Cannes 2009: Buyers, like weather, warming up

By  some estimates, attendance at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is down as much  as 30%. So far, the buying by prominent U.S. distributors is down almost 100%, but as the weather turned sunny over the weekend, there were signs that some domestic buyers were starting to circle a couple of acclaimed titles.

Although no major sales had been announced as the festival entered its sixth full day, buyers and sellers alike said three well-reviewed Cannes competition movies were starting to attract attention. The best-received competition movie so far has been the French gangster movie “A Prophet” (pictured above) from director Jacques Audiard (“The Beat  That My Heart Skipped”). The movie reminds some festival-goers of the mob movie “Gomorrah,” which IFC Films acquired after it premiered at last year’s Cannes festival. Like “Gomorrah,” “A Prophet” is sometimes disquietingly violent, particularly a scene involving a razor blade and oral sex that left some theater patrons hiding under their chairs.

Far less difficult to watch but equally appealing to buyers was Ken Loach’s “Looking for Eric” (pictured), a sometimes serious but mostly lighthearted story of a British mailman who turns to soccer superstar Eric Cantona for help in his life, especially to repair his fractured relationships with his ex-wife, daughter and two sons. Even though the film is in English, thick accents may necessitate subtitles for full comprehension.

Though it wasn’t as well-reviewed as “A Prophet,” director Andrea Arnold’s family drama “Fish Tank”  intrigued several smaller buyers and could secure a distribution deal by the festival’s end.

The one competition movie that will be a much tougher sell is Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” an exceedingly disturbing, violent and sexual drama about a couple’s crumbling marriage. The movie opens with a toddler  stumbling out of a upper-floor window to his death, and let’s just say that what follows is more distressing still. If there’s a market for a movie in which a character gives herself a clitorectomy with a pair of scissors, Cannes could still surprise some people yet.

-- John Horn

Photos: At top, "A Prophet." Credit: Celluloid Dreams. At bottom, "Looking for Eric." Credit:  Wild Bunch

 

Cannes 2009: As Terry Gilliam goes, so does the festival

Not that long ago, American distributors went to film festivals -- Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Telluride -- looking for reasons to buy a movie. These days, as the business has grown much tougher with higher-than-ever profit expectations, they almost seem more interested in finding reasons not to acquire a film. For proof, consider the status of director Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus."

At first glance, the movie would appear to have numerous built-in sales hooks, most notably that it was the last film of actor Heath Ledger, who died of a drug overdose during its filming. Because Ledger was unable to complete the film, a trio of prominent actors stepped in to finish his role: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law.

Those A-list names -- and the mystique of the last performance of the Oscar-winning "Dark Knight" co-star -- would seem to create enough publicity to drum up some audience interest; there's a fan website tracking the film's history and posting images from the film. Gilliam, who directed the critics' darling "Brazil" but also the flop "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen," is not some direct-to-video hack. On top of all that, the film was selected to play out of competition at this year's Cannes festival, where it will be shown Friday night.

But U.S. buyers, who were shown the movie in a screening at the Directors Guild of America theater in Los Angeles a week before the festival started, so far have been quite cool on the movie. Interviews with half a dozen American distributors here revealed a consistent reaction: Whatever publicity Ledger's death may generate for "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," the film itself is too oblique to stand on its own. The buyers said they were both dazzled and puzzled by some of Gilliam's choices, and though they found much to admire, it wasn't enough to tip the scales. 

John Sloss, the lawyer and sales agent who is selling the film in Cannes, said he was confident that the film would find a distributor, and that the potential buyers who are so far passing on the film might not be the right distributors for it in any case. But as the festival and concurrent market enter their fourth full day with no new major sales deals announced, it's starting to look as if the buyers aren't yet ready to start shopping.

-- John Horn

  

Cannes 2009: The global village, all in one French town

The first Cannes Film Festival press screening for Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” was held at 8:30 a.m. in the midst of a gutter-filling downpour, and yet there were only a handful of empty spots inside the 2,300-seat Grand Théâtre Lumière early this morning. The turnout for the latest movie from the director of “The Piano” was remarkable given the circumstances (and all the late-night partying), but equally noteworthy was the film’s international provenance, an across-all-borders production history that is being repeated with many Cannes titles.

Campion’s first feature since 2003’s “In the Cut,” “Bright Star” follows the love story between the young romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). The New Zealand-born filmmaker’s movie was backed by Australia’s Film Finance Corp., Britain’s BBC Films and UK Film Council and France’s Pathé Renn Productions. It will be distributed in the United States this fall by Bob Berney’s new (and still unnamed) American distribution company.

The second Cannes competition title screening to the press today is the horror movie “Thirst,” a co-production between New York’s Focus Features and South Korea’s CJ Entertainment, who are splitting all costs and revenues. Director Chan-wook Park’s story of a medical experiment gone wrong already has opened in South Korea, where it is generating blockbuster sales. It is scheduled to open in the United States in July.

“The future for people like us is to understand that it’s a big world out there, and you don’t have to speak one language,” said Focus CEO James Schamus. In addition to “Thirst,” Focus’ international co-productions include the Brazilian movie “Adrift,” and it recently released the Spanish-language titles “Sin Nombre” and “Rudo y Cursi.”

The potential global rewards for movies like “Bright Star” and “Thirst” cannot be told by U.S. theatrical grosses alone. Director Ang Lee (who is premiering his latest Focus movie, “Taking Woodstock,” in competition Saturday) released 2007’s “Lust Caution” to modest domestic revenues of just $4.6 million. But the NC-17-rated love story grossed $50 million in Asia alone.

— John Horn

Cannes 2009: Despite small deals, outlook remains cloudy

This evening’s forecast for the Cannes Film Festival called for rain, and as cool winds swept along the Croisette throughout the early morning, the weather felt consistent with the chilly market conditions on the festival’s first full day.

As the festival opened with a standing-ovation screening for the Pixar-Disney animated film “Up” Wednesday night (followed by a jam-packed party on the beach), a number of distribution pacts for some smaller films were announced. But even though more than half a dozen deals were closed, they didn’t necessarily mean the Cannes sales floodgates were opening.

IFC Films announced today that it was buying "The Red Riding Trilogy," a series of films based on a British serial killler called the Yorkshire Ripper in the 1970s and 1980s. As was previously announced, Sony Pictures Classics is buying two Cannes titles (“The White Ribbon” and “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky”), Chicago’s tiny Music Box Films picked up “North Face” and “Cloud 9," distributor Bob Berney’s as-yet-unnamed new company bought “Bright Star” while IFC Films acquired “Tales from the Golden Age.”

Yet just as noteworthy are the films that haven’t yet sold. Even though James Ivory’s “The City of Your Final Destination” with Anthony Hopkins and Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” with the late Heath Ledger have not screened in their official Cannes slots, both films have been shown to American distributors without any announced deals. The reports have been equally cautious from the Cannes film market, where about 4,500 movies in various stages of production are searching for buyers.

One of the key problems has been the collapse of worldwide DVD sales. Whereas revenue in the United States has leveled off, international returns are actually declining -- with sales from Europe, the Middle East and Africa falling from $17.8 billion in 2004 to $16.2 billion in 2007. Income from last year is expected to be down as well.

At the same time, it costs more and more to release films theatrically, and without the guaranteed sales from ancillary markets like home video, a theatrical release might no longer be a loss leader but the first shovels into an early grave. That makes in-between titles -- movies that might be too commercial to be an art film and those too artsy to be a commercial film -- the trickiest of all.

“Independent movies that are accessible and commercially minded can actually be harder to sell,” says sales agent Andrew Herwitz of the Film Sales Co. In the Cannes market, Herwitz is trying to land a distributor for “Serious Moonlight,” a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan, Kristen Bell, Justin Long and Timothy Hutton. At the same time, Herwitz says that “when you have a hot movie that everybody wants, it’s a very short conversation.”

Today's highest-profile movies looking for a distributor are the French-Chinese co-production “Spring Fever” and the British-Dutch effort “Fish Tank.” By the time the wet weather improves, perhaps both will have a sunny future.

-- John Horn