Saturday marks the final day of the Cannes Film Festival, with the usual closing ceremonies and awards presentations along with the out-of-competition premiere of Pixar’s “Elemental.” Let us all hope that Disney release earns better festival notices than Lucafilm’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
“Perfect Days” makes a perfect debut.
Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” was the hero of the day, earning strong notices and the now-standard standing ovation. TheWrap’s Nicholas Barber called it “an endearing, admiring portrait of a decent man.” The near-consensus was that Wenders had made his best narrative film in a very long time. The film has already been acquired by NEON, which has been on a shopping spree with “this film”Perfect Days, “Robot Dreams” and “Anatomy of a Fall.”
“Last Summer” debuts to a complicated reception.
“Can a film without much spark really be said to fizzle?” So asks TheWrap’s Ben Croll in his brutal pan of Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer.” Breillat’s first film in a decade, a remake of May el-Toukhy’s acclaimed “Queen of Hearts,” debuted to deeply mixed (but not entirely negative) feedback. Irish Times critic Donald Clarke noted that it “plays like a generic sexy stepmom French flick,” while the film earned other comparisions to Todd Haynes’ just-debuted “May December.”
Some folks had a good time with the not-entirely dramatic story about a middle-aged woman who sleeps with her barely-legal stepson, with the performances being praised and at least some of the iffy reactions being chalked up to unease about the subject matter.
Vertical pays big bucks for “Hot Mess”
In aqquisition updates, Vertical nabbed North American distribution rights to the Emma Roberts comedy “Hot Mess.” The film, penned by Gabrielle D’Amico and directed by Katie Locke O’Brian, stars Roberts as a young woman implodes on a dating show and ends up back home with her parents. It will shoot early next year.
Meanwhile, Martin Scorsese announced that 60 hours of rushes from Agnes Varda’s 2000 documentary “The Gleaners and I” will be available for the next generation of international filmmakers courtesy of an educational initiative from France’s National Audiovisual Institute and Ciné-Tamaris.
“Agnès was the real spirit of cinema and she could make a film out of anything at any time,” said Scorsese. ”I thought that with all this footage that was there, there must be more in it. Others might find a way to have their point of view based on her footage.”
