By Steven Zeitchik

On a last-minute tip from a reviewer friend, we jammed in one final
festival screening Saturday morning before catching a train out of
Dodge. As luck would have it, it was one of the best movies we saw the
entire fest. As Sean Penn would have it, it was the film that won the
Palme d’Or.

There’s already plenty of talk that, after years of being plagued by
nepotism, the Cannes top prize finally means something again now that
two highly praised and critically anointed films have won the prize in
the last two years. (Romanian abortion drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2
Days" was the ‘07 winner.)

"The Class" is similar to that movie in some ways; it also takes on a
topic of social relevance — in this case, education and integration in
modern-day Paris — and, aided by some direct storytelling, gives it a
dramatic shine.

"The Class" (or "Entre Les Murs") basically looks at one year in the
life of a rough-and-tumble school — specifically, at the French class
of teacher Francois Begaudeau (who wrote the memoir on which the film
is based and also plays the lead). Until the last section, it doesn’t
overdo the narrative peaks and valleys, just kind of follows the
teachers and students through their daily paces. Think "Stand &
Deliver" or "Dangerous Minds" without the Hollywood formula, or "Half
Nelson" without the drugs.

Director Laurent Cantet bathes the film in a kind of white light, a
bold visual choice that keeps the focus on the words and relationships
instead of the run-down surroundings, as other movies of this ilk do.
And unlike similar films, there’s a lot of wordplay and quick verbal
jibes in "The Class." A foreign-language film about language might seem
like a doomed enterprise to a non-native audience, but there’s humor
and insight even if you’re just reading the subtitles (which we were).

The movie is more accessible than "4 Months" and a lot easier to
digest. But it’s still a powerful work — about race, language,
adolescence and even justice.

Like other Cantet pics, it likely would have had U.S. distribution
anyway. The Palme ensures that it will go for more money (and increases
the chances it will get shut out of the Oscar foreign race; just ask "4
Months" helmer Christian Mungiu).

And maybe, it will ensure that all that talk about backscratching no longer has much to do with a Palme.

By Steven Zeitchik

We take it all back, Charlie.

“Synecdoche, NY,” the alleged disaster with the unpronounceable title, is nothing of the sort. Well, the title is still a tongue-twister. But the film is not at all the surrealist muddle early detractors had described — it’s a work of profound ambition and artistry.

The best way to characterize the movie (without going into animated discussions about metafiction and ontological reality) is as a tragi-comic lifetime portrait of a nebbishy theater director who has the grandiose idea to re-create an entire city, and the many social interactions thereof, inside a giant warehouse. (The Cannes program describes the pic as a story about a man whose wife leaves him, which seems to us a little like saying “The Godfather” is about a man who kills people.)

Don’t get us wrong — the movie can be messy and doesn’t hit all its spots. But it’s funny, stylish, poignant and crammed with ideas. The last scene will break your heart. (Read Ray Bennett’s review here.)

There had been talk that Kaufman had gone too far, that without a director to rein him in he had lost the sharp wit and sense of purpose that marked his writerly efforts. It isn’t true.

There’s irony here, and worlds just a little off-kilter, and grand metaphyiscal ambitions, and a pervasive sense of loss, and all the other elements you’d want. “Synecdoche” is not just a study of a man’s life but a metaphor for all lives, at least creative ones, a testament to the need for but perils of ambition, a parable about the relationship between imagination and divinity (a Kaufman favorite)…we can go on. You get the point; it’s all there.

Distributors should be all over this movie — not because it’s attractively commercial, but because with a small edit and some savvy marketing, it could become an oddball masterpiece to rival “Eternal Sunshine.”

Sunshine, it should be noted, is not exactly the word that should be used for Kaufman, at least as he appeared at the Cannes press conference Friday. Perhaps not quite prepared for the attention that comes your way as a director (in a reversal, Spike Jonze was there, but as a producer sat to the side and didn’t speak much), CK was vague and sometimes ornery, particularly on questions that tried to get him to open up about his films’ meaning. (”I’m not sure I understand anything … I’m not trying to send a message about anything.”)

Catherine Keener had the line of the session when a reporter very reasonably asked Kaufman if, given all the melancholy in his work, he was feeling better.

“Are you feeling better?” she said, turning toward CK with a smile. “It was better then (on set) but I’m not sure about now.”

The matter was brushed aside, and they all went back to discussing the film. Hoffman jumped in with his own interpretation: “I think it’s about a lot of things … I really dont want to put the movie into any kind of sentence or word.”

He couldn’t, and shouldn’t. No one should. Like all Kaufman movies, you kind of just need to see it.

By Steven Zeitchik

We’ve been so busy running around and hitting screenings these last few days that we haven’t had time to do what we like to do — post reactions to those screenings. A few biggies showed over the last forty-eight hours (and we do mean biggie, in the case of Steven Soderbergh’s four-and-a-half hour epic “Che,” a kind of continuous double feature, or a movie in two parts).

It’s been a time when Eastwood has been Eastwood, Soderbergh has been Soderbergh, and possibly the most hideously awful 90 minutes ever to be committed to celluloid played on the Croisette. Intrigued? Of course you are.

* Che — Where to start on this four-and-half hour Catholic wedding of a screening? We could say the beginning, but that’s not what Soderbergh or screenwriter Peter Buchman does. Instead, the audience is there in the early days of Che fighting the Cuban revolution all the way to the rebels storming of Santa Clara. That’s the first two hours. The second (shown in Cannes after a short intermission, though it may play separately in release) starts in Bolivia and takes an almost eerily similar trajectory, only this time, of course, the revolution fails and Che is killed. There’s a lot more struggle and tension in Che 2, which gives the film more narrative thrust, and also more political context so you’re not locked into the claustrophobia of the Bolivian jungle.  Still, the film is difficult, episodic and willfully disgregarding of what the director calls “movie moments.” We knew we were in trouble when they handed out sandwiches and water for the intermission like we were going on a hike (or into battle).

Soderbergh was unapologetic in Thursday’s presser. “I find it hilarious that people say that movies are too conventional and then when (something comes out) that isn’t conventional, they seem annoyed. We’re just trying to give you a sense of what its like to hang out around this person That’s it.” Judging by the critics reaction, this is going to be a tough sell even to the cinephiles who would be part of the film’s core audience. Still, you have to admire the gumption of a quasi-verite experiment that flouts so many conventions of narrative — even as parts of it make you wonder if the director has just found a way to put the makers of Ambien out of business.

*Changeling — Angelina Jolie is strong and the period touches are nice, but the film stirred an unpleasant visceral reaction. The story centers a woman whose son goes missing, only to have the police return a boy to her that’s clearly another child – but for political reasons insist that it’s hers. The remaining ninety minutes focuses on her quixotic struggle against a corrupt police force. Besides resting on a thin premise (yes yes, we know it’s based on a true story), “Changeling” draws a lot of its emotional power from easy distinctions between good and evil. It’s a binary world for Mr. Clint: there’s the outsider/underdog fighting for justice and a cruel status quo trying to keep him/her down, only to be vanquished in the end by all that is Good and Right. That same straw man from “Million Dollar Baby” (the opportunistic relatives who stood by while Hillary Swank lost various appendages) is here, only he’s been reincarnated as a merciless police captain on the take. Sure, plaudits are starting to come in –and given Eastwood’s track record you can pretty much bet it’ll be nominated for best pic – but we’ll offer a contrarian note from one viewer whose day was not, um, made.

*Maradona by Kusturica — The movie — and by that we mean YouTube collection of footage — is the most absurdly self-indulent hodgepodge of a picture we’ve ever seen (and we’ve been to Tribeca). The film is ostensibly about the rise, fall and rehab of the Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona. But it’s only ostensible. Serbian director Emir Kusturica puts himself right in the middle of the action (and title), while meandering into endless soccer highlights, kneejerk political rants from the soccer star and
pointless  references to, and footage from, Kusturica’s own previous films. In addition to a glowing Maradona, the Lumiere debut featured the spectacle of a bunch of football fans in soccer jerseys and bowties. The chants they shouted were more coherent than anything in the film.

A few more high-profile debuts are still to come in the next few days — Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration,” billed as a (welcome) return to his “Exotica” and “Sweet Hereafter” days, and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, NY” billed as — well, better not to wander into that thicket. Let’s just hope it doesn’t make us want to run back to Che’s jungle.

By Steven Zeitchik

Polarizing — Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama polarizing, Yankee-Red Sox polarizing — is the best way to describe the reaction to James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” which played on the Croisette late Tuesday night and is one of the trio of big available films on which U.S. festwatchers are pinning their hopes.

The pic, an interfaith love story about a Russian Jewish immigrant family that contains subtle undercurrents of class, stunted adolescence and romantic idealism, sets up a love triangle between the troubled and underachieving Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), the sensible marriage option his meddling parents favor (Vinessa Shaw) and the taboo and unattainable Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow, the film’s lone underwhelming performance), all against the backdrop of the director’s preferred Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, location. (There’s a hint of the 2001 Israeli-Georgian crossover “Late Marriage;” the immigrant father in both is even played by the same actor.)

At the party after the Lumiere premiere and into the rainy hours of the night, media and viewers decried the things they disliked, and they had many of them: it was dull, it was dour, the plain-Jane choice was too attractive.

But a smaller and equally passionate group, of which we were decidedly a part, rallied on behalf of the film. There are, first, some obviously strong elements. Gray’s an immensely talented director; shots that would be ordinary in another’s hands are sublime here. And Phoenix’s sophisticated performance is understated in a way that makes very refreshing his well-placed moments of playfulness and self-knowledge. The film also gets the small details of character and culture right, especially in the interactions between the self-made immigrant parents and the more acculturated (and less motivated) son.

But these are small points compared to the larger appeal. There’s a gentle emotional rhythm to “Two Lovers” of the kind of one sees frequently in European films (and really frequently in European films here) but rarely found in modern American dramas, which tend toward, well, the melodrama. As a result, it all seems much more authentic, more human. Family dynamics in “Lovers” can be banal, frustrating and rewarding; just watch the way Leonard and his mother (a brilliant Isabella Rossellini) look and at talk to each other. “Two Lovers” is for our money the best American drama of the year to date, even better than Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor.”

In an ideal specialty-film world, a buyer would snap up this film, market it as a prestige fall title to older audiences and build an Oscar campaign around Phoenix. CAA, which is selling domestic rights, has a particularly good track record at festivals. But in this cool sales climate there’s understandable caution. A Searchlight or Focus could make some hay with this film; at the very least a platform release from a Sony Classics or Magnolia would work as well.

When Gray was last at Cannes — all the way back in 2007 — buyers ran around chasing his period crime drama “We Own the Night” for prices north of $10 million. This year the reactions are more measured, and in the end that may be the best thing for both director and movie.

Speaking of directors with the weight of an entire U.S. market on their shoulders, we’re starting to hear some worrisome talk about “Synecdoche, NY,” Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut which played to buyers last weekend and screens for the media on Friday. Words like messy and ambitious have turned into — “they spent $15-20 million and ended up with that?” We’re hoping it’s wrong, but in a market where conservatism already rules, we shudder to think what would happen if a film really laid an egg. The chattering classes at the afterparty alone would be scary.

By Steven Zeitchik

With a name like Indy, it had to be…mediocre?

The first worldwide screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” at the Palais Sunday afternoon — which, as THR editor-in-chief Elizabeth Guider notes in her color piece, was a bit of an action-adventure in its own right — showed the movie to be a mishmash of action pieces interrupted by puzzling explanatory sections about topics like conquistadors and Etruscan architecture. (Warning: some spoilers below). It all could shape up as the story of the summer: a new franchise from a character few had previously heard of (”Iron Man”), is snappy, original and complex. A revived franchise the entire planet knows about feels tired and mechanical.

Boldness points for Spielberg et al for using aliens as a villain – bet you never thought you’d see a flying saucer in an Indiana Jones movie — but on the whole the script is flat, the motives are murky and, outside of one mountaintop car chase involving swords, monkeys and some thrillingly vertiginous angles, most of the action scenes are noisy and uninspired, and likely to yield more than a few pejorative comparisons to a video game. They’re in a jungle! They’re in a restricted military area! They’re in a temple! Each level is adequate in its own right, we suppose, but narratively they add up to little more than your average XBox title.

The visuals, while lavishly budgeted and colorfully staged, aren’t much better. Designed to look like the earlier films, the movie winds up resembling, in some instances even more than the originals, the 50’s action serials from which the whole franchise derives. This isn’t surprising given Spielberg’s comments that he wanted to make a classic and mostly CG-free  action movie. But that pledge creates something of a problem. The effects in modern summer tentpoles need to be bigger and badder than ever. Spielberg and Lucas, however, are using the standards of twenty-five years ago.

How do you get around that contradiction?

As it turns out, you shoot the same way you did two decades ago and make it up in volume. Instead of slicker scenes, there are simply more of them, and they feel a lot longer. Amid archaeological ruins, Jones and Shia LeBeouf character Mutt (yes, it’s his son; this is handled relatively quickly and without as much revelatory fanfare as you’d expect) are set upon by some ghoulish looking thing for no apparent reason; they fight him off after ten minutes and move along, the encounter never explained or spoken of again.

The script tries for comedy (most of the best jokes, as they were in the earlier films, are actually visual; when Jones is pulled off the back of a motorcycle through a car window he fights the bad guys, then climbs out the window on the other side back onto the motorcycle). When people try to say funny things they fail (Jones, upon learning Mutt is his son: “You need to stay in school.”) The only time anyone is funny is when they’re trying to be profound, and that’s not a good thing. On the aliens: Q: “Where’d they go, into space?” A: “Not into space — into the space between spaces.” Anyone who wonders about the quality of the script need only hear these lines. “Their treasure wasn’t gold; it was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure.”

The most eyebrow-raising element is the skull itself, which is more versatile and multi-dimensional than any character in the movie. The mythic Mayan power of this totem is glossed over in the film, but its utility, apparently, is not; it’s alternately deployed as a weapon, a door-opener, a laser gun, a magnet and enough other uses to make Krazy Glue jealous.

At the end of the movie, in what’s clearly meant as a reference to the nineteen-year lag between the last film and this one, a character asks, “How much of human life is lost in waiting?” In the case of the new Indiana Jones, as it turns out, not so much.

By Steven Zeitchik

There were moments during the Indiana Jones press conference when we thought – this is more interesting than the movie! There was talk of sequels, of Spielberg’s disdain for digital cinema, of Harrison Ford’s, um, ambivalence toward critics. We provide some excerpts.

On how they kept it quiet
Spielberg: “We didn’t give the script out to every person on the set. We didn’t give it to every agent and manager (of the talent int he film).

On a sequel:
Spielberg: “Only if you(fans)  want one. That’s the reason we made this Indiana Jones, because we’ve had so many people come up to us and ask (about it). The only two movies that people have come and asked me about is Indiana Jones and ET. us and asked when its coming out. The only two movies that people come and asked us is Indiana Jones and ET. No one ever ask if I’m making another AI or 1941…So we’ll have our ear to the ground and see what happens and go from there.

In doing this movie in the first place:
Spielberg: I was the holdout. I had to be convinced…I said ‘Gee I’m in my dark period now. I’m making movies with meaning that I want my kids to see.”

On her Soviet-era character
Blanchett: I want to apologize to the entire Russian populace.

On the dangers of/skepticism toward digital:
Lucas: Obviously when you get new technology., you get sound or you get color, or you get special effects, they get misused.
Spielberg: There’s no inspiration when a cast and a director walk onto a screen that is blue. We wanted to do as little of that as possible… I was intent and George was intent on making this practical magic and not digital magic.”

On the potential critical response:
Ford: I’m not afraid at all. I expect to have the whip turned on me. It’s not unusual for something that is popular to be disdained by — some people (it sounded like he was about to say critics)…I’m not worried about it. I work for the people who pay to get in.

By Steven Zeitchik

Tasting menus are all the rage in France, so we thought we’d offer a few morsels from the last two days of Cannes — some frog legs of wisdom, if you will. (Apologies, by the way, for the delayed posting; every time an item presented itself it was followed by another item presenting itself. This is a good thing if you’re in the business of feeding a hungy blog monster, though a decidedly bad thing for one’s sleep schedule.) We’ll keep updating as the fest goes on.

– A Mike Tyson party Friday was fun, if only for the spectacle of seeing the icon/walking reality-show hanging out at a tony Croisette bar, sitting quietly with a young lady friend and watching all the couture-clad bodies and 22-year-olds gyrating partiers with a notable trace of bemusement. A Paramount party for “Kung Fu Panda” was curious — not only because it featured grown men and women in panda suit frolicking on Carlton beach with men in tuxedos (penguins?) but because it revealed a poster in which Jack Black is not mentioned or promoted. Isn’t that the whole reason Jack Black is in the movie? A Focus Features party, meanwhile, was fun because international buyers really like to dance, often in disproportion to their ability to do so.

–Four days in, and there’s still no standout acquisition target. IFC did (pre)buy the new Arnaud Desplechin movie, “Un Conte Noel,” putting them one step closer to their quest to be the first distributor to buy 2,435 festival titles in a single year.

–There’s nothing funnier than hearing people try to pick the Palme D’or. The line of conversation usually goes something like this (we’ll do it in second person in case you, too, want to create your very own Palme D’or salon). A) Ask someone, preferably a random stranger you’ve met at a party restroom line, who they think will win the Palme D’or B) Pretend to listen for five seconds, then start to shake your head in vigorous disagreement C) State with unwavering certainty the movie you think you’ll win, taking special care to privilege a title you saw on the first night when there was no earthly way to know anything about the movie’s competitors or, better yet, pick a movie that doesn’t debut for another four days. D) Declare that the Palme D’Or doesn’t matter anyway because it’s just an elitist award and the whole jury is corrupt E) Repeat the exact same conversation ten minutes later

–There’s something weird about not having a Q&A at a film festival. We get the idea — let the work speak for itself, allow the director his moment in the limelight without having to put up with questions, blah blah — but when all you get to do after a screening is clap at a waving director, it makes you feel a little removed from the work. At the gala Saturday evening for Walter Salles’ “Linha de Passe” it would have been infinitely more illuminating to hear the director flash some of his remarkable eloquence instead of just a few (admittedly nice) front teeth. Couldn’t there be some compromise — maybe a NY Film Festival-style question from a programming person, or just some opening remarks? It’s nice not to have to hear someone ask how long it took a director to shoot — is it even a festival screening without it — but it would also be nice to hear a director talk instead of just smile.

–The early word on Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, “Synecdoche, NY,” one of the hot available titles in competition and a movie which screened for buyers for the first time Saturday at 2, is that it’s ambitious, long, a little messy and pretty out there. Which sounds kind of fun, though are distributors going to open the wallet for fun?

–Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” will win the Palme D’Or.

By Steven Zeitchik

Overnight, the crowds on the Croisette multiplied, the screenings cranked into gear and Jack Black decided to show up with humans in panda suits on a pier in the south of France.

On Wednesday morning,  journalists and critics — when they weren’t lamenting  the cost of a cup of coffee paid in dollars — packed the first screening of the festival, the 10 a.m. critics showing of “Blindness.” We were able to catch only the first half hour or so, but Fernando Meirelles’ <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3ia6e01d5af9d3596d08d02524271260a0
“>comments on his own work struck us as apropos — the use of an anyonmous setting (the movie was shot in Sao Paulo), vague accents and the general lack of distinguishing locational details puts you a little off-kilter and gives the film a mystical, metaphysical feel.

On the business side, the real question will be the buyer action on available titles. While market pics and reel showings will inevitably provide a breakout, the competition lineup is where the cachet — and sales buzz — lies. A lot has been written about the effect of the tempered market, Hollywood labor pains and the contraction of specialty companies like Picturehouse. But like at all fests, the sales will in the end rest on reaction to the movies themselves.

For that, the hope lies, as reported in today’s THR, with two lovers, a two-parter and a headtrip — that is, with James Gray’s romantic drama, Soderbergh’s “Che” epic and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, NY.” None of the three films have distribution, and while all have the kind of artistic ambition that could make them a commercial reach, they also have the artistic ambition that could turn them into this year’s “No Country for Old Men.”

Also, look for Israeli ani doc “Waltz with Bashir” as this year’s “4 Weeks, 3 Months and 2 Days” — a unique and perhaps even difficult film that will draw a small-midrange distributor and a modest amount of actual currency but enormous amounts of the cultural kind. And on the market side, “JCVD” will be the high-concept gamble – a Jean Claude Van Damme biopic that’s a parody of the aged action star. A Jean Claude Van Damme parody may be a comic redundancy, but then, aren’t those the best kind.