Jeffrey Wells
‘90s, Aughts & 20Teens…Pre-Woke Terror
Incidentally: Returning to the NYC area after a couple of weeks in Europe always bums me out. Architectural beauty, magnificent food, excellent public transportation — NYC is way, way behind European cities in almost every regard. Welcome back to down-at-the-heels Schitzburgh.
Oslo Has The Gall To Turn Cold
My relatively brief stopover in Oslo began today around 5:30 pm, when my flight from Stockholm touched down. I was on the street in the center of town an hour later, and it felt cold like mid-March, not to mention windy. My teeth weren’t chattering, but they almost were. Thanks, Oslo!
In the wake of the warm Cannes weather (mid 60s) and even Connecticut’s getting-warmer-by-the-day climate, I felt plunged into a misery pit. Thank God I brought a jean jacket and a big scarf on top of the blazer I was wearing. My Airbnb host says it was warm and placid a day or so ago, and then suddenly arctic air just moved in like an advancing army.
Whatever happened to global warming?
Before catching tomorrow’s 1:10 pm flight to JFK I was going to search around for the spacious home that a good portion of Sentimental Value was shot in, but not in this damn weather! Not just cold but a bit dampish. This is sweaters-scarves-and-ski-parka weather, and it’s almost June, for Chrissake.
Cannes Juries Always Do Something To Piss Me Off
So I wouldn’t be totally gobsmacked if they don’t give the Palme d’Or this evening to Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value. They’ll look like stubborn fools if this happens, but juries have been known to argue with consensus opinion. Just to defy it, I mean.
HE arrives in Oslo around 5:40 pm, or an hour before Cannes award ceremony begins.
I was on my train for Nice St. Augustin three hours before power the Cannes power outage.
Three Loutish Zoomers Bail on “Lyndon”
I sat next to three empty Coke bottles in their early to mid 20s — a foxy girl and two short-haired dudes — at today’s 4K Barry Lyndon screening. Right away I knew they were trouble. Both guys got up to use the facilities right after sitting down, which is what frisky, ants-in-their-pants lowlifes always do.
And then Thierry Fremaux invited Lyndon costar Marisa Berenson to take the stage and share some recollections, which she did. And then the lights finally came down and the film began.
The Coke bottle trio couldn’t handle the unhurried 18th Century pacing along with John Alcott’s exquisitely lighted, old-school compositions. They watched about ten minutes’ worth before bailing. You insects…you miserable know-nothings.
Last Full Day
On this, my last day of Cannes ‘25, I’m shooting for four screenings.
That’s not counting the 2 pm showing of the 4K Barry Lyndon, which I want to attend because I’ll never again have a chance to see this 1975 classic projected upon a big, bountiful screen in one of finest theatres in the world. I’m figuring I can watch about 75 minutes’ worth.
Blind Faith: “Woman and Child”
I’m very sorry but Woman and Child, which I struggled through earlier today, is mediocre and overly strident, certainly on the part of lead actress / protagonist Parinaz Izadyar. I simply didn’t believe it. Just because it’s an Iranian film doesn’t assure quality. A family-squabbling drama, Woman and Child is way below the level of, say, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, to name but one example.
“Moving Away”? Aside From Brute Force Action Realm, Films Have Been Diluting Alpha Male Factor For Years…Mister, There Is No Stardom Without Alpha
Paul Mescal, one of HE’s least favored actors (not in the least due to his sure-to-be-ruinous casting as Paul McCartney), scores again with this press conference declaration. If Mescal is starring, you can be sure that the film in question will be open to squishy, sensitive and vulnerable.
And no, it’s not “lazy” to compare The History of Sound to Brokeback Mountain. Both films are mining very similar turf.
“Sentimental Value” Reps My Idea of a Cannes Grand Slam
I saw Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value last night at 10:30 pm, exiting around 12:40 am. I was afraid it might not live up to expectations, but no worries — I began to feel not only stirred and satisfied but deeply moved and delighted by the half-hour mark, and then it just got better and better.
For my money this is surely the Palme d’Or winner. I wanted to see it again this morning at 8:30 am. Yes, it’s that good, that affecting, that headstrong and explorational. A 15-minute-long standing ovation at the Grand Lumiere, and all the snippy, snooty Cannes critics are jumping onboard.
But what matters, finally, is what HE thinks and feel deep down, and that, basically, is “yes, yes…this is what excellent, emotionally riveting family dramas do…especially with brilliant actors like Renata Reinsve (truly amazing…she really kills) and Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning topping the ensemble cast”
But I was really too whipped to tap anything out when I returned to the pad at 1:15 am. I managed a grand total of 4.5 hours of sleep, and am now at a Salles Bunuel screening of Eugene Jarecki‘s The Six Billion Dollar Man…beginning in a few.
Sentimental Value (why do I keep calling it Sentimental Gesture in my head?) is a complex, expertly jiggered, beautifully acted Ingmar Bergman-esque family drama that feels at times like Woody Allen‘s Hannah and Her Sisters but with less comic snap…it’s more of a fundamentally anxious, sad, sometimes very dark but humanist dramedy (a flicking comic edge, a Netflix putdown or two). A film that’s completely receptive and open to all the unsettled cross-current stuff that defines any shattered, high-achieving family, and this one in particular.
Emotional uncertainty and relationship upheavals are in plentiful supply.
Set in Oslo, it’s basically about an estranged relationship between Skarsgard’s Gustav Berg, a blunt-spoken, film-director father who hates watching plays, and his two adult daughters — Reinsve’s Nora Berg, a prominent stage and TV actress who’s a bundle of nerves, anxiety and looming depression, and Lilleaas’s Agnes, Nora’s younger sister who’s not in “the business.”
Gustav’s career has been slumping but now he’s returning to filmmaking with a purportedly excellent script that’s partly based on his mother’s life (although he denies this), and he wants Nora to star in it. She refuses over communication and trust issues, and so Gustav hires Fanning’s Rachel Kemp, a big-time American actress, to play Nora’s role.
I could sense right away that Kemp would eventually drop out and that Nora would overcome her anger and step into the role at the last minute. And I knew the film would explore every angle and crevasse before this happens.
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And it really digs down and goes to town within a super-attuned family dynamic…steadfast love, familial warmth, sudden tears, extra-marital intrigue, stage fright, film industry satire, thoughts of suicide…nothing in the way of soothing or settled-down comfort until the very end, and even then…but it’s wonderful.
I have to attend the Sentimental Value press conference at 12:45 pm…breathing down my neck.
Worst Tuxedo Garb in World History
A producer with a shaved head wore these atrocious, tent-sized tuxedo pants prior to this afternoon’s Directors Fortnight screening of Lucky Lu.
