Cannes 2012: A fest filled with wild (and divisive) experiments

CANNES, France — The Cannes Film Festival didn't see a breakout on the order of “The Artist” this year. And yet “The Artist” was everywhere.

The silent film's sense of playfulness and disregard for convention pretty much infused the festival. Wherever one looked, there seemed to be another bold experiment — sometimes delighting audiences, often polarizing them.

Among the more well-received movies of the 65th edition of Cannes, which wrapped Sunday evening, was Leos Carax's “Holy Motors,” a surrealist romp through the streets of Paris. Some of its touches: A man biting the body parts off people at a cemetery-set photo shoot and limousines that spoke to one another in darkened garages.

Carax was hardly alone in his eccentricity. The Mexican director Carlos Reygadas offered “Post Tenebras Lux,” a dreamlike story shot with distorted lenses that featured a sex club where rooms are named after famous intellectuals. The film divided audiences but earned him the director's award.

Michael Haneke, the provocateur Austrian director of “Funny Games” and “The Piano Teacher” and a filmmaker who embodies a contemporary cinematic adventurousness, broke form himself by eschewing the violence and sex of his earlier work to make "Amour," a tender drama about aging, which took home the Palme d’Or prize Sunday evening.

And the Chilean Pablo Larrain directed one of the more unusual political films in recent years — a dramatic satire of the 1988 Chilean elections starring Gael Garcia Bernal that was shot to look as if the movie had been discovered on a VHS tape from the era. Tersely titled “No,” the movie became one of the fan favorites of the festival and scored a U.S. distribution deal from Sony Pictures Classics.

“I wanted people to feel like the archival footage we were using looked and felt like the rest of the movie,” Larrain told 24 Frames. “And I wanted to have a little fun with the medium.”

English-language directors did their share of wild noodling too. With “Cosmopolis,” David Cronenberg set nearly an entire movie in a stretch limousine as Robert Pattinson starred in a futuristic exploration of the end of technocapitalism.

The Oscar nominee Lee Daniels, meanwhile, tried his hand at an intensely heightened 1960's melodrama in “The Paperboy,” a period movie about race and murder starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron; the movie was so filled with over-the-top touches that it prompted pundit Eugene Hernandez to proclaim this the auteurs-gone-wild festival. Neither “Paperboy” nor “Cosmopolis” went over well with critics or festivalgoers.

Indeed, U.S.-set films, the subject of much hype coming into the festival, were also some of its biggest disappointments. Also faltering with festgoers was John Hillcoat's Prohibition-era “Lawless,” which starred Shia LaBeouf as a brother in a family of bootleggers.

LaBeouf and many Hollywood stars sought to use Cannes for another purpose: to reinvent themselves as more serious actors. Perhaps none did so more successfully than Matthew McConaughey, the romantic-comedy staple who established himself as a potential Oscar contender with his turn as an enigmatic homeless man in “Mud,” a contemporary spin on “Huckleberry Finn.” Directed by Jeff Nichols, “Mud” was by far the best-received movie of the English-language crop.

Attempts at a career makeover were also undertaken by the stars of one of the globe's biggest franchises. In addition to Pattinson's turn as a paranoid Wall Street mogul in “Cosmopolis,” Kristen Stewart, his “Twilight” costar and comrade in tween idoldom, tried a prestige turn in the long-awaited adaptation of Jack Kerouac's “On the Road.” The film received reasonably enthusiastic responses, as did Stewart for her role as Marylou from the iconic book.

“I just want to take good roles,” Stewart said, when asked by The Times about how this turn might propel her career. “That's true whether it’s a big movie or a small one, or a comedy or a drama, or if a director wants to try something completely new.”

She's in luck. Judging by this year's Cannes, plenty of filmmakers are willing to oblige.

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 — Steven Zeitchik

twitter.com/ZeitchikLAT

Photo: Denis Lavant in "Holy Motors." Credit: Cannes Film Festival

Cannes 2012: 'Amour' captures festival's top prize

CANNES, France -- In a rare convergence of critical, popular and jury tastes, the most admired film at the 65th Cannes Film Festival -- Michael Haneke's "Amour," starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva -- won the Palme d'Or on Sunday night. It was the second victory in four years for the Austrian Haneke, whose "The White Ribbon" also won in 2009.

 “Amour” is a devastating experience, the thrilling result of joining Haneke’s icy, immaculate style (think “Funny Games” and “Cache”) to an intrinsically emotional subject: what happens to the close, harmonious marriage of a couple in their 80s when the wife suffers a series of debilitating strokes. Shattering performances plus Haneke’s severe style add up to a stunningly moving experience.

For American movies at Cannes, it was a mixed year. None of the half-dozen U.S. titles -– which included “On the Road,” “Killing Me Softly,” “Paperboy” and “Mud”  -- won any prizes.

But it was an American film, Benh Zeitlin’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner “Beasts of the Southern Wild," that walked off with the coveted Camera d’Or for best first film across all of Cannes’ sections. The film also took the FIPRESCI or international critics’ prize for the Un Certain Regard section.

Aside from “Amour,” the film that did best at Cannes was “Beyond the Hills,” the new work by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who won the Palme in 2007 for “Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days.”

“Beyond the Hills,” set during a crisis at a monastery, won the best screenplay prize for Mungiu and the best actress prize, split between its two stars, Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan.

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-- Kenneth Turan

Photo: Austrian director Michael Haneke raises his trophy as he poses with French actress Emmanuelle Riva after being awarded with the Palme d'Or for his film "Amour." Credit: Valery Hache / AFP/Getty Images.

Cannes 2012: 'Amour' director Haneke says he hasn't mellowed

Two months ago, the Austrian director Michael Haneke turned 70, which might explain why he recently took a turn from his provocateur past to make "Amour," a tender movie about a Parisian couple struggling with old age.

But ask Haneke if the prospect of that personal milestone informed the poignant tone of his new French-language film and he'll demur.

"It was simply the subject that called for this treatment," Haneke said earlier this week from a hotel suite at the Cannes Film Festival, where his movie premiered to rave reviews and became an instant Palme d'Or front-runner. "If I was making a movie about a different subject it might have demanded a different kind of treatment."

Upon being gently reminded that it was he, after all, who chose to make a movie about this tender subject in the first place, Haneke gave a sly smile and said. "If you're asking whether I've become a nicer person, well, you'll have to ask my wife."

Always crisply courteous in person, Haneke has spent the last 15 years making films that have been anything but polite.

With the immigrant drama "Cache" (2005), the original German-language and then remade English-language psychological thrillers "Funny Games" (1997 and 2008), and the inter-generational sex drama "The Piano Teacher" (2001), Haneke has built a a reputation for uncomfortable material and unsettling scenes, as anyone who's watched the voyeurism-gone-violent of "Cache" or the infamous sex-on-a-bathroom-floor moments of "Piano Teacher" can affirm.

"Amour" is a different animal. The movie is a restrained story of a musically inclined octogenarian couple, Georges and Anne (played by the legendary French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emanuelle Riva), who are thrown for a loop when Anne suffers a stroke and her health begins to decline. Hardly in great health himself, Georges must then care for his wife while he attends to his own feelings of grief.

Cannes 2012: Jeff Nichols cleans up with 'Mud'

CANNES, France -- Looking a little like a kid caught swiping some candy, Jeff Nichols said what everyone in the room was thinking -- there is a lot of Mark Twain in his new movie "Mud."

"If you're going to steal, steal from someone who's really good," he told reporters with an affable shrug after his film premiered to extremely enthusiastic applause Saturday morning at the Cannes Film Festival.

At 33 and with just two features under his belt, Nichols came to Cannes as the youngest and least experienced of the North American directors, an estimable group that includes Wes Anderson, Lee Daniels and David Cronenberg. But he emerged with perhaps the best-received film of them all with "Mud," a coming-of-age drama graced occasionally by thriller touches.

An homage to "The Goonies" and "Stand By Me" as much as to "Huckleberry Finn," "Mud" is perhaps the most accessible and unabashedly crowd-pleasing movie to play among the roughly dozen English-language films here. It is also more of a feel-good tale than Nichols had been known based on his previous work, which includes the moody man-unhinged piece "Take Shelter" from 2011.

"I never considered a bleaker ending for this movie," he said at the press conference. "I had enough of those."

While "Mud" follows a criss-crossing pattern of relationships, its main focus is 14-year-old Ellis (previously unknown Southern teen Tye Sheridan) and his sidekick Neck (ditto, played by Jacob Lofland), and what happens when the Arkansans escape to an island downriver from Ellis' houseboat home only to find an enigmatic vagabond named Mud (Matthew McConaughey).

Which means that, like a certain iconic American novel, we're watching two young boys in rural America taking to the river and coming upon a mysterious stranger.

Unlike the escaped slave of Twain's Jim, Mud, it turns out, is on the run because he committed a crime to win the heart of longtime romantic interest Juniper (Reese Witherspoon, somber and un-Reese-like), who has never fully returned his devotion.

Cannes 2012: Ken Burns' 'Central Park Five' explores famous crime

New York Mayor Ed Koch called it “the crime of the century.” TV newscasters talked angrily about perpetrators who “blazed a nighttime trail of terror” that culminated in the savage beating and rape of a jogger in Central Park on April 19, 1989. It was one of the biggest media stories of its day, and as it turns out, everything you remember about it is wrong.

That is the premise of “The Central Park Five,” a careful, thoughtful and devastating new documentary directed by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns that is premiering out of competition at Cannes.

Five black and Latino teenagers confessed to the rape of the white jogger and served prison sentences ranging from almost seven to 13 years. Compelling new evidence, including an ironclad confession by the actual rapist, led a New York Supreme Court justice to vacate the sentences of those teenagers in 2002. In plain English, these young men were completely innocent.

“The Central Park Five” does more than go over this territory. Using extensive interviews with the five men and their families, it shows exactly how this disturbing miscarriage of justice happened. It also reveals a theme that Ken Burns feels runs through many of his documentary projects: “When you look under the surface of American history, it's always race.”

Burns is best known not for theatrical documentaries but for PBS series about subjects such as jazz, baseball and the Civil War. This project started not with him but with his daughter Sarah, who nine years ago had a summer internship with a Manhattan law firm that was handling a civil suit against the city for violation of the Central Park Five's civil rights.

She met several of the young men and was “moved by their story and by what lovely people they were, not hardened or angry.” The story so stayed with her that Burns decided that instead of going to law school she would turn her interest into a book, also called “The Central Park Five” and published by Knopf in 2011.

While she was writing, her father and McMahon (her husband and a producer for her father) were, in Ken's words, “looking over her shoulder” and getting drawn into the possibility of telling this story on film.

The co-directing credit for Sarah was, the senior Burns is sure to point out, “not parental largesse” but a reflection of the fact that “the three of us made this film co-equally.” Added McMahon, “three is a good number in the editing room, which is where films are made.”

Sarah Burns' relationship with the five meant, she said, “they were all in. They wanted to tell their story.” Four talk on camera while the fifth, who has moved out of the state and lives under a different name (“a self-imposed witness protection plan,” said McMahon) is heard but not seen.

Harder to convince were relatives of the five, who experienced more of the public hatred and condemnation that resulted when, in Ken Burns' words, “the media swallowed the story like an LSD trip.”

“They remained incredibly raw,” said McMahon, while his wife added: “The families were the ones on the outside, the ones who suffered, were ostracized and ignored. They were much more skeptical.”

Even more skeptical were the New York City police and the prosecutors from the district attorney's office. No one was willing to go on camera and talk about the case.

“There's a real omertà, a code of silence from prosecutors. They rarely speak, plus there was a good deal of hiding behind the civil suit,” which is ongoing, said Ken Burns.

The most fascinating aspect of “The Central Park Five” is its examination of how people can be psychologically manipulated into confessing to crimes they did not commit, a phenomenon also explored in another recent doc, “Scenes of a Crime.”

“People don't understand this. It sounds irrational — they sit in the comfort of their living rooms and think, ‘I would never do that,'” said Sarah Burns. “But these were practically children, they were so young and so naive.” And they also were in the hands of experienced interrogators, people who were so good at their jobs, McMahon said, that a military interviewer told him: “I could get Mother Teresa to confess to anything.”

The “Central Park” co-directors are hoping for a theatrical release for their film before it goes to PBS in 2013 or 2014, in part to create publicity to put pressure on the city to settle the civil suit with the five.

“These are men with a life so interrupted, a gap we can't imagine,” Ken Burns said. “My mother died when I was 11 and that hole was the defining moment in my life. It led to what I do for a living: I wake the dead. I would love it if some wise soul would whisper in the mayor's ear, ‘Just settle.' To have these men made whole again in some way would be great.”

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— Kenneth Turan, reporting from Cannes, France

Photo: "The Central Park Five" directors, from left, David McMahon, Sarah Burns and Ken Burns, at the Cannes Film Festival. Credit: Loic Venance/AFP/GettyImages.

'Chernobyl Diaries': Horror movie and travel book depict extreme tourism

Twenty-six years after the worst nuclear accident in history, Chernobyl is suddenly hot again — at least culturally. This weekend, "Chernobyl Diaries," a horror movie that follows a group of tourists on an excursion to the abandoned Ukrainian site of the meltdown, hits theaters just as a pollution travelogue by journalist Andrew Blackwell, "Visit Sunny Chernobyl," is arriving in bookstores.

The movie, co-written and produced by "Paranormal Activity" creator Oren Peli and directed by visual-effects supervisor and first-time feature filmmaker Brad Parker, was inspired by the very type of extreme tourism Blackwell undertakes in his nonfiction book: visits to ravaged, sometimes unexpectedly beautiful polluted sites around the world.

Blackwell canoed through Chernobyl while researching his book and also jogged in smoggy Linfen, China, and sailed for the swirling Pacific Ocean garbage patch, all in pursuit of a glimpse of the Earth's contaminated future.

The travelers in "Chernobyl Diaries" embark on a different sort of trip — more akin to disaster rubbernecking. Four Americans, played by Jonathan Sadowski, Jesse McCartney, Olivia Taylor Dudley and Devin Kelly, pack into a van with a former Soviet special forces soldier for an unauthorized day trip to Pripyat, the Ukrainian city that today resembles the set of a post-apocalyptic movie after it was hastily abandoned in the wake of the 1986 disaster.

At first the movie's scares are natural: intimidating guards, eerily overgrown buildings, a hungry bear. But, this being a Peli production, it soon becomes clear Pripyat is inhabited by some unusual and aggressive tenants.

The notion that Chernobyl, which led to radiation exposure for hundreds of thousands of people, has become the subject of a horror film is distasteful to some. There is a Facebook page boycotting the movie, for instance.

But Chernobyl tourism is a real phenomenon. According to the Lonely Planet, a day trip to Pripyat will cost an adventurer $100 to $300, and sightseeing opportunities include a never-used ferris wheel, some forgotten children's toys and sun-faded Soviet-era propaganda. As for the safety issues, the travel guide warns: " 'Hot spots' are scattered throughout the zone, so any visitors are advised to follow guides extremely carefully. No breaking off from the group for a bit of independent exploration here."

Reviews of "Chernobyl Diaries" seem equally foreboding. USA Today's Claudia Puig says, "Avoid a boredom meltdown and give this formulaic scarefest a wide berth." While writing for The Times, Mark Olsen warns, "The lack of suspense and surprise in this dispiritingly rote film becomes its own form of contamination."

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Photo: A scene from "Chernobyl Diaries." Credit: Warner Bros.

'Men in Black 3' a blast from the past, critics say

After a 10-year absence from the big screen, agents J and K (Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, respectively) are back to save the world from aliens (yes, again) in "Men in Black 3." After the widely panned "MIB2," this third installment is all about time travel — both in terms of plot and in trying to recapture the quirky fun of the original 1997 film. For many critics, the film has done just that, largely thanks to the addition of Josh Brolin.

The Times' own Betsy Sharkey writes, "'Men in Black 3' has got the MIB mojo back — well, most of it anyway." The film "has recovered some of the brashness and all of the unbridled affection for the weird, wonky otherworldly types that made the initial 1997 cosmic comedy such a kick," and Brolin's turn as K's younger self is "a casting coup." Brolin channels Jones "brilliantly" without sticking to a slavish impersonation, and the end result is "campy fun if not quite a classic."

The New York Times' A.O. Scott finds "MIB3" to be a movie "with no particular agenda. Which may be part of the reason it turns out to be so much fun." Though the film starts slowly, eventually "it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty and genuinely fresh territory," Scott says. Jemaine Clement ("Flight of the Conchords"), playing a time-hopping supervillain, brings "thunderous mock pomposity" to the proceedings, while Brolin is "uncanny and hilarious." Other game cast members include Alice Eve, Bill Hader and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Ty Burr, of the Boston Globe, calls Brolin "the film's most remarkable special effect." His performance, Burr says, "is funny, masterful, confident, and more than a little unsettling." The rest of the film "is about as good as one could hope for from an unnecessary sequel that’s a decade late to the party." Burr agrees with Scott that the first act drags and the story "feels pro forma," but once things get going there are moments of "deft, absurdist entertainment."

Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, deems "MIB3" "better than the first one" and echoes Burr in calling Brolin's young Agent K "the movie's most impressive achievement." The film also offers "an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters [and] audacious cliff-hanging," if that's your thing.

Hearst film critic Amy Biancolli ranks "Men in Black 3" as "not quite as fresh" as the original film but "a heck of a lot better" than the second. "Abundant humor, dabs of heartbreak and a suspenseful, vertiginous climax go a long way toward compensating for any logical lapses or cliches."

A few critics have proved somewhat immune to Brolin's charms, including the Village Voice's Nick Pinkerton, who writes that the actor does "a fair TLJ impersonation." It's not enough to save the film from "ubiquitous timidity" and "bland formula."

Whether J and K will return for future adventures remains to be seen. But in a world populated by aliens and time travelers, stranger things have happened.

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Photo: Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in "Men in Black 3." Credit: Wilson Webb / Columbia Pictures

Trailer Trash: New preview for Ben Affleck's 'Argo' [Video]

Ben Affleck isn't off to a bad start as a movie director.

His directorial debut, 2007's "Gone Baby Gone," received overwhelmingly positive reviews, while 2010's "The Town" earned equally great marks and grossed more than $154 million globally.

Affleck's next movie, "Argo," scheduled for Oct. 12, presents the hardest test yet of his expertise behind the camera, as he steps into a genre -- Middle Eastern conflict -- that has felled any number of skilled filmmakers. 

Based on the true story of an Iranian rescue operation that feels more like "Tropic Thunder" than anything military intelligence could dream up, "Argo" stars Affleck as the architect of the mission. 

Here's a look at the latest trailer, complete with our Trailer Trash commentary:

 

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Photo: Ben Affleck in "Argo." Credit: Claire Folger / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. / GK Films

Cannes 2012: With 'Cosmopolis,' Rob Pattinson seeks acting cred

"Twilight" stars Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson have sex multiple times in Cannes (separately, and on screen) but it's a very different kind of lovemaking. As Marylou, Dean Moriarty's wife in "On the Road," Stewart's sex is uninhibited and hedonistic. As Eric Packer, the troubled Wall Street Master of the Universe in "Cosmopolis," Pattinson's sex is mechanical and joyless, as if he's trying to exorcise some unhappiness instead of simply indulging in pleasure.

Audiences got a glimpse of that exorcism on Friday when the David Cronenberg-directed "Cosmopolis" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. The contrast in the "Twilight" stars' bedroom manner proved telling.

"On the Road" is a free-form depiction of an era and has won largely plaudits at Cannes. "Cosmopolis" is a claustrophobic  look at a troubled billionaire who is watching the world implode around him from his limousine, and it landed far more mixed responses from critics and festival-goers. Some thought it a timely, idea-driven gem, while a far larger number saw in it a purposelessness reminiscent of Packer's moments in flagrante.

Based on Don DeLillo's dialogue-heavy novella, "Cosmopolis" tells of Packer, a billionaire financier in New York who undertakes the simple task of having his limo driver escort him to a barber across town, despite vague threats on Packer's life and, possibly, the larger world. For all the intrigue and respect he elicits, this isn't a man who's liked very much; that’s what you get for climbing to the top of the corporate heap, or, maybe, for becoming the world’s biggest teen idol.

The setting is typical Cronenberg, a place that looks much like our world but somehow isn't quite. As the trip unfolds, the billionaire, speaking in that Cronenbergian flat affect, entertains a host of acquaintances who pop in and out of his limo, often to talk about things like technocapitalism and its wonders (per Packer) or dangers (per others, and perhaps the film as a whole).  These guests both in the limo and outside it (Sarah Gadon, Emily Hampshire and Paul Giamatti co-star) engage in elliptical exchanges with Packer about their views of the universe, often in turns of DeLillo-ian eloquence and/or impenetrability.

Cannes 2012: Actor Norman Lloyd remembers Hitchcock, Renoir

If modern film history has a voice, it is Norman Lloyd's. An actor for more than 70 years, Lloyd has worked with -- and known as friends -– filmmakers as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir.

A peerless raconteur with an impeccable memory, the 97-year-old Lloyd had a capacity crowd at the Cannes Film Festival (including directors Alexander Payne and Abbas Kiarostami) in the palm of his hand as he answered questions from critics Todd McCarthy and Pierre Rissient about his long career.

Lloyd's best-known work (unless you count his TV stint on “St. Elsewhere”) was his first appearance, a key role as a Nazi spy in Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 "Saboteur." His character famously plunges off the Statue of Liberty. But before he ever came to Hollywood, Lloyd had a distinguished stage career that included a place in Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre and the role of Cinna the Poet in Welles’ 1937 production of "Julius Caesar," which Lloyd remembers as having, in Welles' celebrated staging, the contemporary feel of "political melodrama written the night before." 

Once in Hollywood, Lloyd became extremely close to Renoir, the son of painter Auguste Renoir, after appearing in the director's 1945 "The Southerner." Though dismissed by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck as "not one of us," Renoir earned the admiration of Chaplin as well as Welles: "They both said he was the No. 1 director," Lloyd recalled.

Perhaps the most moving story Lloyd told involved Renoir in his declining years. The director embarked on a project of seeing all his films. When he'd viewed them all, he said to Lloyd: "'When I started to make films, I was determined at all cost to be as unlike my father as possible. But having seen all my work, I realize that what I've been trying to do all my life is imitate my father,' Lloyd shared, before adding, "What an amazing statement from a man near the end of his life."

Lloyd's close association with Hitchcock led to his working as a producer and director on the classic TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." As the Cannes audience sat spellbound, so to speak, Lloyd recounted going to see Harold Pinter's 1960 "The Caretaker" and talking to the British playwright about possibly writing for the Hitchcock show.

As it turned out, Pinter had a TV script already written, which was sent on to Hitchcock to consider. His epigrammatic response: "I don’t do that sort of thing."

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-- Kenneth Turan

Photo: Norman Lloyd is reflected in a mirror at his home in Brentwood on May 15, 2009. Credit: Christina House / Los Angeles Times