Today I started off with my first film of the festival in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs strand, Miguel Gomes’ ARABIAN NIGHTS – VOLUME 1, THE RESTLESS ONE.
This has been on my Cannes radar since I read about the inclusion of a six-hour film at the festival. Yes, that’s right, six hours, one film! As it turns out, they don’t have screen time to show a film of that length in the Théâtre Croisette in the JW Marriot hotel during the festival, so they’ve split Gomes’ film into three parts spread over five days. Théâtre Croisette was the cinema I watched last year’s festival favourite for me, GIRLHOOD. It’s a great little cinema with a fairly large balcony, but the only issue getting into it with a lowly industry badge is that everyone gets in to the screening before you. So even if, like me, you arrive two hours beforehand and are right at the front of your badge’s queue for the screening, it’s no guarantee of a seat. Luckily I did get in, and I’m really glad I managed to, as on Day 4 of the festival, ARABIAN NIGHTS – VOLUME 1, THE RESTLESS ONE has proven to be my favourite film so far. Mixing a documentary-style, state-of-the-nation observation on Portugal, with a contemporary “loosely-based-on” re-telling of Arabian Nights, part one of the trilogy had everything I wanted in a film here, but haven’t quite found in as cohesive a manner as Gomes displays.
Feeling elated after this first screening of the day, I changed into my DJ and headed out for tactical reasons. On paper there wasn’t much time between my second and third film of the day, and the only way to get into film number three (THE SEA OF TREES by Gus Van Sant) was to wear the gear in film number two (A TALE OF LOVE AND DARKNESS by none other than Natalie Portman). Thus started the most sweaty, claustrophobic, noisy queue I have experienced in any film festival. Portman’s directorial debut was being screened in Salle Buñuel, a cinema right at the top of the Palais on Level Five, with very little space to queue and not much room to move around in. Two hours into the scheduled start time of the film, no-one was in the screen, and the previous film’s audience were still struggling to leave, as our crowd were blocking all the exits. The noise was like that of a football match and the air rapidly became hot and sweaty.
Although Ethan Coen was in the audience, and Natalie Portman introduced the screening, there was an air of tension as everyone calmed down after being treated like cattle for over two hours. The film is good, reminiscnet of a Terrence Davies film, but set in the early years of the State of Israel. I had to dash over to the Lumiere, however, with ten minutes left to play, as I had a red carpet screening to attend for Gus Van Sant’s new film THE SEA OF TREES. As has been happening with the competition films for me these past few days, there is great hype attached to this film and I really want to like it, as I love Gus Van Sant and Matthew McConaughey. The soundtrack is orchestrated synth-tastic, and suits the haunting tone required for large parts of melancholy Matthew’s walks through a Japanese forest where people go to kill themselves. The cinematography from Kasper Tuxen is great – really interesting camera angles looking up from a filling cup of tea, to some beautiful floating camera lens flares along the forest floor looking upwards towards redemption/the sun/ a ghost? However, the script is just a bit oversentimental and the editing style gives it a daytime TV movie feel, rather than something worthy of a trip to the cinema on a weekend.
Three films today, and my mind is out of synch with where we are in the week. But I’m slowly starting to get a sun-tan from the queues, and not, as my friend Hugh suggested in an email this evening, from lounging on the beach! On second thoughts, maybe I should have my lunchtime sandwich down there at some point tomorrow…the water does look appealing!
