I’m still fiddling around and shuffling the deck and not yet dealing the cards on my review, but of all the rooted, spellbinding performances in Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past the one that really put the hook in, for me, was Pauline Burlet‘s as Lucie, the elder daughter of Berenice Bejo‘s Marie. I haven’t felt this kind of surging river current in a new actress since I first saw Carey Mulligan go to town in An Education. Burlet is only 16 or 17 or something, but she’s clearly the new Marion Cotillard-plus. Indeed, she played the young Cotillard (or more precisely the young Edith Piaf) in La Vie En Rose when she was 10 or 11.

(l. to r.) The Past director-writer Asghar Farhadi, costars Berenice Bejo, Ali Mosaffa.

In my book (and this in no way compromises the value of Berenice Bejo’s lead perfoirmance), the most eye-opening performance in The Past is given by Pauline Burlet.

The sky is blue and the sun is out! On top of which I’ve seen two phenomenal, award-destined films — strong>Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station and Asghar Farhadi‘s The Past — within the past 14 hours. I’m sitting in the Orange cafe now and trying to bang something out on The Past and perhaps Fruitvale Station, although I wonder if I have it in me to write two thumbs-up reviews in a row. It’s much easier to write a slam. What makes a domestic melodrama seem soapy to a snarky few and Eugene O’Neil-ish to others? Here’s the initial Twitter dialogue on The Past:

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I’ve been hearing about Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station since last January’s Sundance Film festival, where it played through the roof. It did the same thing here tonight at the Cannes Film Festival, or more specifically at the Salle Debussy. It’s an awards-level steamroller, that’s for sure. Perhaps more on the level of critics group and Spirit Awards rather than Oscars due to limited box-office…but maybe not. Coogler, 26, has done himself proud, and cheers also to Michael B. Jordan for his vibrant and emotionally varied portrayal of the late Oscar Grant, who was aggressively if accidentally shot by a BART cop after a melee on New Year’s Eve. Cheers also to producers Forest Whitaker and Octavia Spencer.

I attended a yacht party in Cannes today for Martin Scorsese and Silence, the long-gestating, much-delayed historical drama set in 17th Century Japan that Scorsese will finally begin directing in June 2014. Andrew Garfield, Ken Watanabe and Issei Ogata will costar. The floating soiree was thrown by Emmett/Furla Films, which is producing. The hosts were producers Randall Emmett and Emma Tillinger Koskoff.

(l.) 42West honcho Leslee Dart, (r.) director Martin Scorsese during yacht party earlier today for Silence.

Scorsese arrived about a half-hour after things began, and his publicist Leslee Dart allowed me to speak with him for about four minutes. Mainly we talked about the restored Shane (“I’m waiting to see it…I hear it looks fantastic”). He and George Stevens, Jr. conferred about Shane, he said (presumably about the aspect-ratio situation) and just before they were about to get in touch with Warner Home Video, which will release the Shane Bluray in August, they were told that WHV had flipped on the 1.66 aspect ratio position and that they’d decided to go with 1.37.

Last night’s rainstorm was miserable all around. It felt like a monsoon in early March. Windy, almost bone-chilling, damp pants and socks. I came out of Amat Escalante‘s Heli, a miserable experience in itself (although it clearly has integrity and auteurist purity) and stood at the top of the steps of the Salle Debussy and the city was under a kind of meteorological siege. Huddled groups, hunched-over bodies, wind and umbrellas. I went to an Asian place and ordered an all-you-can-eat meal for 16 euros. And then I went home and wrote until 2 am.

An apparent attempt to simulate the look of spats, which went out of fashion about 90 years ago. George Raft: “Okay, button my spats.”

My question to Bling Ring director-writer Sofia Coppola at this afternoon’s press conference was about the stupidity factor, although I didn’t use that term. Whenever I see a film about thievery I identify with the thieves, I said. I want them to succeed, and I certainly don’t want them to get caught because of a stupid mistake. Which is precisely what the Bling gang does by ignoring the fact that all pricey homes have security cameras. Plus they don’t wear surgical gloves and plastic foot wraps — standard stuff.

Sofia basically said they were too young and too caught up in their feelings of delight at stealing all the great stuff to think about security cameras. I think they were just too dumb. Wearing masks and not leaving prints or fibres during a robbery is about as basic as it gets.

There’s a self reflecting, shallow pool, empty-hall-of-mirrors vibe delivered by Sofia Coppola‘s The Bling Ring, which just finished screening in the Salle Debussy. I don’t know what could’ve resulted from a film about fame-worship and malignant materialism, but don’t we know about the yield of shallowness going in? Aren’t the urban GenY kids who live for some kind of nocturnal proximity to the vapidly famous…aren’t they self-parodying to begin with? Weren’t the actual Bling Ring kids extremely self-mocking before they were even caught?

I paid a brief visit last Monday to the Studio Babelsberg set of Brian Percival‘s The Book Thief, which was shooting on the outdoor World War II-era “European street.” This theatrical neighborhood has been used by Roman Polanski‘s The Pianist and Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Basterds, among many other productions. During a chat with producers Ken Blancato and Karen Rosenfelt I was reminded that Studio Babelsberg has lost its lease on the section of the lot where the set stands, and therefore the entire street is being demolished to make way for residential real estate. It breaks my heart but the same thing happened 50-odd years ago to the old MGM backlot in Culver City.

Studio Babelsberg’s European WWII set adjacent to main lot — Monday, 5.13, 3:45 pm.

Update: Zach Braff has responded to Pamela McLintock‘s 5.15 Hollywood Reporter story about his having landed a “full” financing deal for Wish I Was Here through Worldview Entertainment, which has prompted some to ask (a) why he’s holding on to his Kickstarter fund ($2.6 million) and/or (b) why Kickstarter contributors don’t just pull their support.

“The story out there about the movie being fully funded by some financier is wrong,” Braff writes. “I have said on here and in every interview I’ve done on this project that the film would be fully financed from three sources: (a) My Kickstarter Backers, (b) my own money and (c) Pre-Selling foreign theatrical distribution. Those three amounts will bring us to a budget of around 5 to 6 million dollars.

Every fledgling filmmaker is allowed at least one rank embarassment. This is a stab at an opening-credit sequence for a curiously lame short film that I made with a couple of friends in the ’70s. Never mind the particulars. It was called Beyond Embarassment (and not “embarassing,” as the clip is called). What the hell, I’m not that embarassed. It was just a little wank. No animals were killed during the making. The raincoat routine was inspired by a bit in Robert Downey Sr.‘s Putney Swope.

I think I knew it would prove vaguely embarassing later in life, whch is why I used the nom du cinema Peter Bongo.

I’m sitting in my Cannes apartment, damp and chilled from the rain and trying to get Amat Escalante‘s Heli out of my head. It’s a starkly drawn, no-frills, deeply ugly Mexican art film about the ravaging of Mexican society by drug traffickers and how poor people always take it in the neck. I respect Escalante (Sangre, Los Bastardos) and his austere mindset, but there would have to be something wrong with anyone who says they “liked” this movie. It uncovered every dark and fatalistic thought I’ve had about my life and about life in general, and generally sent me into a black-dog mood pit.