At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, the eventual Palme d’Or winner “Anora” didn’t debut until Tuesday. Did this year’s big winner just launch on Wednesday?
Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” Debuts to Raves
By far the most glowing reception at Cannes so far was for Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” which premiered on Wednesday to a roaring ovation in the theater and rave reviews from critics. It’s the filmmaker’s highly anticipated follow-up to “The Worst Person in the World” and stars Stellan Skarsgard as a filmmaker who tries to reconnect with his daughter – played by Renate Reinsve – by making a movie in their old family home, with Elle Fanning as a big Hollywood movie star playing the role of his daughter.
In his review for TheWrap, critic Chase Hutchinson said Trier’s film strikes at the heart of the art form. Comparing the film favorably to Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical “The Fablemans,” Hutchinson wrote, “He does so not with one big blow, but in the steady accumulation of emotional gut punches that offer deep reflections about what it means to create art from a life that is not nearly as neatly packaged as what’s on screen. It’s a rich text, but a focused one, letting the gradual power of what it’s exploring sneak up on you until you are completely swept up in the vision.”
Buzz is already high that this could be this year’s Palme d’Or winner, which would be good news for distributor Neon who is behind “Sentimental Value.” We’ll find out Saturday.
Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor Heat Things Up
Wednesday also saw the debut of “The History of Sound,” a new WWI-era film starring Paul Mescal as a musician who strikes up a romance with a man played by Josh O’Connor. Oh, and he sings!
Our critic, Ben Croll, praised Mescal’s performance but said director Olivier Hermanus’ approach was disappointingly muted. “Even as this impossible love tale enters the lonesome stretch, the director never moves beyond a muted register thrumming only the quiet melancholy of a sensitive soul, dissatisfied with the life he’s built,” Croll wrote.
The film drew comparisons to “Brokeback Mountain,” but Mescal shrugged those off in a press conference on Thursday.
“When I look at ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ it’s dealing with repression, this film is pointed in the opposite direction,” he said. “To be honest, I find those comparisons lazy and frustrating.”
Hermanus added: “That movie wasn’t in our heads….it just shows there should be more forms about these nuances of queer relationships, beyond the context what most movies deal with. I felt that the idea of History of Sound, it wasn’t about the complications of their sexualit. That wasn’t the problem between them, rather what was going to keep them apart is that they would have other loves in their life.”
Julian Assange Doc Director Wants to Paint WikiLeaks Founder in a New Light
TheWrap spoke with director Eugene Jarecki about his new Julian Assange documentary “The Six Billion Dollar Man,” which he said he made with the aim of changing the narrative around the WikiLeaks founder.
“There’s a Cheshire Cat quality to Julian,” Jarecki told TheWrap. “He’s always kept people guessing, and a lot of that was strategic. He had to, especially when taking on the U.S. government. So, if you’re going to make a film about him, you can’t avoid reintroducing some gray areas of his humanity. He doesn’t come off as especially likable in the film, but he comes across as a full person. He deserves that.”
Getting more explicit, Jarecki said his film aims to paint Assange in a new light.
“I’m not here to do counter-propaganda,” Jarecki explained. “I’m here to speak truth to power, especially after being subjected to a decade-plus of deeply choreographed state propaganda. It’s been very convenient for the U.S. to cast him as Dr. Evil. Bill Hader even parodied him on ‘SNL’ as this cartoon villain. That helped distract from the actual crimes he exposed.”
How New Mexico Is Luring Film and TV Production
As part of TheWrap’s final Cannes Conversations with Brand Innovators, founder and CEO Sharon Waxman sat down with New Mexico’s film office director Steve Graham to discuss how his state is battling the “existential crisis” of production fleeing the United States.
Graham cited contraction in the industry after double strikes, slow COVID-19 recovery and mergers and acquisitions across the entertainment industry as primary indicators for the slump in production. He noted that his state is currently shooting 10 projects – film and series alike – down from 20 last spring.
“I think it’s not hyperbolic to say it’s an existential crisis,” Graham said. “I don’t really know policy well enough to understand how a national incentive would work. But if it were something that — anything that increases domestic production for us is good because, as I said, we’re very competitive among the states. So if it means that there’s more work being done in the US, it’s good for us.”
Watch the full interview below.