Even More DVD Updates: Joe Dallesandro, Alain Robbe-Grillet

Eric announced earlier Mondo Macabre's announcement that they were releasing Alain Robbe-Grillet's Gradiva. Now it's been officially set for 25 August. Another Ryko title coming out on the same date is Fernando Di Leo's Vacation Massacre [Vacanze per un massacro], an action film with Joe Dallesandro from Midnight Choir. Also look for Ralph Bakshi's Fire and Ice on DVD the same day from Blue Underground.

The first of three Coco Chanel films coming out soon, entitled simply Coco Chanel, will hit DVD on 7 July from Screen Media Films. This one was made-for-television and stars Shirley MacLaine and Barbora Bobulova as the fashion designer. Speaking of Chanel, does anyone know if William Friedkin's biopic was scrapped? I had read he was casting Marina Hands as Chanel, but what I remember reading sounds a lot like Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, the closer of this year's Cannes Film Festival with Anna Mouglalis instead of Hands. Anyway, Venevision is releasing Carlos Sorin's Bombón el perro on 14 July. Film Movement is releasing his more recent The Window [La ventana] later this year as well.

Miramax has set a date for the Blu-ray of Pulp Fiction, set for 4 August. I don't know any specifics about the disc, unfortunately. Showtime will have the second season of their brilliant This American Life, which translates surprisingly well onscreen, out on 21 July. Zeitgeist's Oscar-nominated Trouble the Water comes out 25 August as well. Menemesha Films is releasing Jan Hrebejk's Beauty in Trouble [Kráska v nesnázích] on 8 September.

And finally, a few more Magnolia discs have been announced: Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. on 15 September; Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience on 15 September; The Mutant Chronicles on DVD and Blu-ray 4 August; Kirby Dick's Outrage on 15 September; and Thanakorn Pongsuwan's Demon Warriors on 4 August.

TY

I'm taking this opportunity to do what so many others on my Facebook news feed are doing and thanking Bea Arthur for being a friend. She will be missed. And God knows the gays will be dropping their tears into a glass or three this evening. Wear some shoulder pads tonight in remembrance. Goodbye, Dorthy Petrillo Zbornak.

New Lifshitz, plus some bad TV news

For those of you not tired of me blabbing about Sébastien Lifshitz, I'd like to thank my friend Jordany for directing me to his new film's IMDb page. Plein sud stars Yannick Renier (Private Property, Born in '68), Léa Seydoux (De la guerre, The Last Mistress), Théo Frilet (also from Born in '68) and Pierre Perrier (Cold Showers, One to Another), will unfortunately not be shot by Agnès Godard (Claire Mothon is the DOP, I'm not familiar with her work), but will feature music from John Parish, one of PJ Harvey's collaborators [check out their album A Woman, A Man Walked By if you haven't already], and Jocelyn Pook. It's scheduled to be released in France on 19 August, and I suppose there's a chance it'll play at either Venice or Toronto a few weeks later. You like how I got to bring up both Lifshitz and PJ Harvey in the same post?

Also, Nathan at Film Experience gives us some bad news about a planned television series based around Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. No Carmen Maura or Rossy de Palma and scripted by someone who works on Grey's Anatomy? Fail. Makes you kinda wish that American remake with Jane Fonda had happened, so this wouldn't have.

The Decade List: (Some of) The Worst Films (2001)

Some annotations: 2001 was a bad year for brother filmmaking teams. Whether together (From Hell, Out Cold) or separate (Head Over Heels, Happy Campers), I'm not sure there was a successful fraternal outing in 2001; the Waters brothers, really, have only been involved in two decent films (Heathers, Mean Girls). Though I was instructed not to see Tony's Spy Game, the Scott brothers didn't fare as well either. While the year was also bad for a few repeat actors (Bijou Phillips and the late Brad Renfro both starred in two films together), it was the worst for poor Penélope Cruz, who shows up in four of the worst films I saw from 2001; I don't even like to remember there was a time where I wasn't smitten with her (or a time when she dated someone with a similar last name to hers). But I wouldn't like to imply that all the films I've listed below are without some merit, so I've saved the salvagable bits from a few of the films below.

All About Lily Chou-Chou: the opening scene; Blow: Paul Reubens; Brotherhood of the Wolf: Monica Bellucci; Bully: Bijou Phillips, surprisingly, and Nick Stahl; Ghost World: the Bollywood film Enid (Thora Birch) dances along to from Gumnaam, but not the fact that she's dancing along to it; Life as a House: when angsty, Marilyn Manson-loving teen hooker Hayden Christensen (whose character was obviously researched by watching news programs about "troubled teens") sexually asphyxiates himself whilst masturbating (about 3 minutes in); Moulin Rouge!: the tango scene to The Police's "Roxanne," the only scene where they appear to have let someone other than the blind, speedhead edit the film; The Shipping News: both Judi Dench, whose not-so-secretive bulldyke pisses on the ashes of her dead brother, and Cate Blanchett, who would play crazy again opposite Dench (again playing a lesbian) in the more wonderfully awful Notes on a Scandal; Suriyothai: Nothing, but I should mention that I only saw the original Thai version and not the Francis Ford Coppola edit, which had to be better than what I saw; and Vanilla Sky: Cameron Diaz defending her intense feelings for Tom Cruise by yelling, "I swallowed your cum; that means something!"

- 13 Ghosts - dir. Steve Beck - USA/Canada
- All About Lily Chou-Chou - dir. Shunji Iwai - Japan
- Blow - dir. Ted Demme - USA
- Brotherhood of the Wolf [Pacte des loups] - dir. Christophe Gans - France
- Bully - dir. Larry Clark - USA/France
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin - dir. John Madden - UK/USA/France
- Crush - dir. John McKay - UK/Germany
- Don't Tempt Me [Sin noticias de Dios] - dir. Agustín Díaz Yanes - Spain/Mexico/Italy/France
- From Hell - dir. Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes - USA
- Ghost World - dir. Terry Zwigoff - USA/UK/Germany
- Hannibal - dir. Ridley Scott - USA/UK
- Happy Campers - dir. Daniel Waters - USA
- Head Over Heels - dir. Mark Waters - USA
- Hey, Happy - dir. Noam Gonick - Canada
- His Secret Life [Le fate ignoranti] - dir. Ferzan Ozpetek - Italy/France
- Life As a House - dir. Irwin Winkler - USA
- Mad Love [Juana la Loca] - dir. Vicente Aranda - Spain/Portugal/Italy
- Moulin Rouge! - dir. Baz Luhrmann - Australia/USA
- Original Sin - dir. Michael Cristofer - USA/France
- Out Cold - dir. Brendan Malloy, Emmett Malloy - USA
- Pearl Harbor - dir. Michael Bay - USA
- Planet of the Apes - dir. Tim Burton - USA
- Prozac Nation - dir. Erik Skjoldbjærg - USA/Germany
- River, The [Joki] - dir. Jarmo Lampela - Finland
- Shipping News, The - dir. Lasse Hallström - USA
- Suriyothai [The Legend of Suriyothai] - dir. Prince Chatrichalerm Yukol - Thailand
- Tart - dir. Christina Wayne - USA/Canada
- Tomcats - dir. Gregory Poirier - USA
- Vanilla Sky - dir. Cameron Crowe - USA

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

The Decade List: Y tu mamá también (2001)

Y tu mamá también - dir. Alfonso Cuarón

It took me a while to really separate my feelings for Y tu mamá también and my feelings for the people who held the film in such esteem. While my experience may be a singular one, I think anyone around my age, entering their first year as an undergrad around the time the film's popularity hit its peak, probably grappled with the same confrontation. Let me take you back to the fall of 2002. Your average dorm-living stubborn liberal arts college student couldn't resist placing Y tu mamá también right next to Requiem for a Dream, Amélie (or Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain if they were really bratty) and Donnie Darko on their Friendster profile, all of which intended to represent their "advanced" taste in cinema (it's also likely that The Perks of Being a Wallflower was mentioned as their favorite book). Sometimes the films' appeal split down the middle, with Y tu mamá también and Amélie in one corner, Requiem for a Dream and Donnie Darko in the other. However, if you really wanted to prove that your "advanced" taste was broad, all four was the way to go.

The near universal admiration for these films eventually lead to dissonance. Always concerned with going against the grain, the college student a notch snobbier than the ones who passed these DVDs around their dorm floor resisted their allure and commenced their backlash. Although, it's very likely that this breed of college student liked all four before they realized they weren't special for doing so. Varying arguments against these films surfaced, and the most common concerning Y tu mamá también likened it to American Pie, an "untouchable" in the world of the liberal-minded student. American Pie was yielded to the football-loving, party school kids, not for the "advanced" photo students with a minor in world religions. So this comparison was especially threatening. I mean, there are fart jokes in Y tu mamá también.

Y tu mamá también may not be the most exemplary case for the ubiquitously incorrect correlation between the work of art and its subject, but it certainly aided my understanding of this separation. The people who made the association between Y tu mamá también and American Pie committed the moral sin of assuming a film about people who exhibit juvenile behavior must therefore be as callow as the characters contained within it. Many of the people who paraded their love for Y tu mamá también perpetrated the same miscorrelation. This doesn't pertain to everyone, of course, but it's was hard to avoid hearing about how "sexy" the film was. Though I realize sex appeal lies in the eye of the beholder, the people who were raving about the film's unbridled sexual heat must have overlooked the fact that most of the sex scenes resulted in one of the boys prematurely ejaculating after fumbling around Luisa's body. I'm not making claims against those of you who felt the temperature rise while watching it, but when every mention of Y tu mamá también was followed by some declaration of its eroticism, the question arises as to whether the people saying these things are feeling the heat from the idea of what's happening or are just used to clumsy sexual encounters. That Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna are quite good looking just made the matter more deceptive. Of course, all the above statements are retracted if they were only referring to the final ménage à trois, where Cuarón leaves the deed itself up to the viewer's imagination.

Truly, Y tu mamá también has a lot more going on than Amélie, Requiem for a Dream and Donnie Darko, three films whose visual lure concealed their simplistic (or perhaps hollow) core. I'm not going to pretend that I'm privy to the sociopolitical climate of Mexico that shapes the film or that I'm not vaguely alluding to myself when I mentioned the snobbier breed of college student. However, Y tu mamá también will always remain a significant part of my development of understanding film and my relationship to it. It may be an impossible task to separate personal feelings toward something and its common perception among the public, but awareness of this inability is a step in the right direction.

With: Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Maribel Verdú, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Andrés Almeida, Diana Bracho, Emilio Echevarría
Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón
Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki
Country of Origin: Mexico
US Distributor: IFC Films/MGM

Premiere: 8 June 2001 (Mexico)
US Premiere: 6 October 2001 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Foreign Film (Independent Spirit Awards); Best Screenplay, Marcello Mastroianni Award for Best Young Actor - Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna (Venice Film Festival)

Quick DVD Update: Tilda, Sherilyn and More

Magnolia announced both Erick Zonca's Julia, with the wonderful Tilda Swinton, and Jennifer Chambers Lynch's Surveillance, with Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond, for 18 August. Surveillance, Lynch's follow-up to her disasterous debut Boxing Helena, will also be available on Blu-ray. And speaking of Sherilyn Fenn, City Lights is bringing the world a film called Zombie High, from 1987 and also starring Virginia Madsen, on 23 June. This would be director Ron Link's first and last film.

Strand announced two titles for July. The Ring Finger [L'annulaire], starring Olga Kurylenko, Marc Barbé, Stipe Erceg and Edith Scob, hits shelves on the 21st, while Le jupon rouge, with Alida Valli, comes out on the 7th. Sony announced the long overdue Spanish horror film [REC], which was remade into Quarantine, on 14 July. Nikita Mikhalkov's 12 will be out the same day, also from Sony.

Image will release Giuseppe Tornatore's so-bad-it-might-be-good The Unknown Woman [La sconosciuta] on 21 July. Cinema Libre is releasing Nicolas Klotz's The Bengali Night [La nuit Bengali], with Hugh Grant, Shabana Azmi and John Hurt, on 23 June. Facets will have another Masahiro Kobayashi film, Bootleg Film, out on 28 July.

And finally, Eric at Filmbo's Chick Magnet has tipped off on a few films on their way to DVD. The State: Complete Series. Two for Buñuel from Microcinema: Las hurdes [Land Without Bread] and Death in the Garden [La mort en ce jardin] with Simone Signoret. Mitchell Leisen's Remember the Night, written by Preston Sturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck? Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco for certain getting a Criterion release? The State is out 14 July, the 2 Buñuels are certain but without a date, The Last Days of Disco is a distinct possibility and the Leisen may just be an Amazon placeholder. We'll see.

The Decade List: Brève traversée (2001)

Brève traversée [Brief Crossing] - dir. Catherine Breillat

It's a common misconception that Catherine Breillat has no sympathy for her male characters (the opposite could be said of Claire Denis, actually). More often than not, all of her characters are functional, and that includes the women. In Fat Girl's Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) (and maybe also The Last Mistress' Vellini (Asia Argento)), one senses some affection between the artist and her subject, but in most cases, the characters that inhabit her films are walking theories. In Brief Crossing, a film often disregarded as one of her lesser works, the male character Thomas (Gilles Guillain) receives the same treatment she gave Anaïs earlier that year. In the film, he's subjected to an endless stream of gender absolutes and generalizations from Alice (Sarah Pratt, a dead ringer for Julianne Moore). They meet on an overnight ferry trip across the English Channel and spend the evening together. He's sixteen and French; she's thirtyish and English.

It's impossible to discuss Brief Crossing without giving away the end revelation, so, like nearly all of the Decade List posts, I wouldn't suggest reading unless you've already seen the film. More than a "twist," the discovery that Alice's stories about leaving her husband and being without child are all a farce is less a trick than an explanation. In many ways, Alice embodies a whole different set of preconceived notions and stereotypes as she freely spouts about how men are, how women are treated, etc. On one hand, she's the cold and bitter Brit, a common depiction by the French (see also Charlotte Rampling vs. Ludivine Sagnier in François Ozon's Swimming Pool). On another, she's exactly the sort of woman we expect to appear in a Catherine Breillat film: detached and with plenty to say about the dynamics of male/female relationships. Hell truly is other people in Breillat's universe.

That Alice is playing a role for Thomas adds another dimension to the film. It's certainly more narrative-driven than Anatomy of Hell, but Brief Crossing truly is about illusion and perception. Alice's arguments become less convincing the more it seems she's giving in to her young suitor's sexual advances, and yet we have to wonder if this isn't intentional on her part. She constantly has control over her situation, even more so when you realize she hasn't been exactly truthful with Thomas. What she's feeding him is bullshit, but even in bullshit there's levels of truth. Though driven by a candid pursuit of what may be his first sexual encounter, Thomas is pure because he's been spared by his youth. Though, it's his youth that prevents him from truly grasping what Alice is saying and doing, blinding him to that approaching disappointment.

Thomas learns the same lesson that Elena (Roxane Mesquida) does in Fat Girl, but he's spared her demise. Perhaps. I've heard Brief Crossing described as a companion piece to Fat Girl, the better known of her 2001 films. Breillat examines the perils of first love and sexual awakening with extraordinary results. The pains of youth can best be attributed to the willingness of the young to expose themselves. Thomas explains to Alice how dating is different from when she was a teenager; you can date a girl for a few weeks and move on to her best friend later on. But it's that Thomas, like Elena, seeks something greater in his older lover while acting the part of an adult which opens him up for the heartbreak he never experienced with others his age. He's playing a part, just like Alice is, but his vulnerability makes transparent what Alice is able to conceal.

With: Sarah Pratt, Gilles Guillain
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat
Cinematography: Eric Gautier
Music: Patrick Chevalier, D'Julz, Marc Filipi
Country of Origin: France
US Distributor: Wellspring

Premiere: 5 September 2001 (Venice Film Festival)
US Premiere: 29 April 2002 (San Francisco International Film Festival)

Cannes 2009 Line-Up: Updates

Via Variety, the full jury, headed by Isabelle Huppert, has also been announced: Asia Argento, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Lee Chang-dong, James Gray, Hanif Kureishi, Shu Qi and Robin Wright Penn. In addition to that, a number of other screenings have been announced out of the festival's main competition. Marina de Van's Ne te retourne pas, her second feature after Dans ma peau [In My Skin], will screen along with Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell in the Midnight Program. The film stars Sophie Marceau, Monica Bellucci and Andrea Di Stefano. Michel Gondry's L'épine dans le coeur, Souleymane Cissé's (Yeelen) Min ye and Keren Yedaya's (Or My Treasure) Jaffa will receive special screenings. In the Un Certain Regard category: Denis Dercourt's (The Page Turner) Demain des l'aube; Alain Cavalier's (La chamade) Irène; Bahman Ghobadi's (A Time for Drunken Horses) Nobody Knows About the Persian Cats; Bong Joon-ho's (The Host) Mother; João Pedro Rodrigues' (O Fantasma) To Die Like a Man; Tales from the Golden Age from Romanian directors Hanno Hofer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu and Ioana Uricaru; Pavel Lounguine's (Taxi Blues) Tzar; Pen-ek Ratanaruang's (Last Life in the Universe) Nymph; and Lee Daniels' (Shadowboxer) Precious, formerly known as Push. Check the Variety link above for more information.

Cannes 2009 Line-Up

Heavy competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which was announced earlier today in France. As stated earlier, the new Pixar 3D film Up! will open the fest, and it will be closed by that other Coco Chanel film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, from director Jan Kounen (Dobermann) with Anna Mouglalis and Mads Mikkelsen. New films from a number of previous Palme d'Or winners will screen in competition, from Lars von Trier (Dancer in the Dark), Jane Campion (The Piano), Quentin Tarantino (Inglorious Basterds) and Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley). More films in the other various programs will be announced tomorrow. Actress Isabelle Huppert is the head of this year's jury.

In Competition

Bright Star - dir. Jane Campion - UK/Australia/France - with Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Abbie Cornish

Spring Fever - dir. Ye Lou - China/France

Antichrist - dir. Lars von Trier - Denmark/Sweden/France/Italy - with Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Enter the Void - dir. Gaspar Noé - France/Japan

Face [Visages] - dir. Tsai Ming-liang - France/Taiwan/Netherlands/Belgium - with Laetitia Casta, Lee Kang-sheng, Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye

Les herbes folles - dir. Alain Resnais - France/Italy - with André Dussollier, Emmanuelle Devos, Sabine Azéma, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny

À l'origine [In the Beginning] - dir. Xavier Giannoli - France - with Gérard Depardieu, Emmanuelle Devos, François Cluzet

Un prophète [A Prophet] - dir. Jacques Audiard - France - with Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup

The White Ribbon [Das weiße Band] - dir. Michael Haneke - Austria/Germany/France - with Susanne Lothar, Ulrich Tukur

Vengeance - dir. Johnnie To - France/Hong Kong/USA - with Johnny Hallyday, Simon Yam, Sylvie Testud

The Time That Remains - dir. Elia Suleiman - Israel/France/Belgium/Italy

Vincere - dir. Marco Bellocchio - Italy/France - with Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Kinatay - dir. Brillante Mendoza - Philippines

Thirst - dir. Park Chan-wook - South Korea/USA - with Eriq Ebouaney, Song Kang-ho

Los abrazos rotos [Broken Embraces] - dir. Pedro Almodóvar - Spain - with Penélope Cruz, Ángela Molina, Lola Dueñas, Rubén Ochandiano, Blanca Portillo, Rossy de Palma, Chus Lampreave

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo - dir. Isabel Coixet - Spain - with Rinko Kikuchi, Sergi López

Fish Tank - dir. Andrea Arnold - UK/Netherlands - with Michael Fassbender, Harry Treadaway

Looking for Eric - dir. Ken Loach - UK/France/Italy/Belgium

Inglourious Basterds - dir. Quentin Tarantino - USA - with Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Kruger, Mike Myers, Eli Roth, Cloris Leachman, Til Schweiger, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Cheung, Daniel Brühl

Taking Woodstock - dir. Ang Lee - USA - with Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Emile Hirsch, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Paul Dano, Eugene Levy, Kelli Garner, Imelda Staunton, Katherine Waterson

Out of Competition

Drag Me to Hell - dir. Sam Raimi - USA - with Justin Long, Alison Lohman

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - dir. Terry Gilliam - France/Canada - with Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Jude Law, Tom Waits

Agora - dir. Alejandro Amenábar - USA/Spain - with Rachel Weisz

Off to Cannes We Go!

In just a matter of hours, the line-up for this year's Cannes Film Festival will be announced. It's already been announced that Pixar's latest Up! will open the fest, but the rest of the films are less certain. With new films from Michael Haneke, Tsai Ming-liang, Lars von Trier, Jacques Rivette, Claire Denis, Abbas Kiarostami, Jane Campion, Alain Resnais, Gaspar Noé, Patrice Chéreau, Jacques Audiard, Werner Herzog, Fatih Akin, the Coen Brothers and Andrea Arnold all finished (or at least close to), the line-up could be an exciting one. Expect Pedro Almodóvar's Broken Embraces [Los abrazos rotos], Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds and Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control to screen, either in or out of competition.

R.I.P. Jack Cardiff

The Decade List: La ciénaga (2001)

La ciénaga - dir. Lucrecia Martel

Following close behind Sébastien Lifshitz as my favorite filmmaker to emerge within the decade, Lucrecia Martel represents the most promising figure in Argentinean cinema, a country whose artistic surge on the map of international cinema has unjustly received less attention than Romania. No other country produced a string of film debuts more striking than Argentina, with Martel's La ciénaga, Lucía Puenzo's XXY and Alexis Dos Santos' Glue. La ciénaga's setting, a crumbling summer home in the northwest part of Argentina, provides a metaphor for the state of ruin within the upper middle-class family, and on a larger scale, the white aristocracy of the country itself.

Unlike one of 2001's worst films Life as a House, this isn't spelled out for the viewer or handed with a plate of schmaltz (or a shitty title, though maybe the comparison to another middling Kevin Kline film The Ice Storm is more accurate). It seeps within the film's narrative, though it's pretty difficult to call La ciénaga a narrative. Set across five or so sweltering summer days, the children of two families convene at the summer house of Mecha (Graciela Borges) and Gregorio (Martín Adjemián). After falling and cutting up her chest, Mecha recovers from her drunken accident, which opens the film, by planting herself in her room watching news footage of yet another sighting of the Virgin Mary. Her cousin Tali (Mercedes Morán) brings her children to play with the seemingly endless number of young bodies that run through the hallways and swamp (the literal, English translation of the title) and lounge across the house's beds. Mecha and Tali have grown apart for reasons unbeknownst to us, though it may have something to do with Tali having a better grip on reality than her boozy cousin.

There's nothing flattering about how Martel portrays the adults in La ciénaga; even Tali shares her cousin's unsavory racism, though it's more in check than Mecha's without the amplifying effects of alcohol. The opening scene provides the visual clue as a bunch of "adults," most of which are too drunk to even stand up, drop handfuls of ice in their wine glasses. Cellulite and beer bellies mark the flesh their bathing suits don't conceal. Most of the children are no better, with scars and cuts in place of their elders' aging marks, but with parents as inattentive as Mecha and Gregorio, it's hard to expect any less.

The characters in La ciénaga can be defined by their excuses. Mecha uses her "accident" as a cushion to hide away in her bed and drink the day away without anyone harassing her about it. She also invents reasons to belittle her native servants, such as accusing Isabel (Andrea López) of stealing towels, a sad attempt at exerting superiority. When he hears of his mother's accident, Mecha's eldest son José (Juan Cruz Bordeu, the actual son of Borges) uses this to get away from his older lover Mercedes (Silvia Baylé), who was, strangely, also his father's former mistress. José never seems the least bit concerned for his mother's "ailment" but uses this retreat to party and lay about the house in his underwear. Tali recites her own excuses for why she can't follow through with her and Mecha's plan to go shopping in Bolivia, which is an excuse in itself to maybe reconnect with Mecha or likely get away from her family. Merely talking about the trip to Bolivia provides the biggest illusion for Mecha, who begins to resemble traits of her late mother who spent the last twenty years of her life locked in bed.

Despite this, Martel isn't out to denunciate her characters, a trick that would sell her uncanny vision short. Based on memories from her own childhood, La ciénaga is as evocative of summer as any film I've seen. Though filled with hopeless individuals and bookended by two very unsettling occurrences that happen so seamlessly they're easy to overlook, La ciénaga is utterly sumptuous. While Argentina has never been a heavyweight in the ring of international cinema, filmmakers like Lucrecia Martel are changing that. Thus, it's not so much a resurrection of nation's cinematic legacy as it is the exciting dawning of, hopefully, a new era of cinema art.

With: Graciela Borges, Mercedes Morán, Juan Cruz Bordeu, Andrea López, Sofia Bertolotto, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé, Daniel Valenzuela, Noelia Bravo Herrera, Sebastián Montagna, Fabio Villafane, Diego Baenas
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Cinematography: Hugo Colace
Country of Origin: Argentina/France/Spain
US Distributor: Cowboy Booking/Home Vision

Premiere: 8 February 2001 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: September 2001 (Telluride Film Festival)

Awards: Alfred Bauer Award for Best First Film (Berlin International Film Festival)