Cannes Diary – Day 10
Three of us queued for 40mins to watch DANIEL & ANA, a Mexican film about a brother and sister whose lives are turned upside down when they’re kidnapped and then shockingly forced into making a pornographic film. It was 10.30 at night, we were all very tired, a little emotional, nay exhausted… then the film begin with only French subtitles – great! Still, we muddled through and even with my pathetic knowledge of French – I know enough to order a coffee – it was the kind of film we managed to watch and even enjoy. Never lose an opportunity to see a good film I say!
A director affiliated with bad luck and projects gone sour, that Terry Gilliam got to complete THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS at all is a minor miracle and cause for some celebration. A fantastical morality tale set in present-day London (for the most part at least), the alternate realities Gilliam spins will be more than familiar to fans of TIME BANDITS and BRAZIL.
With more than a hint of Doctor Faustus, the film’s kernel is an enterprising traveling magician whose ambition has caused him to enter a number of deals with the devil, the most personally damaging of which has seen Parnassus (played impeccably by Christopher Plummer) trade immortality for his daughter on the occasion of her 16th birthday.
A feast for the senses, the film is not without its faults (one or two of the more Pythonesque set-pieces certainly feel a little jaded) but it is difficult not to feel generous towards a film that is credited as being a ‘Presentation by Heath Ledger and Friends’. Perhaps the film’s biggest plus point, quite apart from Gilliam’s ability to entertain and enthrall of course, is Tom Waits having a ball as old nick.
Unfolding over four episodes, THE TIME THAT REMAINS is a semi-autobiographical work from Palestinian director Elia Suleiman that covers the period in his family’s history spanning 1948 until recent times. Inspired by the diaries of his father, a resistance fighter, the film also takes in the letters of Suleiman’s mother to the various members of his family who were forced to leave the country.
Described by the director as ‘an attempt to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labeled ‘Israeli-Arabs’, it is a successful synthesis of style, politics and personal diary, at the centre of which is the director’s own Keatonesque performance. Like Suleiman’s earlier DIVINE INTERVENTION, THE TIME THAT REMAINS manages to blend humour and deft social/political commentary and there are a number of beautifully visual gags that put one in mind of Roy Andersson (YOU, THE LIVING).
On the whole, I must confess that I found this to be less immediately satisfying than DIVINE INTERVENTION, but like Lucrecia Martel’s THE HEADLESS WOMAN, this is a Cannes title to which I find my memory returning with some frequency, discovering fresh thoughts and pleasures each time.
Picturehouse Top Five
- THE WHITE RIBBON
- PRECIOUS
- A PROPHET
- INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
- POLICE, ADJECTIVE
