Cannes Film Festival 2021
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Cannes Film Festival 2021 Critic’s Notebook 2: Benedetta, Hit the Road
Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s “lesbian nun movie” Benedetta may have taken two extra years to land (Verhoeven’s hip surgery in 2019 prevented him from completing post-production in time for that year’s Cannes), but its prologue wastes no time informing the audience of its mischievous timbre (for the handful heading into it expecting anything close to reverence), slipping in flame-farting jesters and a bird (ostensibly possessed by the Virgin Mary) dropping a turd in a bandit’s eye at our young heroine’s request. Adapted from Judith C. Brown’s 1986 book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, the […]
by Blake Williams on Jul 10, 2021 -
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Critic’s Notebook 1: Section Openers Onoda, Ghost Song, Between Two Worlds, Cow
Cannes declared itself open for business earlier this week, 2021’s first major international film festival to do so in an entirely physical edition (save the partially-digital market). The irony has not been lost on some attendees that Thierry Fremaux and co. opted to launch its first Un Certain Regard selection in more than two years (the festival’s main opening film, Leos Carax’s Annette, was reviewed by Vadim Rizov earlier this week here) with an epic about a man who continued fighting a war for nearly three decades after it ended. Invisible enemies, lost time and interminable isolation: familiar pandemic phraseology […]
by Blake Williams on Jul 9, 2021 -
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Critic’s Notebook: Annette
Leos Carax’s Annette begins with a variant on Holy Motors’s “Entrac’te,” now split from one mid-film break into opening and (mid-end-credits) closing musical numbers that set a similarly grimly determined/celebratory tone. The director and his real-life daughter are among the first people seen, leading Sparks and the film’s main cast out of the recording studio and into the world. Adam Driver gets on a motorcycle and zooms into the night to begin his diagetic story proper as confrontational stand-up comic and antihero Henry McHenry, his castmates calling “good luck” after him. A slow-motion love triangle revolves McHenry and the Conductor (Simon Helberg) […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 7, 2021 -
Cannes Film Festival Announces 2021 Official Selection with Pictures by Sean Baker, Sean Penn, Kogonada, Mia Hansen-Løve and More
A larger-than-usual Competition — 24 films — for its 2021 edition was announced today by the Cannes Film Festival, along with the Out of Competition, Un Certain Regard and other titles that comprise (for now) its official selection. Delayed from its usual dates in mid-May to July 6-17, the festival opens with the long-awaited Leos Carax Sparks-scored musical Annette and contains new features by Asghar Farhadi, Mia Hansen-Løve, Jacques Audiard and Nanni Moretti. Cannes also adds this year a new section, Cannes Premieres, containing films by festival veterans such as Oliver Stone, Kornél Mundruczo and Andrea Arnold. Among the American […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 3, 2021 -
Trailer Watch: Leos Carax’s Annette (Plus Cannes 2021 News)
The long-awaited trailer for Leos Carax’s musical Annette — his follow-up to Holy Motors, one of best films of the last decade — has just been posted online. Concurrent with a communique from French President Emmanuel Macron that seems designed to assure anxious international industry about the viability of the upcoming ’21 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where Annette will be opening night, it’s a particularly impressive publicity drop. The film’s synopsis, from the press release: Los Angeles, today. Henry (Adam Driver) is a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humor who falls in love with Ann (Marion […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2021
