The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing and we’ve got your must-read recap on everything that is going on in the sunny south of France, including Peter Jackson getting his honorary Palme d’Or and the “Fast and the Furious” crew showing up and making a lot of loud engine-revving sounds (we’re assuming).
Peter Jackson Gets His Flowers, Defends AI
Peter Jackson, the celebrated filmmaker behind “Heavenly Creatures,” “The Frighteners” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (plus its subsequent “Hobbit” trilogy), held a masterclass as part of his appearance at the festival, which also includes him receiving an honorary Palme d’Or.
At the masterclass, the director, who has always had a keen eye on technology, said that he doesn’t “dislike” AI being used in film production. This isn’t exactly surprising; he’s used the technology before in his Beatles documentary “The Beatles: Get Back,” which helped him sharpen footage and enhance audio from the original filming sessions. He joked that he thinks that AI is “going to destroy the world,” but when it comes to using it himself in films “I don’t dislike it at all.”
Jackson continued: “To me, it’s a special effect. It’s no different from other special effects.”
Others may disagree with that assessment, given that AI learns from existing art and has lasting impacts on the environment, thanks to the amount of data required to generate images.
“A lot of the current environment, everyone’s so worried about AI … I don’t think a Gollum-type character or a generated character has any hope for winning any awards, which is a bit unfair, especially in the Andy Serkis case where it’s not an AI-generated performance, it’s a human-generated performance 100% of the way,” Jackson remarked.
Elsewhere, Jackson said that Andy Serkis was really the only person to direct the new “Lord of the Rings” film “The Hunt for Gollum” (“I thought the most exciting version of this movie is if Andy Serkis makes it”) and said that he is writing a new “Tintin” movie while in Cannes, which he hopes to direct. Steven Spielberg directed the first Jackson-produced film, which was released back in 2011.
“The deal was that Steven directs one and I direct another,” said Jackson. “Steven did his film, then for 15 years [later] I haven’t made mine. I feel very awkward about that.”
Renate Reinsve Returns to Cannes
For TheWrap’s Cannes magazine cover story, Steve Pond spoke with Cannes regular Renate Reinsve — who was previously at the fest with “The Worst Person in the World” and “Sentimental Value” — about making her return with “Fjord.” The drama by Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”) stars Reinsve and Sebastian Stan as a Norwegian-Romanian couple who move to a small town in Norway, where their conservative religious lifestyle clashes with their liberal neighbors’ values, putting uncomfortable scrutiny on their parenting decisions.
Reflecting on last year’s 19-minute standing ovation for “Sentimental Value,” Reinsve said she had resigned herself to the possibility that the film wouldn’t make a splash.
“We were open to thinking that it might go nowhere,” she said. “It was a personal movie, and you don’t know until you show it to an audience. And it’s the same now, going there with ‘Fjord.’ We don’t know how it’s going to be received. I will always be nervous about that, I think.”
The Family Comes to Cannes
“The Fast and the Furious,” the underdog street-racing movie that kicked off an unlikely global franchise that is still going to this day (the next installment arrives in 2028), will screen at the festival for its 25th anniversary. And on Cannes’ second day, there was a star-studded photo call with Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, joined by producer Neil H. Mortiz and Paul Walker’s daughter Meadow. (Walker died tragically in an automobile accident in 2013.)
After all the black-tie galas and glitzy evening gowns, there was something refreshing about seeing Diesel in his black T-shirt and white jeans posing for photos. Who says Cannes is pretentious? When the “Fast and Furious” family shows up, expect the unexpected.
Cannes Film Market Sets Records
While the Film Festival takes up much of the attention, there is also the Cannes Film Market happening simultaneously, which attracts buyers, sellers and distributors to the south of France. This is where, in the 1980s, companies like Cannon would sell entire movies based on little more than a well-airbrushed poster and an intriguing logline and where countless deals are currently made. And this year’s Cannes Film Market is setting records.
16,000 market participants are at Cannes this week, from more than 140 countries. And while the United States, France and the United Kingdom remain the top three countries by attendance, Japan (this year’s Country of Honor) has recorded an almost 50% surge in registration. They are now the fifth most represented country at the Cannes Film Market.
There are 1,700 buyers and 600 companies exhibiting films at this year’s Cannes Film Market, with 1,500 festival and market screenings and 250 industry events. As for what will be bought, what will be sold and what will be exhibited? That remains to be seen. But there certainly is enough product to go around.
Reviews? We’ve Got ‘Em
The Festival started off with the debut of Pierre Salvadori’s “The Electric Kiss,” which didn’t exactly get the electric response that the festival or filmmakers were probably hoping for. In fact, it had a lukewarm response, with our critic Steve Pond describing the film as “a little clunky, kind of messy and oddly entertaining.”
This isn’t exactly out of character, as Pond also noted that “in recent years has given its opening-night berth to a string of movies that delivered sporadic pleasures but were never among the highlights of those festivals: Amelie Bonnin’s curious ‘Leave One Day’ last year, preceded by Quentin Dupieux’s goofy ‘The Second Act,’ Maïwenn’s inert ‘Jeanne du Barry,’ Michel Hazanavicius’ wacky ‘Final Cut’ and Leos Carax’s wild musical ‘Annette.’” How could anyone forget “Annette?”
It’s odd to think how “The Electric Kiss,” set in a sideshow in 1920s Paris, could be as dull as many of the reviews are suggesting, but that seems to be exactly the case. As Pond concluded: “Part Gallic rom-com and part meditation on grief, ‘The Electric Kiss’ slips and slides and provides a slight way to begin the film festival, but not an unpleasant one. As usual, Cannes kicked off with an appetizer; the main courses will follow.”
Some of those main courses?
Vietnamese director and graphic artist Phuong Mai Nguyen’s debut animated feature “In Waves,” which is playing as part of the independent International Critics’ Week section of the festival. Pond said that “for all the virtuoso hand-drawn animation, at heart this is an emotional story – and, make no mistake, a major tearjerker of a rom-dram,” part lovingly animated exploration of grief, part traditional coming-of-age melodrama.
There is also Kôji Fukada’s drama “Nagi Notes,” “a film defined by a sense that the filmmaker is trying to chip away at something,” said Pond. He said that the film wasn’t as powerful as Fukada’s recent “Love Life,” but that “there’s still something here that you can’t fully dismiss.”
And Diego Luna, hot off the success of Lucasfilm’s hit Disney+ series “Andor” (among many other things), is at Cannes this year with his first film as a director in 10 years (since 2016’s little-seen drama “Mr. Pig”). “Ashes,” Pond wrote, “is a quiet character study that gets its power from understatement and its style from embracing silence and darkness. Luna returned to directing not to show off, but to make a few points about compassion and empathy.”
“Ashes,” adapted from a 2022 novel by Brenda Navarro, is a family drama that seems to hold a subtle power. Pond said that Luna launches “a quiet return to directing, but it’s unsettling and hard to shake.”
