Jerzy Skolimowski‘s Four Nights With Anna will have its world premiere in Cannes as the opening film of the 40th Directors’ Fortnight showcase, according to Variety‘s John Hopewell.
Oddly (or perhaps not so), the IMDB doesn’t even list Anna on Skolimowski’s page (although it does list an ’08 project called America, a period drama written by Eyes Wide Shut‘s Frederic Raphael that’s based on a Susan Sontag work).
The Polish-born Skolimowski will turn 70 on May 5th. I will always revere his direction of Deep End (’71), The Shout (’78) and particularly Moonlighting (’82), which I saw at the New York Film Festival in September 1982. For me the world is divided into two camps — those who immediately think of Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd when they hear Moonlighting, and those who think of Skolimowksi and Jeremy Irons. At best, we’re talking about a 98% to 2% split.
Everyone regarded Skolimowski as a world-class helmer back in the day. (Not that he’s less admired now.) I was honored to interview him at the Algonquin Hotel just prior to Moonlighting‘s commercial debut. Things slowed down for him in the ’90s, but he’s been acting in recent years in films such as Eastern Promises, Before Night Falls, L.A. Without a Map and Mars Attacks!
Four Nights With Anna, which costars Polish actors Kinga Preis and Artur Steranko, is described as “a tale of amour fou, chronicling one man’s voyeuristic relationship with a woman as it evolves over four days.” That’s Skolimowski, all right — always the sensualist.
The full Directors’ Fortnight’s program will be announced Friday. Vareity’s speculation about the lineup includes Hunger, about IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands from British helmer Steve McQueen; and Francesco Munzi‘s Il resto della notte, an immigration phobia drama set in Italy’s wealthy northeast region.
Other titles being talked up are Acne, from Uruguay’s Federico Veiroz; Tony Manero from Chile’s Pablo Larrain (about “a serial killer obsessed with John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever character), Argentine dierctor Lisandro Alonso’s Liverpool, Catalan Albert Serra’s El cant dels ocells, Radu Muntean’s Boogie and Claire Simon‘s Les Bureaux de Dieu, described as a “potentially polemical” French abortion doc.
