all that riveting. It just doesn’t feel tightly wound or hungry to get over. It’s “good” but unexceptional. I didn’t dislike it, but feels very Netflix-y.

Where does Meyerowitz sit on the Baumbach scale? Way, way below the brilliantly anti-social Greenberg (’10), my all-time favorite Baumbach, and which delivered Stiller’s best performance of his career, hands down. And it has none of the pizazz of Noah’s two Greta Gerwig collaborations, Frances Ha (’12) and Mistress America (’15). I don’t know where it belongs, but tonally it’s kind of similar, I guess, to The Squid and the Whale (’05) and While We’re Young (’14).

During filming The Meyerowitz Stories was called Yen Din Ka Kissa, which is Hindi for something or other. “Where the day takes you”? Something like that. Pow, right in da kissa!

The story is basically is about three Meyerowitz kids — Sandler’s Danny, Stiller’s Matt-from-the-coast, and Elizabeth Marvel‘s Jean — coping with their troubled histories with their father, Dustin Hoffman‘s Harold Meyerowitz, a somewhat curmudgeonly sculptor who wasn’t that great of a dad, etc. There’s also the small issue of Harold’s possibly impending death, due to a head injury that happened while walking his dog.

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