Ken Loach, Photocall for Jimmy's Hall © AFP
- Day 9 - Thursday, May 22
Recap of the ninth day of the 67th Cannes Film Festival (Festival de Cannes), which runs until May 25, 2014.
Two Compétition films were screened today:
- Jimmy's Hall by Ken Loach (UK, Ireland, France).
The latest from the veteran British director, who screens his work in the main competition for the twelfth (rumored to be the final) time in his much decorated career. Loach is a previous winner of the Palme d'Or (2006: The Wind that Shakes the Barley), and the Jury Prize on three separate occasions, the most recent being for (2011: The Angels' Share).
Official Synopsis:
In 1921, Jimmy Gralton's sin was to build a dance hall on a rural crossroads in Ireland, where young people could come to learn, to argue, to dream... but above all to dance and have fun.
- Mommy by Xavier Dolan (Canada).
After paying his dues in the Directors' Fortnight and Un Certain Regard sections, the young Canadian director makes his main competition debut, with his fifth feature film in as many years.
Official Synopsis:
A widowed single mom finds herself burdened with the full-time custody of her explosive 15-year-old ADHD son. As they try to make ends meet and struggle with their impetuous and unpredictable ménage, the new girl across the street, Kyla, benevolently offers needed support. Together, they find a new sense of balance, and hope is regained.
In the Un Certain Regard section:
- Charlie's Country by Rolf de Heer (Australia).
For his fourteenth feature film, the previous Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize winner (2006: Ten Canoes), returns to Cannes with a film co-written and starring friend and frequent collaborator, Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil (Walkabout).
Official Synopsis:
Blackfella Charlie is out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws now. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in so doing sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.
- Misunderstood (Incompresa) by Asia Argento (Italy, France).
The Italian film star makes her first trip to the section, with her third feature film as a director. Charlotte Gainsbourg co-stars.
Official Synopsis:
Aria is a 9 year-old girl who unwillingly finds herself to live the violent separation of her parents, drifted apart from her half-sisters in an extended family. Her parents do not love her as much as she would like. Aria, pulled back and forth in the conflict between her father and her mother, rejected and pushed away, walks through the city with a striped bag and a black cat, touching the abyss and the tragedy and just trying to protect her innocence.
Competition Film Jimmy's Hall directed by Ken Loach UK, Ireland, France
Quotes from the press conference: "It's not a duty, it's not like work. I don't feel like I'm required to make a film every six months, it's just my passion. It's like a hard drug, I need to express myself and to create."Xavier Dolan on his prolific work output.
"My own father impresses me, but the father figure in general does not. With mothers, I feel a totally different need to depict strong women. I know this doesn't always please people, but for me it's an absolute necessity."Dolan on mothers and female characters.
"Music is the soul of a movie. For me in Mommy it was more about music playing in the film rather than on the film. All of the songs are on radios, in cars, in bars. I wanted the music to be incorporated into the lives of the characters."Dolan on music.
"I am not scared that people will hate my films. I have the fear of falling down those red steps, I have the fear of stuttering when I shouldn't. But I don't have the fear of telling a story, and creating it with people that inspire me. "Dolan on his fears.
Critical response:"Undoubtedly a major contender for the Palme d'Or, and undoubtedly one of our top films of the festival, nothing in Dolan's previous work, which we have liked to varying degrees, really warned us that he was going to so comprehensively slay us with a story this warm, human and humane."Jessica Kiang (The Playlist)
"Dolan's characters endure a series of seismic up and downs, the movie maintains a vitality and movement that goes beyond craftsmanship to illustrate Dolan's evolution as an artist."Eric Kohn (IndieWire)
"It’s uncanny how much Dolan’s style and overall solipsism have evolved in five years’ time, resulting in a funny, heartbreaking and, above all, original work that feels derivative of no one, not even himself."Peter Debruge (Variety)
"Filled with tenderness and compassion, Mommy may well be Dolan’s most accomplished film to date."Allan Hunter (Screen Daily)
"Feels like a strong step forward, striking his most considered balance yet between style and substance, drama-queen posturing and real heartfelt depth."Stephen Dalton (The Hollywood Reporter)
"It comes at you baying and rattling like an early Pedro Almodóvar comedy, threaded through with an infectious love of full-throttle melodrama, and flinging its energy right back to the cheap seats, thanks to Dolan's customarily zippy design choices."Tim Robey (The Telegraph)
"Even with certain elements left to puzzle over, Dolan's fifth feature is a sophisticated and sincere celebration of motherhood. Once he killed his mother. Now he has made her live forever."Sophie Monks Kaufman (Little White Lies)
"Self-indulgently overlong (a trait shared by several Competition films) but despite this, the energy and sheer visual bravura carry it along on a wave of emotionally truthful performances, with narrative twists of considerable ingenuity."Richard Mowe (Eye For Film)
"Reminiscent of one of Almódovar's heroines, Dorval balances perfectly her brashness and brass, with a tenderness and sensitivity she cannot allow herself to fully express lest her financial and familial problems overwhelm her entirely." John Bleasdale (Cine-Vue)
Un Certain Regard Film Charlie's Country directed by
Rolf de Heer Australia
Critical response:"Argento seems to have learned from the experience of her overwrought first features, or maybe from life itself, that there is more to childhood than Gothic horror, and the mischievous moments of being a kid captured in Misunderstood show a filmmaker who is maturing in the direction of audience appeal."Deborah Young (The Hollywood Reporter)
The
2014 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14-25, be sure to return for our daily coverage!
Screening Tomorrow at
#Cannes2014 (Friday, May 23):
- Clouds of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas (In Competition)
- Leviathan by Andrey Zvyagintsev (In Competition)
See our other coverage of the 67th Cannes Film Festival: - Day 1: (Grace of Monaco)
- Day 2: (Mr. Turner, Timbuktu, Party Girl, That Lovely Girl)
- Day 3: (The Captive, Winter Sleep, The Blue Room, Amour Fou)
- Days 4-5: (Saint Laurent, Wild Tales, The Homesman, The Wonders)
- Day 6: (Foxcatcher, Maps to the Stars, A Girl at my Door, Xenia, Bird People)
- Day 7: (Two Days, One Night, Still the Water, Titli, Lost River, The Salt of the Earth)
- Day 8: (The Search, Goodbye to Language, Fantasia, Snow in Paradise)