Wild Hearts

Laurence Anyways
2012, Canada/France
Xavier Dolan

Keep the Lights On
2012, USA
Ira Sachs

Laurence Anyways is Xavier Dolan's third and certainly most ambitious film to date, notably so in the fact that he took himself out of the equation this time. In stepping away from the autobiographical, he examines an adult relationship between Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clément) and the ways in which Laurence's desire to live life as a woman affects it. As an actor himself, Dolan has a knack for eliciting great performances, especially from Clément, who won a best actress prize from the Un Certain Regard jury at Cannes last year, and the always reliable Nathalie Baye as Laurence's mother. While Dolan's characters have matured and his scope has broadened, he still employs some of his iffy stylized characteristics that were more forgivable when he used them for angsty young love in Les amours imaginaires (Heartbeats).

Perhaps the biggest strikes against him are the misguided, clumsy bookends to the film. Someone should have advised him against every decision involved in the opening scene, a brooding montage set to Fever Ray's "If I Had a Heart." I'm not certain if fault should be given to Dolan for choosing a song any one of his fans would have already created so many associations with prior (note the spectacular, nightmarish music video by director Andreas Nilsson), but I am certain that the choice was wrong. It looks like a music video, creates a mood that the film never matches, and takes place in an fuzzy, uncertain time in Laurence and the film's timeline. This is a mistake that is repeated a few times during the film. The worst scene in Laurence Anyways could effectively be the best scene in a totally different movie, but as it stands, in this particular film, it feels wholly out-of-place. In what's possibly a fantasy sequence (possibly not), Fred puts on her sexiest gown and floats into a fancy ballroom, all cut to Visage's "Fade to Grey." These out-of-place music video montages don't advance the film in any way or tell the audience anything useful about the characters; instead, they're just mere reminders that Dolan has exceptionally good taste and unfortunate indications of the director's level of maturity as a filmmaker and his inability to self-edit. The film's final scene is a misfire as well, closing a long, vibrant journey on a humdrum note.

However, what Laurence Anyways does best is illustrating Laurence and Fred's explosive relationship. The film itself bares a number of similarities with another of 2012's notable queer films, Ira Sachs' Keep the Lights On (both won the top prize for queer cinema at the Berlinale (Teddy) and Cannes (Queer Palm)). Both films chronicle a turbulent relationship over the course of a decade in a fashion that feels almost fragmented and elliptical, though they're mostly told chronologically. Laurence Anyways effectively loses some of its power and intrigue when the narrative splits midway through the film. Keep the Lights On, on the other hand, restricts its perspective to one half of the couple, Erik (Thure Lindhardt), and we see the relationship between him and Paul (Zachary Booth) through Erik's eyes. The sort of dramatic strengths Dolan reaches in Laurence Anyways can best be chalked up to his decision to step away from autobiography, and on the flipside, clinging to autobiography is where Keep the Lights On seems to get lost. Basing the screenplay on his own long-term rocky relationship with a drug addict, Sachs fails to depict the sort of intensity and obsession that could possibly lead someone to carry on a relationship as destructive as Erik and Paul's. During a conversation Erik and Paul have near the end of the film, one of them smiles and says, "Well, we had some good times," to which a friend of mine leaned over to me during the screening and whispered, "Did we miss that part?"

Keep the Lights On has a few other problems, not least of which the flatness of the supporting characters played by Julianne Nicholson, Paprika Steen, and Souleymane Sy Savane, but it does a commendable job creating and maintaining a mood and tone, beautifully lensed by Thimios Bakatakis (Dogtooth, Attenberg) and featuring just the right amount of Arthur Russell songs for the film's score. As I mentioned before, Laurence Anyways is all over the map visually and tonally, and its near-three-hour running time doesn't do Dolan any favors (though I'd never describe the film as boring). If only Laurence Anyways and Keep the Lights On could borrow each other's strengths and abandon their weaknesses, you'd have two spectacular films instead of two pretty messes.

Laurence Anyways
With: Melvil Poupaud, Suzanne Clément, Nathalie Baye, Monia Chokri, Yves Jacques, Catherine Bégin, Sophie Faucher, Guylaine Tremblay, Patricia Tulasne, Mario Geoffrey, Jacob Tierney, Susan Almgren, Magalie Lépine Blondeau, Emmanuel Schwartz, Jacques Lavallée, Perrette Souplex, David Savard, Monique Spaziani, Mylène Jampanoï, Gilles Renaud, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé, Anne Dorval, Pierre Chagnon, Éric Bruneau, Alexis Lefebvre, Denys Paris, Vincent Davy, Vincent Plouffe, Alexandre Goyette

Keep the Lights On
With: Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, Julianne Nicholson, Paprika Steen, Souleymane Sy Savane, Miguel del Toro, Justin Reinsilber, Sebastian La Cause, Maria Dizzia, Ed Vassallo, Chris Lenk

Être Queer à Cannes

Following in the traditions of both the Berlinale and Venice International Film Festival, the very first Queer Palm will be handed out at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Though in its first year, the award isn't yet an "official" prize... but it will be given to any film screening across the panels (the Official selection, Un Certain Regard, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique). The Teddy Award in Berlin has been around since 1987, formed by German filmmakers Wieland Speck and Manfred Salzgeber; the first Teddy's were given to Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire [La ley del deseo] in the feature category and Gus Van Sant's Five Ways to Kill Yourself and My New Friend in the shorts section. The Queer Lion of the Venice Film Festival has only been around for three years, with the first prize going to Edward Radtke's The Speed of Life in 2007; Tom Ford's A Single Man won last year. "Fathered" by directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (Jeanne et le garçon formidable, Crustacés et coquillages), the Queer Palm will be announced at a ceremony on the 22nd. For more information, here's an interview with the organizer, Franck Finance-Madureira, with English subtitles. Ducastel and Martineau won a Teddy Jury Award in 2000 for The Adventures of Félix [Drôle de Félix].

Unfortunately, the official Queer Palm site doesn't mention which titles are eligible for the award, but with three notable queer cinéastes presenting their latest films this year, I'd imagine they'll have their pick of Gregg Araki's Kaboom! (which played out of competition at a midnight screening), Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats [Les amours imaginaires] (which has gotten a lot of great feedback and was just acquired by IFC Films) and (possibly) Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (which hasn't screened yet and may not be as queer as, say, Tropical Malady). I suppose there's a possibility in Cam Archer's Shit Year (like Weerasethakul's, it may lack the queerness of the director's previous Wild Tigers I Have Known), but gauging a film's queerness is a challenge (for those reading synopses and reviews just as much, I'd imagine, as those who've actually seen the films).

Looking at the Semaine de la Critique line-up today, I just now noticed that another (queer) short directed by James Franco, The Clerk's Tale, will be closing the Court-Métrange section of the Semaine (along with a short directed by Kirsten Dunst called Bastard, with Juno Temple, Brian Geraghty, Lukas Haas, Lee Thompson Young and L.M. Kit Carson). A little over a year after acting in a Gus Van Sant film (Milk, of course), Franco seems to be carrying on the queer cinema torch. Another short he directed called Feast of Stephen, about a teenage boy's black-and-white fantasies, took home the Teddy for Short Film earlier this year; Franco also played that homo Allen Ginsberg in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's Howl, also part of the 2010 Berlinale. If no other Queer Palm information surfaces in the next few days, you'll hear back from me when the jury hands out their prize. Until then, check out the charming, smutty interview BUTT magazine conducted with Dolan back in April.

The 2010 Cannes Film Festival in Posters, Round 1

With the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival beginning shortly, I decided to unveil the posters for the films playing (in all the sections) that I've come across so far. Though I didn't find a poster for it, Ken Loach's Route Irish, a film dealing with the British's involvement in Iraq, was added to the competition line-up, making the grand total of films in competition nineteen; ten of which (Biutiful, Burnt by the Sun 2, Copie conforme, The Housemaid, Des hommes et des dieux, Outrage, Poetry, Un homme qui crie, La nostra vita and Tournée) I did find posters for. In total, there's 26 in this round (I had more before realizing they were just cover sheets for the press booklets), including a collage of posters for Im Sang-soo's The Housemaid and Xavier Dolan's Les amours imaginaires. The rest: Abel, Alting bliver godt igen, Blue Valentine, Carancho, Copacabana, Draquila - L'Italia che trema, Illégal, L'autre monde, Año bisiesto, Life, Above All, Petit tailleur, Rubber, Film socialisme, Somos lo que hay and Wall Street 2.

Here! Films returns to the DVD market

Missing from the DVD market since March of this year, Here! Films, with the first Oscar under their belt and a newly restructured roster, will begin releasing DVDs in January of 2010 though a partnership with E1 Distribution (formally Koch). Their first release, naturally, will be Yojiro Takita's Departures, which won the Best Foreign Language Oscar this year, hitting shelves on 12 January. The heavily maligned teen comedy Tru Loved (you may remember what Roger Ebert had to say about this one) will be released on the same date. Two more titles, Paul Morrison's Little Ashes with Robert Pattinson as Salvador Dalí and Shamim Sarif's lesbian romantic comedy I Can't Think Straight (which is truly dreadful, by the way), will street on 26 January. With two more Foreign Language Oscar possibilities (Asghar Farhadi's About Elly from Iran and Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother [J'ai tué ma mère] from Canada), Lucía Puenzo's latest El niño pez and James Bolton's surprisingly good adaptation of Jim Grimsley's adaptation of Dream Boy on their upcoming roster, Here! Films looks to have a successful year in 2010.

Miscellaneous Updates for 23 September

I mentioned my friend Stewart Copeland's film Jennifer playing on PBS' POV the other day; well, James Hansen posted the interview he conducted with Copeland yesterday on the Out 1 Film Journal. If you missed its airing last night, you can watch it here. Also, for the bored, you can watch the "web series" All the Young Dudes, which Stewart and I both worked on, via his website. I play a slightly exaggerated version of myself in three episodes. Look out, Courtney Love.

Canada has selected Xavier Dolan's I Killed My Mother [J'ai tué ma mère] to be their representative for the Oscars next year, which, if nominated, would make its director (one of?) the youngest director to be nominated for a narrative feature (correct me if I'm wrong). Canada last claimed the prize in 2004 with Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions [Les invasions barbares]. Poland has chosen Borys Lankosz's The Reverse [Rewers], and Bosnia and Herzegovina named Namik Kabil's Guardians of the Night [Čuvari noći] as their official submission. According to Movie On, the Netherlands will be submitting The Silent Army, Italy's choice of Giuseppe Tornatore's Baarìa is not official and Serbia is reconsidering their choice of Here and There due to its prevalent English dialogue.

In acquisition news, Magnolia will add another Tilda Swinton to their roster (after Julia) in Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love [Io sono l'amore]. The film premiered at Venice and also played at Toronto... and was, according to Vice President Tom Quinn, "unanimously [Magnolia's] favorite film at Toronto." Sony Pictures Classics also picked up Aaron Schneider's Get Low, which stars Bill Murray, Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Lucas Black.

And finally, I also have a few DVD updates for you. Though few, there are some noteworthy titles that have been announced, including the doc Beautiful Losers from Oscilloscope and Pascal-Alex Vincent's feature debut Give Me Your Hand [Donne-moi la main] from Strand, which I have yet to see.

- The Carter, 2009, d. Adam Bhala Lough, Virgil Films, 17 November
- Funny People, 2009, d. Judd Apatow, Universal, also on Blu-ray, 24 November
- Beautiful Losers, 2008, d. Aaron Rose, Joshua Leonard, Oscilloscope, 8 December
- Hollywood, je t'aime, 2009, d. Jason Bushman, Wolfe, 9 December
- 20th Century Boys: Chapter 1, 2008, d. Yukihiko Tsutsumi, Viz Media, 15 December
- Murder by Decree, 1979, d. Bob Clark, Lionsgate, 15 December
- The Tudors, Season 3, 2009, Showtime/Paramount, 15 December
- Ichi: The Movie, 2008, d. Fumihiko Sori, FUNimation, also on Blu-ray, 22 December
- Downloading Nancy, 2008, d. Johan Renck, Strand, 12 January
- Give Me Your Hand [Donne-moi la main], 2008, d. Pascal-Alex Vincent, Strand, 26 January

Atom Egoyan's Latest Among the Latest Unveiling for Toronto 09

While I knew the homegrown titles had yet to be announced for this year's Toronto International Film Festival, another round of additions to the line-up kinda makes you (really) wish everything had come in one big swoop. Atom Egoyan's Chloe, which stars Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried and sounds an awful lot like Anne Fontaine's awful Nathalie... [correction: it is a remake of Nathalie..., as if I couldn't be any less excited about a new Atom Egoyan film], will make its world premiere in the Gala section. Xavier Dolan's J'ai tué ma mère, which everyone expected to play considering the accolades from Cannes and because, well, it's Canadian, will play in the Special Presentations section, and Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria, with Emily Blunt as Queen Victoria, will close the fest, even though it already hit the DVD market in the UK last month. The titles are listed below. (Sorry for some of these bootleg-lookin' pics I found, but they were the best I had to work with).

[additional note: I'm too tired to fix the redundant use of "latest" in the title.]

Gala

- Chloe - d. Atom Egoyan
- Cooking with Stella - d. Dilip Mehta (brother of Deepa) - w. Don McKellar
- The Immaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - d. Terry Gilliam

Special Presentations

- Cairo Time - d. Ruba Nadda (Sabah) - w. Patricia Clarkson, Alexander Siddig, Elena Anaya
- Defendor - d. Peter Stebbings (directorial debut) - w. Kat Dennings, Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Sandra Oh
- Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel - d. Brigitte Berman
- J'ai tué ma mère [I Killed My Mother] - d. Xavier Dolan
- The Trotsky - Jacob Tierney (Twist) - w. Jay Baruchel, Saul Rubinek, Colm Feore, Jessica Paré, Genviève Bujold

Contemporary World Cinema

- A Gun to the Head - d. Blaine Thurier
- Cole - d. Carl Bessai (Emile, Mothers&Daughters)
- Excited - d. Bruce Sweeney (Last Wedding)
- High Life - d. Gary Yates
- Passenger Side - d. Matt Bissonnette - w. Adam Scott, Robin Tunney
- Suck - d. Rob Stefaniuk - w. Malcolm McDowell, Dave Foley, Henry Rollins, Jessica Paré, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Moby, Paul Anthony

Canada First!

- Year of the Carnivore - d. Sook-Yin Lee (Shortbus actress)
- All Fall Down - d. Philip Hoffman
- Crackie - d. Sherry White
- George Ryga's Hungry Hills - d. Rob King
- Machotaildrop - d. Corey Adams, Alex Craig
- The Wild Hunt - d. Alexandre Franchi

The Rest...

- La donation - d Bernard Émond (La femme qui boit) [part of the Masters section]
- Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould - d. Peter Raymont, Michele Hozer [part of the Reel to Reel section]
- Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands - d. Peter Mettler [part of the Reel to Reel section]
- Reel Injun - d. Neil Diamond [part of the Reel to Reel section]
- Carcasses - d. Denis Côté (Les états nordiques) [part of the Vanguard section]
- Leslie, My Name Is Evil - d. Reginald Harkema [part of the Vanguard section]

Cannes Awards: Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Un Certain Regard, Semaine de la Critique

The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival has ended, and while the main competition prizes won't be given out until later today, the sidebars have already announced their winners. They are as follows.

Un Certain Regard

Prix Un Certain Regard: Dogtooth [Kynodontas] - d. Yorgos Lanthimos - Greece
Prix du jury: Police, adjective [Intermediar] - d. Corneliu Porumboiu - Romania
Prix special Un Certain Regard: (tie) No One Knows About Persian Cats - d. Bahman Ghobadi - Iran / Le père de mes enfants [The Father of My Children] - d. Mia Hansen-Løve - France

Semaine de la Critique

Grand Prix: Adieu Gary - d. Nassim Amaouche - France
SACD Award: Lost Persons Area - d. Caroline Strubbe - Belgium/Netherlands/Hungary/Germany/France
ACID/CCAS Support Award: Whisper with the Wind - d. Shahram Alidi - Iraq
OFAJ/TV5MONDE Young Critic Award: Whisper with the Wind - d. Shahram Alidi - Iraq

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Art Cinéma Award: J'ai tué ma mère [I Killed My Mother] - d. Xavier Dolan - Canada
Special Mention: De helaasheid der dingen [La mertitude des choses] - d. Felix van Groeningen - Belgium
7e Prix Regards Jeunes 2009: J'ai tué ma mère
SACD Prize: J'ai tué ma mère
Europa Cinemas Label: La Pivellina - d. Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel - Austria

IndieWire explains what these awards mean here.

Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, Semaine de la Critique, Cannes 2009

More films playing at the 62nd annual Festival International de Cannes were revealed today. The line-up of both the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, aka Directors' Fortnight, and La Semaine de la Critique, aka The International Critics' Week, have been announced. Contrary to early reports, Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro will make a showing at Cannes this year, opening the Quinzaine. Coppola's company American Zoetrope will roll the film out in US theatres in early June. Other notable films screening at the Quinzaine are the latest from Pedro Costa (Colossal Youth), a documentary entitled Ne change rien, translated as Don't Change Anything; a new film from Hong Sang-soo called Like You Know It All; Luc Moullet's La terre de la folie; Yuki & Nina, a co-directorial effort from Nobuhiro Suwa and French actor Hippolyte Girardot, who starred in Suwa's segment in Paris je t'aime; the latest film Le roi d'évasion from Alain Guiraudie, who will show up on my Decade List in the coming months; and a trio of American films that made their premieres at Sundance in January. I Love You Phillip Morris finds our new favorite trend of Hollywood actors going gay as Jim Carrey falls in love with cellmate Ewan McGregor. Amreeka, about an immigrant woman in Illinois starring Hiam Abbass (The Visitor, Lemon Tree, The Limits of Control) and Alia Shawkat (Arrested Development), also played at New Directors/New Films on 25 March; National Geographic Films will release it theatrically. And Lynn Shelton's acclaimed Humpday is the third; Magnolia is releasing it this summer. I'm not familiar with any of the directors screening at La Semaine de la Critique, but among the shorts is one directed by actor Grégoire Colin, the star of a number of Claire Denis' films, entitled Le Baie du renard, loosely The Bay of the Fox. The directorial debuts in the Quinzaine will compete for the Caméra d'Or, whose previous winners include Steve McQueen's Hunger, Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know, Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest, Tran Anh Hung's The Scent of Green Papaya, Jafar Panahi's The White Balloon, Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! and Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise.

As for reactions to the various line-ups this year, it seems strange to comment about a group of films no one's seen yet; however, it's hard not to get excited about all the new films from such established directors, particularly after such a disappointing showing at Berlin and Sundance earlier. Of course, some of these films will not meet their high expectations. Some of the unavoidable things I'm not looking forward to reading this year include the homophonous substitute of "Cannes" for "can," the American media coverage of Angelina Jolie at the premiere of Inglourious Basterds, talk about how the recession has effected the festival unless it's warranted by, say, Vanessa Paradis walking down the red carpet naked and complaints about the poor showing of American directors. I'll also direct you to Vadim Rizov's wonderful piece about the festival's history with their national filmmakers. I've posted the line-up of features for the Quinzaine below. You can find the shorts here, and the Semaine de la Critique here, both via Variety. Oh, and if you're looking for anyone to sponsor coverage of the film, my schedule for May is wide open.

Directors' Fortnight

La Pivellina - dir. Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel - Austria

The Alasness of Things [De helaasheid der dingen] - dir. Felix van Groeningen (Steve + Sky) - Belgium/Netherlands

Eastern Plays - dir. Kamen Kalev - Bulgaria/Sweden

Carcasses - dir. Denis Côté - Canada

J'ai tué ma mère - dir. Xavier Dolan - Canada

Polytechnique - dir. Denis Villeneuve - Canada

Navidad - dir. Sebastián Lelio - Chile

Oxhide II - dir. Liu Jiayin - China

La famille Wolberg - dir. Axelle Ropert - France/Belgium

La terre de la folie [Land of Madness] - dir. Luc Moullet (A Girl Is a Gun, Anatomy of a Relationship) - France

Le Roi d'évasion - dir. Alain Guiraudie (No Rest for the Brave) - France

Les beaux gosses - dir. Riad Sattouf - France - with Emmanuelle Devos, Valeria Golino, Irène Jacob, Noémie Lvovsky

Yuki & Nina - dir. Nobuhiro Suwa (Un couple parfait, H Story), Hippolyte Girardot - France/Japan - with Girardot

Ajami - dir. Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani - Israel/Germany

Daniel & Ana - dir. Michel Franco - Mexico/Spain

Karaoke - dir. Christopher Chan Fui Chong - Malaysia

Ne change rien - dir. Pedro Costa - Portugal/France

Here - dir. Ho Tzy-nyen - Singapore/Canada

Like You Know It All - dir. Hong Sang-soo (Woman on the Beach, Night and Day) - South Korea

Amreeka - dir. Cherien Dabis - USA/Canada/Kuwait - with Hiam Abbass, Alia Shawkat

Go Get Some Rosemary - dir. Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie - USA/France

Humpday - dir. Lynn Shelton - USA - with Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard

I Love You Phillip Morris - dir. Glenn Ficarra, John Requa - USA - with Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro

Tetro - dir. Francis Ford Coppola - Argentina/Spain/Italy/USA - with Vincent Gallo, Maribel Verdú, Carmen Maura, Klaus Maria Brandauer