I am always very suspicious if colleagues who go off to film festivals and come back with a sun tan.
It is the annual bacchanale euphemistically termed the Cannes Film Festival and le tout Londres cinématique has gone off to do deals, quaff vast quantities of rosé and maybe watch the odd movie.
The festival opened with Woody Allen’s first French located movie, Midnight in Paris on which the word is good and commentators continue to be surprised that he can still be funny after all these years, as though he had got arthritis in his funny bone!
Lars von Trier has, yet again, stirred up controversy, less with his film, this time and more with his misjudged asides. Still Melancholia stars Kirsten Dunst and is due to be released here in September.
Another Cannes regular, Pedro Almodovar, has delivered his new film which has been warmly received. The Skin I Live In is his first collaboration with Antonio Banderas in many years and the chemistry is still working by all accounts.
As an armchair spectator for this event, I am most keen to see Lynn Ramsey’s adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, which will release here in October but I hope to run into at one of the later festivals that I will get to go and grace with my presence – probably Toronto in September.
For those of us unable to swan around La Croisette, there is a fine selection of last year’s Cannes selection in the next few weeks, including Luc Besson’s highly entertaining ‘Indiana Jones in a Skirt’ Adele Blanc-Sec, the Samurai epic 13 Assassins and the gripping thriller Julia’s Eyes. The world comes to Coventry – eventually!
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