Yes We Cannes
by Brian Tallerico

As much as critics and festival lovers don't want to admit it, most modern filmgoers in the States completely write off the Cannes Film Festival. We might peruse a headline or look at pretty pictures of people on the red carpet, but it's an afterthought. Cannes is often looked down upon by some as a bunch of pretentious filmmakers and beautiful people eating Brie, drinking wine, and watching movies that will NEVER play in Peoria. It doesn't help that it happens in May, when most young folks in the States are getting ready for summer and seeing Iron Man for the 15th time. Finally, even the Cannes aficionados would admit that the "best of the fest" often looks a little different a few months later in the cold light of American theaters. For every two films that make a splash at Cannes, one of them will completely disappear into obscurity. (Actually, that ratio is in the best years.) Some Palme d'Or winners don't even play in as big a city as Chicago.

So, should we write off Cannes and just wait for Toronto? Oh, no. In fact, the opposite is true. Yes, Cannes can be a pretentious wank-fest but some of the more interesting movie stories of the last few years have started on the French shores. Last year, Cristian Mungiu's amazing 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days stole headlines at Cannes, winning the Palme d'Or and was still making waves eight months later when the Academy failed to even short list it for Best Foreign Language Film. At the same festival, two of the best films of 2008, Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the Coen brothers No Country For Old Men, began their incredible runs (Schnabel won Best Director). Other films in competition included Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and David Fincher's Zodiac. In Competition films in 2006 included Babel, Pan's Labyrinth, Days of Glory, Marie Antoinette, Red Road, and Volver. That year also saw the controversial premiere of The Da Vinci Code, a film that was given a lavish premiere but booed as the credits rolled. And those stories are just from the last couple of years. There are always a few movies at Cannes that start the ball rolling in France and that makes it a fest to which all film lovers should still pay attention.

Recent winners at Cannes who continued to make waves all the way across the pond include Diving Bell, 4 Months, and Persepolis in 2007; Babel, Volver, Days of Glory, and Red Road in 2006; Broken Flowers, Cache, and Sin City in 2005; and Fahrenheit 9/11, Old Boy, and The Motorcycle Diaries in 2004. What were the stories this year? What were the hits and the bombs? Which films are likely to make an impact in the States, possibly even riding the French buzz all the way to Oscar? Here are the big stories from Cannes 2008.

Eastwood Continues His Dominance

Has there been a director more consistent in the last two decades than Clint Eastwood? We can forgive the slight missteps like The Rookie and True Crime for a resume that includes Bird, Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Letters From Iwo Jima. And that's just in the last 20 years. There are at least four masterpieces in there and, if the buzz is to be believed, he's already produced a fifth in Changeling. Written by J. Michael Straczynski (who has also penned the World War Z adaptation that we'd love to see David Fincher get his hands on), Clint Eastwood's Changeling, which may already be switched to The Exchange (a title that appears to have come about through an English-to-French translation of Changeling which saw the film listed as L'Echange), received some of the most unanimous acclaim at this year's fest. Several people seem to think that the film could be on a similar path as Mystic River, a film that also won praise at that year's fest.

Opening here on November 7th, Changeling/Exchange, which is based on a true story, stars Angelina Jolie as a mother in 1928 Los Angeles who uncovers corruption after her nine-year-old son disappears. After five months with no developments, the police actually try to deliver a different child to Jolie's character, Christine Collins, and she doesn't take it very well. The LAPD Captain (played by Burn Notice's Jeffrey Donovan) demands that Collins take home the new child on a "trial basis" and locks the heroine up in a psycho ward when she refuses. Meanwhile, a radio minister played by John Malkovich and an officer played by Michael Kelly help to uncover the corruption that The Hollywood Reporter called "a forgotten chapter to the L.A. noir of Chinatown and Hollywood Confidential."

Remember how poor Angelina got completely screwed out of an Oscar nomination for the best work of her career in A Mighty Heart? It's unlikely to happen again. HR said of Jolie's work in Changeling/Exchange, "Jolie completely shuns her movie star image to play a woman whose confidence in everything she thinks she knows is shaken to its very core. She can appear vulnerable and steadfast in the same moment. This woman has a depth she herself has never explored." Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote a no-holds-barred rave, saying that the film was "a thematic companion piece to "Mystic River" but more complex and far-reaching, "Changeling" impressively continues Clint Eastwood's great run of ambitious late-career pictures." He also called the film "emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed." Eastwood's latest may not have a name yet, but it has as much buzz as anything coming out this year.

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