Cannes Do Spirit

It is shaping up to be a pretty vintage Cannes with an abundance of good movies in most sections of the Festival. It is sixteen years since Jane Campion won the Palme d’Or here for The Piano and her films since then have often been very disappointing but she is right back on form with Bright Star, a beautifully crafted and ultimately very moving account of the tragic love between the poet Keats and his neighbour Fanny. It looks fantastic and has the kind of performance from Abbie Cornish that is already attracting Oscar buzz as they say. Also in the main competition is the brilliant A Prophet from Jacques Audiard, the man who gave us The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Imagine Prison Break crossed with an Alexandre Dumas novel like The Count Of Monte Cristo and you have the pulse of this gripping crime drama in which a petty criminal is sentenced to six years in prison and becomes embroiled in the turf disputes of warring inmates that he learns to survive and master. It is an incredible piece of storytelling on a par with Gomorrah and Optimum have bought it for the UK which makes it one to watch out for. Many other highlights include Mother from The Host director Bong Joon-Ho an epic tale of crime and a mother’s love that plays like a mixture of Miss Marple crime-solving and Almodovar melodrama. Completely compelling for a 140 minute running time. Also fantastic is Precious, the story of a very large, very sullen 16 year-old black girl who has suffered terrible abuse at the hands of her father and mother but rather than seeing herself as a victim she knows that she is a beautiful, wonderful person and sets out to take on the world. A glib sentence doesn’t do justice to the emotional power, daring and toughness of a film that deserves a huge audience. Disappointments include Ang Lee’s mild-mannered Taking Woodstock with Imelda Staunton channeling the spirit of the late Shelley Winters in an overwrought performance as an embittered Jewish momma and Johnnie To’s hilariously bad Vengeance, a kind of Death Wish Does Hong Kong in which French idol Johnny Hallyday (looking all of 112) sets out to avenge the Triad killing of his grandchildren and son-in-law even though he has a bullet in his brain and is fast loosing his memory. Probably a blessing if he ever had to sit through this codswallop. With a bit of luck we can avoid that stinker for the Glasgow Film Festival and continue to seek out the cream of the crop.

GFF Co-director Allan Hunter, in Cannes.

image: Jacques Audiard's A Prophet