70th Cannes Film Festival: Colin Farrell front and centre
The fact that Alien: Covenant starring Michael Fassbender and Dunkirk with Cillian Murphy have given the landmark 70th Cannes Festival the flick means that another prolific Irishman, Colin Farrell, will be front and centre stage at the world’s most prestigious festival—in two films, no less,
In 2015 when Colin Farrell came to Cannes with The Lobster, everyone thought that his appearance in the second season of True Detective was the big thing on his agenda. Yet The Lobster, by Greek absurdist filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, became Farrell’s big success, invigorating his career.
Now in Lanthimos’s The Killing Of A Sacred Deer Farrell stars with Nicole Kidman in another competition film, about a teenage boy forming a sinister friendship with a surgeon, that could cause a similar sensation.
The actors also star in Sophia Coppola’s The Beguiled, based on the same book as Don Siegel’s 1971 film starring Clint Eastwood, though apparently it’s a vastly different telling of Thomas P. Cullinan’s A Painted Devil, a story about sexual tension and jealousy. Coppola regular Kirsten Dunst and another Cannes two-timer Elle Fanning, also star.
Fanning also appears in John Cameron Mitchell’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties alongside Kidman.
The Aussie actress and increasingly muscular producer, who is currently enjoying success with the television series Big Little Lies, had forged a close relationship with Mitchell on Rabbit Hole, her second producing effort for which she was Oscar-nominated for best actress.
Her first had been Palme d’Or winner Jane Campion’s In The Cut, so it’s no surprise that she will be in Cannes starring in Campion’s second series of Top of the Lake, this time filmed in Sydney. The series takes Kidman’s Cannes entries to four.
There’s more excitement on the television front too. After premiering Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at the Festival in 1992 David Lynch returns to the Croisette with his revitalized Twin Peaks television series again starring Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper.
In his Paris address Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux told the crowd he had been keen to invite as many of the Cannes fraternity of filmmakers to the event as he could.
So it’s no surprise to find two-time Palme d’Or winner Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon, Amour) competing with Happy End, a genre film starring Jean-Louis Trintignant (from Amour) and Isabelle Huppert, whose wonderful Elle closed the festival last year.
After his success with Carol, Todd Haynes returns to Cannes with Wonderstruck, his third film starring Julianne Moore after Safe and Far From Heaven.
We Need to Talk About Kevin British director Lynne Ramsay returns with another tough story, You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a war veteran attempting to save a young girl from a sex trafficking ring, but it goes horribly wrong.
Francois Ozon whose stunning World War Two drama, Frantz, is coming to local cinemas, will compete with L’Amant Double, an erotic Hitchcockian thriller starring Jacqueline Bisset. Nude photos of the two younger leads Marine Vacth et Jeremie Renier adorn French websites, so it’s sure to capture our attention.
Also in the competition The Artist director Michel Hazanivicius premieres Redoubtable which recounts an early Jean-Luc Goddard romance and stars Louis Garrel as the hailed New Wave director as well as Stacy Martin from Nymphomaniac by Lars von Trier (whose latest film isn't finished).
The festival opens with Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts starring Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis (again) and Mathieu Amalric—the Quantum of Solace actor also premieres his latest work behind the camera, Barbara, starring Jeanne Balibar.
For the first time Netflix will field two competition entries, Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories starring Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman and Ben Stiller, as well as Okja directed by Bong Joon-Ho (The Host, Mother, Snowpiercer) and starring Tilda Swinton and Paul Dano.
The members of the competition jury headed by Pedro Almodovar will soon be announced, as will the festival sidebars Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week.
Not all films are world premieres and some of the cream of Sundance are making their international debut. Al Gore in fact told me in Utah that his An Inconvenient Sequel, partly set amidst the Paris climate summit would most likely come, and of course its climate change subject is even more prescient than in January.
Taylor Sheridan the screenwriter of previous Cannes gems Sicaro and Hell or High Water brings his directing debut Wind River set on a snow-covered Indian reservation and starring a heartfelt Jeremy Renner in his strongest performance in a while.
