Like female directors, American directors are sometimes in short supply at the Cannes Film Festival. But just as a couple of the women in competition have shaken things up this year — first Maren Ade with “Toni Erdmann” and then Andrea Arnold with “American Honey” — a pair of young American directors and a British director telling a thoroughly American story, have also made a splash in the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
The Americans are Matt Ross with “Captain Fantastic” and Michael O’Shea with “The Transfiguration,” while the Brit is David Mackenzie with “Hell or High Water.” All are indie directors making quintessentially indie films, the kind that seem more likely to premiere at Sundance than Cannes.
In fact, “Captain Fantastic” did premiere at Sundance in January; Cannes typically invites one Sundance project to make the trip to the Croisette, and Ross’ film landed the slot this year.
At Sundance, TheWrap’s reviews editor Alonso Duralde wrote of “Captain Fantastic,” “At Saturday night’s premiere, I found myself laughing and crying through the tale of Ben (Viggo Mortensenabove), who raises his six children off the grid and away from civilization’s clutches.
“The film looks great, whether the characters are in the forest primeval or surrounded by mini-malls and golf courses — the great Stéphane Fontaine (‘A Prophet’) is director of photography — and editor Joseph Krings (‘Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead’) keeps the story moving along at a brisk clip, keeping the audience from feeling like they’re watching yet another Sundance movie about an odd family on a road trip,” Duralde said.
The audience at the film’s Cannes premiere on Tuesday clearly agreed, greeting Ross’ wry and touching film with a loud ovation.
“The Transfiguration”
Of the two American indies that came to Cannes unseen, “The Transfiguration” was the bigger surprise. It’s a genre movie from a first-time American director who submitted his film on a whim and was amazed to find that he’d been accepted.
His film is about a shy black teenager, Milo, in a poor New York City neighborhood. Bullied at school and by local gang members, Milo is obsessed with vampire movies to the point where he stealthily pursues a sideline as a once-a-month bloodsucker — an obsession that appears to date back to finding his mother’s body after she slit her wrists.
He also critiques vampire movies and books by one criterion — are they accurate? — though it’s unclear whether he is a reliable judge of that: He vomits after most of his kills, after all, and he may well just really want to be a vampire.
An urban teen vampire wannabe who might be faking it is a new kind of vampire-movie protagonist — and while it’s hard to put a truly fresh spin on a genre that has seen such recent reinventions as “Let the Right One In,” O’Shea just about pulls it off.
Eric Ruffin’s Milo is disturbed and disturbing; the guy’s idea of a first date is to show gory online videos of slaughterhouses. And the movie is a low-key, low-budget, low-energy thriller, where neither we nor the character can see a way out but it’s clear he’s on a road to ruin.
Or is he? Vampires, after all, are immortal, right? Is that Milo’s way out of the projects, to outlive the gang members who are giving him problems? “The Transfiguration” deals with that question, among many others, and manages to seem novel, energetic and yeah, a little scary along the way.
“Hell or High Water”
David Mackenzie‘s “Hell or High Water” is another genre movie, a Western crime thriller of sorts starring Ben Foster and Chris Pine as brothers who take to robbing a string of small-town Texas banks in an attempt to pay off the house that a bank is trying to foreclose on after the death of heir mother.
With Jeff Bridges in a priceless turn as a grumpy Texas ranger nearing retirement even though he’s clearly always the smartest (and funniest) guy in the room, “Hell or High Water” works as a thriller, as a twist on cops ‘n’ robbers, as a character study of some hard-luck losers in a world where, as Foster’s character says at one point, “I never met anybody who got away with anything, ever.”
Foster’s the crazy one, Pine is the (relatively) sane one, Bridges is the sly and sharp one, and they tangle across a batch of small Texas towns until the bullets start flying and things go bad, as we always figured they would. But we don’t know how they’ll go bad — one of the pleasures of Mackenzie’s film is that the familiar beats don’t come in familiar ways.
“Hell or High Water,” though, also has a killer soundtrack featuring real-deal singers like Townes Van Zandt, Waylon Jennings and Gillian Welch, and more on its mind than just letting the bullets fly. There’s a wonderfully elegiac feel to the movie, which spends its time hanging out in a world of people and places that are being discarded.
This is a thriller that thinks about things like predatory banking and income inequality, although Mackenzie is smart enough to use that to deepen the story, not to overwhelm it. (His last film was the gritty prison drama “Starred Up.”) Almost everybody on screen is part of a dying breed, and that includes the ones who don’t actually die.
But mostly, it’s great because it surely must be the first movie ever to play at Cannes with a line that nobody has ever spoken along the Croisette before: “Sure feels like beer o’clock!”
11 Best Cannes Moments, From Madonna to Jerry Lewis' Hotel-Trashing Poodle (Photos)
"In 1991, Sean Penn had directed a movie ['The Indian Runner'] and Madonna was in a different movie ['Truth or Dare']. This was after their marriage had broken up. Roger and I went to a nice party, and he spoke to Charles Bronson and Sean Penn and this other lady sitting next to Sean. And eventually Roger said to me, 'I'm tired and I have to get up early, but I know my editors will want something about Sean and Madonna. So I have to wait until she gets here.' I said, 'You've been talking to her for the last half hour.'"
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Jessica Chastain: "Cannes was really my first festival. I was there with 'The Tree of Life,' and I walked down my first red carpet with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, the three of us holding each other's hands. But I was also there for this very small film I made for $100 a day ['Take Shelter'], which won the grand prize at Critics' Week, and 'The Wettest County in the World' [renamed 'Lawless'], which had a bidding war that Harvey Weinstein won...
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Jessica Chastain continues: "And on the last day of the festival I was back home, having breakfast with one of the producers of 'Wettest County,' and my phone kept going off. And I finally picked it up, and there was a text: 'Palme d'Or, "Tree of Life."' I actually started crying in the middle of the restaurant. I feel like my career was born in Cannes."
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Mark Damon, CEO, Foresight Unlimited: "We brought Jerry Lewis to Cannes way back in 1983 for 'The King of Comedy.' Well, he not only insisted on a suite for himself, but also a separate suite for his dog at the Carlton. A tiny little French poodle had a suite all to himself! The dog wound up shitting all over the carpet and the Carlton Hotel expelled Jerry and his dog before he could do any promotional work for us."
Jerry Lewis
Elizabeth Kim Schwan, President of International, Covert Media: "In one of my early years of attending Cannes, I went to the premiere of 'About Schmidt.' Walking down the red carpet I was enjoying the moment, looking up at the Palais and the steps to the theater. Suddenly the paparazzi began to take notice of me, yelling at me to get my attention, and the flashes started going off. I wondered who they were mistaking me for when suddenly I realized they were yelling 'bouge!' to me, which means 'move!' Turns out Gina Gershon was right behind me."
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Stuart Ford, CEO, IM Global: "My No. 1 memory arises from a few years ago when Martin Scorsese and I spent a day in a Majestic penthouse suite jointly pitching key foreign distributors on his career-long passion project 'Silence' [now in postproduction]. It was Marty's first-ever experience personally pre-selling his movie in Cannes -- but I was all the time wondering to myself, 'Why the hell does he need me here?' That's a guy who knows how to pitch a movie."
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Nadine de Barros, co-founder, Fortitude International: "I was at the Majestic, and there was a buyer at the concierge desk -- he'd forgotten to put his suitcase into the taxi. The concierge calls the airport, then turns to the buyer and says, 'I'm sorry, but your suitcase? Kaboom!' The airport had blown the suitcase up since it was sitting out front and no one was there to claim it. The buyer did the entire Cannes market with holes burned in his sweater, suits and pants -- anything that hadn't been totally burned to a crisp. That's why I hand-carry all my clothes on the plane."
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Mimi Steinbauer, CEO, Radiant Films International: "My very favorite Cannes memory is being up at a fabulous chateau for New Line's party when we were selling the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. The best moment was when black horses and horsemen came riding across the lawn in front of the chateau. As the evening drew to a close the owner of the chateau, a dashing older gentlemen seemingly straight out of a movie set, asked me to move to France and live there with him--not really my cup of tea, but a fun path-not-chosen moment in life."
Joni Sighvatsson, chairman, Scanbox International: "My first Cannes was back in 1986, with my then-partner at Propaganda Films, Steve Golin, and Michael Kuhn. The three of us rented a tiny apartment, bunking together to make ends meet, running up and down the Croisette talking to anyone that would listen. Fast-forward four years, we were standing alongside David Lynch on the Palais stage, accepting the Palme D' Or for 'Wild at Heart.' That night was a blur, but we partied hard at the Carlton, and all I remember is the five-figure champagne bill."
Laura Walker, CEO, AG Capital: "In 2011 or 2012 I got a call in the middle of the night from someone telling me Sean Combs' yacht needed to be parked at the old port next to the Palais. I made some calls begging, borrowing and negotiating to make it happen. I got him the only parking spot where his yacht would fit, and I became his agent after that. Then he threw a big party, which was very generous, and I got to invite all my friends."
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Ashok Amritraj, CEO, Hyde ParkEntertainment: "For many years, we used to have a party on a boat. I remember the last year the weather was so bad that I had more guests throwing up than watching the fashion show we put on, with models walking around. It may not be the happiest story, but it illustrates how unpredictable Cannes is at every turn."
Joachim Trier, director: "My grandfather, Erik Løchen, made a small Norwegian film, 'The Chasers,' that competed in the main competition in 1960, in the same program as Antonioni, Fellini, Buñuel, Bergman -- can you imagine? And the Norwegian media and public didn't really care. So when I was there last year with 'Louder Than Bombs' and I walked up the staircase to the Grand Palais as the first co-produced Norwegian film in the main competition in 36 years, I was thinking about my grandfather, who passed away when I was 9. And now the Norwegian media cared."
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Cannes veterans tell TheWrap their favorite stories about the festival