Cannes 2014: Reporter's diary
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By: HCarrasco
Added: 27-06-14
- A host of stars have been on the Cote d'Azur for the 67th Cannes Film Festival, one of the key events in the film industry calendar and a magnet for film-makers, journalists and hopefuls from across the globe.
This year's event has been characterised by a significant British presence, with films from Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in contention for the prestigious Palme d'Or award and several other titles showcased in other areas of the programme.
The BBC's Neil Smith spent nine days on the French Riviera and has been posting regular updates on this year's festivities.
Here he reports on the films, the stars and the parties that he saw, spoke to and attended.
WEDNESDAY 21 MAY 16:00 (15:00 BST) Boorman's latest film draws on the film-maker's past for inspiration My final afternoon in Cannes was made memorable by an entertaining encounter with John Boorman, the veteran British director best known for such modern classics as Point Blank, Deliverance and Excalibur.
In all fairness, John's more recent output has not matched up to those earlier career highlights. But the 81-year-old keeps plugging away and was back at Cannes this year with a follow-up of sorts to his 1987 film Hope and Glory.
Queen and Country, like its predecessor, draws on Boorman's own past for inspiration. Yet while Hope and Glory looked at growing up in London during World War II, his latest jumps forward to the early 1950s, when he did his national service.
What follows is a nostalgic vision of a more innocent England that made me feel a little homesick when I saw it on Tuesday, for all its slight clunkiness and Carry On Sergeant-style humour.
Some people, Sir Michael Caine among them, are of the opinion that the youth of today would benefit from a period of mandatory conscription.
Boorman is not dismissive of that view, though he does offer caveats on what form that service should take.
"The people who say [it should be brought back] feel it gives you discipline, makes you into a man and all that. The problem is it wouldn't really have a purpose," he says.
"The reason they brought it in was that Britain had garrisons all over the world - in Egypt, Malaya, Kenya and Malta - and they had to be manned.
"War today is much more specialised, the army is more technological, and robots are being developed so you won't really need soldiers at all.
"National Service would perhaps be a good thing, but not for the purpose of making soldiers. Were it to come back for a different and better purpose - like the Peace Corps in America, where they send the youth out to underdeveloped countries - there would be a reason for it."
The BBC's Neil Smith on the steps of the Palais in Cannes Having made films since the 1960s, Boorman has worked with a host of stars from Lee Marvin and Burt Reynolds to Pierce Brosnan, Brendan Gleason and TV's Kim Cattrall.
Queen and Country, however, sees him marshalling a more fresh-faced, less experienced ensemble. Which does he find the easier?
"When I had my first child, I developed a theory about bringing up children," the director says by way of explanation. "But when I had my second, I found I had to adapt and modify that theory.
"By the time I had four children" - he has seven in all, among them actor and documentary-maker Charley - "I gave up theory altogether.
"It's the same with actors. I used to have theories about how to deal with them, until I realised they are all different.
"They all need different things from me and different approaches."
Boorman has a wealth of anecdotes and insights that makes any time spent in his company a pleasure.
He also has strong views about Britain's class system and its royal family that suggests there probably won't be a knighthood heading his way, not that he'd be likely to accept it.
All in all, meeting him was as good a way as any to round off nine hectic, eventful and exhilarating days at the world's biggest and craziest film festival.
I'll leave you with this photo of myself on the steps of the Palais. Next time I'm up there, I hope to be wearing a tuxedo.
WEDNESDAY 21 MAY 11:30 (10:30 BST) Director Michel Hazanavicius (left) returned to Cannes with his wife, actress Berenice Bejo Another day, another letdown - in this case The Search, Michel Hazanavicius's follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Artist.
The long road that took that movie to Oscar glory in 2012 began the previous year at Cannes, the first festival to embrace the French director's affectionate homage to silent cinema.
This time, alas, Cannes may prove something of a dead end, judging by the half-hearted applause and audible boos that greeted his remake of a 1948 film of the same title.
There were even a few whistles during this morning's press screening, suggesting some critics had made their mind up on its merits long before the end credits.
Set in the aftermath of World War II, the original version saw Montgomery Clift as an American soldier who set out to reunite a lost Czech boy with his mother.
Berenice Bejo plays an EU delegate who tries to help a nine-year-old boy Hazanavicius updates the story to 1999 and the second Chechen War, using the plight of an orphaned nine-year-old refugee as a far from subtle symbol of the West's widespread indifference to the conflict.
Berenice Bejo - aka Mrs Hazanavicius - plays an EU delegate who takes the boy under her wing while trying to alert Strasbourg to the carnage on its doorstep.
Meanwhile, a young Russian private finds soldiering is not what it is cracked up to be, setting up a climactic twist you do not have to be psychic to see coming.
Earnest, mawkish and punishingly slow, this two-and-a-half hour slog boasts some impressive battle sequences but feels like one long preach to the already converted.
It's the last film I will see during my stint in Cannes, and one that sadly confirms my overall impression that this has been far from a vintage year.
WEDNESDAY 21 MAY 07:30 (06:30 BST) Ryan Gosling arrived in Cannes with the cast of Lost River Only in Cannes can you get a critical pasting one minute and a standing ovation the next.
That was the lot of Canadian actor Ryan Gosling on Tuesday, the day his directorial debut was unveiled to expectant festival audiences.
The 33-year-old star of Drive and The Notebook appeared genuinely humbled to be given such a prominent launching pad for his film Lost River.
"It's a huge honour to be invited here," he told the audience last night. "It's an incredible opportunity to show a film in a theatre like this."
Long before Gosling mounted the Debussy Theatre's steps with cast members Christina Hendricks and Matt Smith, however, the word was out that the RyGo was a no-no.
"Overcooked", "inauspicious", "derivative" and "indulgent" were just some of the adjectives used to describe a drama generally felt to be overly indebted to the likes of David Lynch, Terrence Malick and Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn.
While some reviewers gave Gosling credit for his ambition, just as many said he had overreached himself on his first stint behind the camera.
Back at the Debussy, though, none of that seemed to matter to an largely enthusiastic crowd happy to bask in the actor's reflected glory.
It made me wonder what one has to do not to get a standing ovation at Cannes. Hmm... not be a Hollywood A-lister maybe?
Gosling's directorial debut screened as part of Un Certain Regard Lost River was originally named How to Catch a Monster, a rather more evocative title than the bland one it has now.
Then again, the title is the least of its problems. Rather more pressing is the overall lack of coherence and a story that's deathly dull even when it's trying to be intensely perverse.
Set in a ruined city clearly modelled on Detroit, it tells of a single mother (Mad Men actress Hendricks) who takes a job in a nightclub to make ends meet.
Little does she know her position requires her to participate in kinky sexual role-plays, often at the behest of her manipulative financial advisor (Ben Mendelsohn).
Meanwhile, the oldest of her two sons (Iain De Caestecker) falls on the wrong side of local thug Bully after thieving on his patch.
The villain is played by Smith as a hollering Looney Tune capable of extreme acts of violence - a role the actor shaved his head for shortly after leaving Doctor Who last year.
The combined star wattage of Gosling and Smith should help Lost River find an audience when it is released in the UK later this year.
For now though, it's already been chalked up as another of this Cannes Film Festival's high-profile disappointments.
TUESDAY 20 MAY 16:30 (17:30 BST) Whiplash features Miles Teller (Divergent, That Awkward Moment) and JK Simmons (Spider-Man, Juno) I'd heard such good things about Whiplash from when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January that I was worried it wouldn't live up to my high expectations.
To my delight it did, and more. Not only is Damien Chazelle's music-based drama the best thing I've seen at Cannes, I already suspect it will be the best film I'll see all year.
Set in New York, it tells of a budding jazz drummer (Miles Teller) who comes under the tutelage of a dictatorial martinet of a music teacher (JK Simmons).
Imagine the drill instructors from Full Metal Jacket, An Officer and a Gentleman and Aliens rolled into one and you're still nowhere close to this ruthless, foul-mouthed tyrant.
The jazz is sensational, the editing astonishing and it all climaxes on a musical crescendo so extraordinary you can only applaud. (And trust me, you will.)
Teller is fabulous but this is Simmons' film - and a just reward after many years of selfless supporting roles in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies and others.
"No one can make the word [expletive] sound as good as JK," said Chazelle after Tuesday's Directors' Fortnight screening. "There are some people who can curse really well and create poetry out of very coarse language.
"He was the only person in American film today who could sell it both comically and dramatically and give it the right rhythm I needed."
"I will confess there are aspects of Terence Fletcher with which I empathise," said Simmons of a role I can easily see landing him his first Oscar nomination.
If this sounds like extravagant praise, I assure you it is not. Whiplash hasn't got a confirmed release date in the UK yet, but you should definitely seek it out when it does.
TUESDAY 20 MAY 10:00 (11:00 BST) Oscar winner Marion Cotillard stars in Two Days, One Night as a woman on a mission to save her job Belgian siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are two-time winners of the Palme d'Or, so it is no surprise to see them in competition again this year.
Yet where 1999's Rosetta and 2005's The Child both told stories of the struggling underclass, Two Days, One Night tries something different by turning its gaze on the more rarefied concerns of Belgium's aspirant middle-classes.
Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, an employee at a solar panel factory who learns she will lose her job unless her co-workers opt to give up a
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