Close, but ‘not America’
By Joan Dupont

International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, MAY 17, 2005

CANNES — For the first time in decades, Canada has two films in
competition here. David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan, directors of the
extreme, from a place – Toronto – known as tame, make imaginative
and, some say, weird films, investigations into dark zones. But these
offerings look like sheer entertainment.

Cronenberg’s U.S.-produced “A History of Violence” depicts an
American family living in a Garden of Eden that turns into a snake
pit, and stars Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, William Hurt, and Ed
Harris. Egoyan’s Canadian-produced “Where the Truth Lies,” shot in
London studios, is about a Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin-style comedy team
that breaks up mysteriously. The story, told from different points
of view over three time periods, stars Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and
Alison Lohman.

Their new films are adapted from American novels. “This was a world
where these men had access to whatever they desired,” Egoyan said. “I
wanted to show them as unbridled – drugs, sex, almost a narcoticized
feeling of sexuality, in scenes about power and control, shown from
different points of view.” He described his movie as a film noir.

Cronenberg said his film was not a realistic movie: “It’s about
creating another identity. We make choices. An identity isn’t given to
us, we create it. Everyday you wake up and assemble that person. It’s
possible to become somebody else.”

Both are champions of the competition and have been on the jury,
Cronenberg as president. He is excited to be back in competition, and
alongside Egoyan: “We’re close friends and support each other. We’re
comrades in arms rather than competitors.”

At the festival, their ventures are being looked upon as UFOs. The
trade magazines hail them as sleek and sexy, while the cinephile
press sniffs suspiciously, although “A History of Violence” was well
received Monday. Even if the films bear the imprint of the directors –
obsessions with truth, identity, violence and sexuality – both seem
to take place in a magnificently decorated but anonymous country,
and are also moral tales.

Since the 1970s, when French-language filmmakers such as Gilles Carle,
Jean-Pierre Le- febvre and Claude Jutra made their mark here, Cannes
has been supportive of Canadian cinema. These films spoke French
with a Canadian accent; they charmed, but were perceived abroad as
provincial. At home, this cinema is popular at the local box office.

Denys Arcand is an exception. His brilliant scripts and worldly
characters in films like “The Decline of the American Empire” and
“The Barbarian Invasions” speak a more universal language, win prizes
and are popular at movie houses. “The very first film I worked on,
a student film, went to Cannes at the Semaine de la Critique in
1962,” he said, referring to “Seul ou avec d’autres” (“Alone or With
Others”). “Most of my other films were screened at Cannes, and Cannes
has always been very good to me.”

Yet some Canadians, French- or English-speaking, feel they are
sometimes treated like poor relatives here, less glamorous and
important than their American cousins. Over the years, the Toronto
festival, which while noncompetitive is now ranked by many observers
as third after Cannes and Berlin, has changed that. The festival
boosts emerging directors from English-speaking Canada.

Piers Handling, who programmed at Toronto before becoming its director
10 years ago, has championed Cronenberg and Egoyan since the 1980s. “We
ran the first North American retrospective of David’s work in 1983,
when he was something of a pariah, a genre filmmaker on a scene where
Canadians looked for realism.” The festival also launched Egoyan with
“Next of Kin” in 1984. “Atom and David made the breakthrough for
Canadian art cinema,” Handling said. “Their new films became fixtures
at festivals.”

Handling finds “Where the Truth Lies” to be genuine Egoyan despite
the material. “There’s Atom’s interest in storytelling. Where does the
truth lie with characters who are chameleon-like? That’s part of Atom,
his obsessions. He’s an immigrant, born in Cairo of Armenian parents,
and he had to adapt a whole series of personas and masks.

“With both directors, their Canadianness is very much part of their
work. Look at Fritz Lang or Lubitsch, who came to America; did they
lose themselves or their talent? Yet French-Canadian films are truly
rooted in the land. Denys Arcand sets his films on the streets of
Montreal, the hospitals, the universities, whereas Atom and David
are like aliens traveling through their own cities.”

Robert Lantos, a Canadian whose career as a producer began with Gilles
Carle in 1976, was also behind Arcand, Cronenberg and Egoyan. He
will produce Cronenberg’s next film, “Painkillers,” and he produced
“Where the Truth Lies.” He finds it interesting that both directors
have chosen themes more accessible to bigger audiences.

In this film, Cronenberg says, his characters are mainstream. “Normally
I’m attracted to bizarre people, outcasts. This time, I thought it
would be interesting to see what happens when the characters start
out normal and slide into abnormality. In this film, the violence is
specifically American, but there is universal violence – the violence
in one person, the violence in movies.”

He observes that Marshall McLuhan felt he could comment on America
in a way that Americans couldn’t. “Canada is so close to America,
but it’s not America. Our movie is set in America with major American
actors, but not a foot was shot in America. Our cultures are very
different. We didn’t have a revolution or a civil war.”

Cronenberg added: “Violence is universal. We can’t eliminate it. Humans
are unique on earth as creatures that can imagine a world without
violence, where everybody is fed, and lives in peace. We can imagine
this, and not accomplish it.”