Cannes Film Festival...5th Dispatch



Lights in the Dusk - Aki Kaurismaki
Kaurasmaki's entrance to the Palais for his afternoon screening nearly upstaged his movie. He has had to make that promenade up the red carpet many times, and no doubt doesn't appreciate the protocol of having to linger for several minutes while a legion of photographers blast away. Rather than posing, he grabbed one of his actresses and began dancing. This was all on the big screen in the theatre for those of us seated, awaiting his arrival. The rest of his cast followed suit, so there were five couples clutching each other and twirling about to the music that plays pre-film. There was laughter and applause in the theatre.
He lit one last cigarette as the cameras followed him into the theatre. He peaked around the doorway and then backed off, as if he was nervous about coming in. This drew even greater laughter. He repeated the routine several times. This was all entertaining, but it was delaying the start of the movie, and most of us have our day planned to the minute. His antics were squandering crucial time. He finally relented, making his entrance and taking his seat, cigarette still in hand. Thierry Fremaux, festival director, had to pry it from his fingers.
"Light in the Dusk" was the final film of his trilogy on the plight of the Finnish working man. The film does not upstage any of his previous films, nor does it diminish his reputation. There were less comic moments than he is known for, but he remains the master of the droll.

Babel - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
This isn’t a film about terrorism, but rather about innocent acts and slight misunderstandings that lead to catastrophic results. The film brilliantly interweaves four stories, two in Morocco and the other two in Japan and the Mexican border. Inarritu, whose two previous films were "Amores Peres" and "2l Grams", could well earn best-director here for this very mature effort. The cast includes Brad Pitt, Gael Garcia Bernal and Cate Blanchett, as a consummate bitch of a wife, right up there with Sandra Bullock in "Crash." Her husband Pitt is one of the few characters in the movie who responds to crisis with some sense, but he too is driven to the brink. Characters are in peril in all four stories. Inarritu's pacing perfectly switches from one story to the next, as the tension builds in all.

Flanders - Bruno Dumont
This is a tale that begins in the northeast of France and ventures off to an Arabic war zone, where his French conscripts go berserk inflicting holy terror upon the innocent and undeserving. But before they are sent to war, Dumont depicts rural life with the gritty realism that marked his much-acclaimed "Life of Jesus" and "Humanite." This film doesn't probe the insidious depths of those films, but it still is an unapologetic study of man's inner recesses.

The Real Santa – Péter Gárdos
The lone film of the thousand plus here whose write-up mentioned a bicycle. The film's opening shot is of Paris in l994 with snow falling and two bikes parked in front of a bar. We get to feast our eyes on those bikes for several minutes as the credits roll. The pianist is shot in the leg during a robbery and the movie fast forwards to ten years later in Budapest. The pianist has become a disheveled bum. He is enlisted to fill in for a Santa at a mall, who was snowed in. His job is to wander around the mall and the streets outside singing and passing out candy. That is when a young girl starts haunting him, demanding a bike. They eventually become pals and he considers trying to rustle up the money to buy her a bike. They get in and out of trouble, but in the end he not only gets her a bike, but gives bikes to everyone in the mall. Hundreds of people flock from the mall with bikes all singing a rousing song of joy celebrating the bike--"Life is a bicycle. It won't go by itself...with wheels that always turn so keep your eyes on the road."