EGOYAN’S `ADORATION’ TO COMPETE AT CANNES
Jenny Barchfield
Toronto Star, Canada
April 23 2008
PARIS-Atom Egoyan’s Adoration will compete next month at this year’s
streamlined Cannes Film Festival, as will Clint Eastwood’s Changeling
and Wim Wenders’ Palermo Shooting.
Adoration, starring Toronto actors Scott Speedman and Rachel Blanchard,
is about a young man obsessed with the idea that he is the spawn
of two historical figures and is Egoyan’s first feature length film
since Where The Truth Lies, which also screened at Cannes.
His 1994 film Exotica won the International Critics’ Prize at the
festival and his 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter won the Grand Jury
Prize.
Eastwood and Steven Soderbergh will headline the competition this year
at the pared down version of Cannes, which features fewer big-name
directors and more emerging voices from across the globe, organizers
said Wednesday.
Eastwood will show Changeling, a mystery set in 1920s Los Angeles and
starring Angelina Jolie as the mother of a kidnapped child. Soderbergh,
the director of the lighthearted series that began with Ocean’s Eleven,
gets serious with his four-hour-long marathon, Che, about Argentine
revolutionary Ernesto Guevara.
Organizers did not say which films would open and close the festival,
which runs May 14-25. Organizers said they would announce the movies
that snag the coveted slots later.
In a much-anticipated premiere, Harrison Ford dons his khakis for the
latest instalment of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series. Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull also stars Australian
actress Cate Blanchett, and will be screened out of competition.
Festival head Thierry Fremaux said he was thrilled Spielberg had
chosen to premiere the movie at Cannes.
"It’s amazing," he said. "A big portion of festival-goers and
journalists grew up with Steven Spielberg’s first movies."
Woody Allen’s Spanish-set Vicky Cristina Barcelona will play out of
competition, as will Serbian director Emir Kusturica’s Maradona, a
documentary about Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona. Kusturica
has won the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize, twice, in 1985 and 1995.
Organizers said the 61st edition of the French Riviera festival
will mark a shift in the spirit of the event, known for its mix of
Hollywood blockbusters and small art-house films.
They said they had pared down the offerings in the main competition
from 22 last year to 20 this year and nixed some of the sideline
events to put the spotlight back on cinema.
This year, smaller productions by lesser-known directors appear to
have the upper hand over blockbusters. Organizers explained that
many of the festival’s favourite star directors – like Britain’s
Stephen Frears (The Queen) and Spain’s Pedro Almodovar (Volver) –
are currently working on new movies.
The main competition lineup includes movies by art-house directors from
Belgium, Turkey, China, France, Argentina, Brazil and Italy. Eight of
the directors have never appeared in Cannes’ main competition before.
Brazilian director Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) is showing
Linha de Passe, the story of brothers trying to scrape their way out
of poverty. Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel makes her debut at Cannes
with La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Woman without a Head), which explores
the psychology of a woman disturbed after she hits and kills a dog
with her car.
Award-winning Chinese director Jia Zhangke, whose Still Life took
the top prize at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, continues to explore
how economic expansion affects China’s legions of poor. 24 City is
about the relocation of an aircraft factory and its workers in the
southwestern Chinese city Chengdu.
American screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) makes his
directorial debut with Synechdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour
Hoffman.
Germany’s Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or for his melancholic 1984
movie Paris, Texas, will screen The Palermo Shooting, a drama with
a multilingual, multinational cast.
Palme d’Or laureates Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who took top honours
at the 1999 and 2005 festivals, are back with Le Silence de Lorna
(Lorna’s Silence). Known for their harrowing portraits of those on
the margins of society, the Belgian brothers tell the story of the
marriage between a drug addict and an illegal immigrant.
In a festival first, an animated documentary has been selected for
the main competition. Israeli writer-director Ari Folman’s Waltz with
Bashir grapples with the 1982 massacre of Palestinians by Christian
militia members in Lebanon.
Sean Penn, the American actor-director, leads the jury, which also
includes actress Natalie Portman. The Palme d’Or and other awards
will be announced May 25.
Though festival regular Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) is not
presenting a new movie, the 1994 Palme d’Or laureate will give a
master class on moviemaking to students and film buffs.