Cannes Film Festival...2nd Dispatch



Ten Canoes - Rolf de Heer's
A remarkably original film telling a timeless tale of aboriginal lore with an entirely aboriginal cast off in their aboriginal lands. If nothing else, it is a fascinating ethnographic study, showing the aboriginal way of life--hunting, gathering, stripping bark to make canoes, constructing platforms in the trees to be safe from crocodiles, death dances sending the soul on its final journey, justice meted out, passing down their wisdom from generation to generation. It is narrated by the great David Gulpilil with only occasional aboriginal exchanges. Four of the cast members were in attendance, looking not entirely comfortable in formal attire.

Volver - Pedro Almodovar
A Penolope Cruz vehicle as much as anything. Almodovar can't keep his camera off her breasts, shooting them from every angle imaginable. He's so preoccupied by them, he even has [the character playing] Cruz's mother comment, after not having seen her in a while, "Your breasts are bigger than I remember, have you had them enlarged." The movie's plot seemed as if it had been concocted at an improv club--disposing of a dead body, starting up a restaurant, the dead return, a 200 lb prostitute, "who needs a spleen anyway." It may have frequently begged credibility and been more fluff than substance, but it was well-executed and will please those who just want to be distracted and entertained.

Taxidermia - György Palfi
This Hungarian film will please those who thrive on stylized outrageousness and fresh and original images. This three-parter notched up the outrageousness segment by segment, beginning with varieties of masturbation, proceeding to eating to excess and culminating with self-inflicted decapitation. It was all most artfully filmed--including a rooster pecking at an enlarged male member proceeding in and out of a lubricated peep hole into his coop, a baby born with a tale that is snipped, a row of gargantuan eaters slurping as much as they can into their mouths and then engaging in mass vomiting, an intricate machine designed to lop off one's head.

Unknown - Simon Brand
My foraging in the market place was amply rewarded with "Unknown", an American production starring Barry Pepper, Greg Kinnear and Jim Caviezel. [It is] a thriller about five guys who wake up in a locked-down warehouse that they can't escape from after they have been asphyxiated by a gas leak. All their memories have had their memories erased, tho they all gradually have some flickers of their pasts. They soon realize that they were involved in a kidnapping, but no one knows who were the kidnappers and who were the kidnappees and why. It was most gripping and exhilarating film-going experience. And the end does not disappoint.