“Top Of The Lake: China Girl”
Director: Jane Campion & Ariel Kleiman
Synopsis: Four years after the events of Season 1, Robin investigates the death of an unidentified Asian girl found at Bondi Beach in Sydney.
What You Need to Know: It’s de rigueur for Cannes critics to complain about the length of the movies they’re going to see, but there’s been a magnificent lack of griping over the inclusion of all six-ish hours (assuming it’s the same length as the first) of the second season of Jane Campion and Gerard Lee‘s novelistic TV show, “Top Of The Lake.” Part of that is, of course, an enthusiasm for the cast, including Elisabeth Moss‘ detective Robin, as well as a new addition in the shape of, who else, Nicole Kidman, here reuniting with Campion for the first time since the devastatingly underrated “The Portrait Of A Lady.” But mainly it’s the lure of Campion, who hasn’t made a film since 2009’s “Bright Star,” but who acts as co-writer, co-director and showrunner here. This time, her co-director is Ariel Kleiman (whose “Partisan” we admired a great deal) replacing Garth Davis from season 1, and the show’s very presence here seems like a tacit admission that even the notoriously TV-averse Cannes regards it as almost a film, from still the only female director ever to have won the Palme d’Or.
“Dark Glasses”
Director: Claire Denis
Synopsis: A divorced Parisian artist, the mother of one child, looks for later-life love in the city.
What You Need to Know: Plot details are so sketchy for the new film from French genius Claire Denis that we have to go with that soapy-sounding synopsis, but we can pretty much guarantee it’s no representation of what Denis will give us. Finding mythological levels of resonance and texture in her enigmatic, controlled yet invariably vibrant, life-filled films almost from the very start, this will mark Denis’ first time in the Directors’ Fortnight. Four of her previous films made it into the Official Selection (“Bastards,” “Trouble Every Day,” “I Can’t Sleep” and “Chocolat“), but only “Chocolat,” her debut, snagged a main competition slot. That’s pretty surprising, given that she has competed three times in Venice, and won Locarno, and perhaps we could have expected this title, which its heavyweight Euro cast in Juliette Binoche, Gérard Depardieu, Xavier Beauvois and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, to wind up there. Then again, perhaps she’s saving that for the starrier English-language sci-fi “High Life,” with Robert Pattinson and Patricia Arquette, which will be her next film — either way, more Denis is nothing to complain about.
“I Am Not A Witch”
Director: Rungano Nyoni
Synopsis: In Zambia, an eight-year-old girl accused of witchcraft after a minor incident falls in with a group of traveling witches, but gradually, she starts to long for freedom and sparks a rebellion.
What You Need to Know: It’s always surprising to observe the process by which buzz begins to build around one title while another, equally deserving one might remain obscure. But during the lineup announcement in April, there was already a palpable air of excitement from the selectors and the assembled press about this debut feature from Welsh/Zambian director Rungano Nyoni. Set in a cinematically little-seen environment and, excitingly, shot by DP David Gallego, who was the cinematographer on the gorgeous “Embrace Of The Serpent,” “I Am Not A Witch” already made waves when it was presented for sale at the European Film Market in Berlin, and we’re anxious to see if the early noise translates to signal.
“The Florida Project”
Director: Sean Baker
Synopsis: A six-year-old-girl and her group of friends enjoy a carefree Floridian summer unaware that the adults around them are experiencing hard times and crises.
What You Need to Know: After the vibrant, experimental “Tangerine,” which he famously shot using iPhone cameras, Sean Baker returns to the more expansive canvas of 35mm for this Florida-set drama, which also stars the biggest name he’s yet worked with in Willem Dafoe. But as anyone who’s seen “Tangerine” knows, the shooting format was not what made it special: actually, it was the pulsating, intimate, authentic and raw performances he got from his unknown cast, and the warmth and humanity he put into the portrayal of the spiky friendship between two Hollywood working girls on Christmas Eve. And so this film, which will see Dafoe and Caleb Landry Jones as among the only established actors in a neophyte cast, should in no way trade off on Baker’s resolutely independent-spirited, energetic, lo-fi but lyrical approach, and we’re dying to see what he’ll bring on this, his first trip to the Croisette, as part of a truly brilliant Directors’ Fortnight lineup (seriously, the Quinzaine 2017 is seriously slaying the Un Certain Regard selection, at least from this distance).
“Twin Peaks”
Director: David Lynch
Synopsis: The first two episodes of the long-after-the-fact 18-episode season 3 of seminal 1990/91 TV show “Twin Peaks”
What You Need to Know: Finally, that gum I like is going to come back in style. It’s only the first two episodes, and it’s “only” TV, and it’s “only” presumably screening a few hours before anyone with Showtime will get to see the the same footage, but even still, the return of David Lynch’s generation-defining show is right up there with our most anticipated Cannes events. Aside from it being a revisiting of a world that so many of us feel so devoted to, this will be the first real narrative work from Lynch since 2006’s “Inland Empire,” and given that he recently said he’ll never go back to film, this may be our only lifeline connection to that weird and brilliant brain. Can it possibly live up to expectations? Can it possibly fail to, given the inherently inexplicable nature of its appeal? All we can say is that even the tiny slivers and glimpses we’ve had so far have managed to convey the sense, which I imagine will be shared by a lot of people whose personalities were essentially partly forged by the experience of watching “Twin Peaks” back in the day, that the show never actually went away: it’s been there all this time, waiting.
As ever, this is just a small selection of the films we hope to catch up with on the Croisette, and there are some pretty big names we didn’t have room for, like the opening film, Arnaud Desplechin‘s “Ismael’s Ghosts” starring Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg. “L’amant Double” is the next film from the prolific François Ozon, while the mystically-tinged “Jupiter’s Moon” from Kornél Mundruczó of doggy revenge tale “White God” also looks seriously intriguing. Sergei Loznitsa may be better known these days for his formalist documentaries, but he has a narrative feature “A Gentle Creature” in competition, while we’re very much hoping Fatih Akin‘s “In The Fade” with Diane Kruger is a return to form after the disappointment of “The Cut.” And we’re honestly kind of terrified by the prospect of Michel Hazanivicius‘ Jean-Luc Godard biopic “Le Redoutable,” but fully prepared to eat our words should it turn out ok.
In Un Certain Regard, there’s “Barbara,” Mathieu Amalric‘s directorial follow-up to the solidly intriguing “The Blue Room“; “April’s Daughter” from “Chronic” director Michel Franco; and “Before We Vanish” from the frustratingly uneven Kiyoshi Kurosawa. More excitingly, Out of Competition we find Roman Polanski‘s ominously titled “Based On A True Story” starring Eva Green; a typically impish-looking doc from New Wave doyenne Agnès Varda, “Visages, Villages“; as well as the final film, a kind of anthology of a lot of shorter segments, from Iranian great Abbas Kiarostami, “24 Frames.” And for a dose of genre hijinks as a palate cleanser, there’s “Blade Of The Immortal,” this week’s Takashi Miike movie. Oh, and Cannes drags itself onto the VR bandwagon with the premiere of Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s VR experience “Flesh And Sand,” which sounds a sight more interesting than the VR stand at a party we’ve been invited to at which we get to see what it’s like to “be a tree.” Not even kidding.
There’ll be more, of course: there are always discoveries to be made in Cannes (and we haven’t even touched on the enticing-looking Critics’ Week selection here, nor Cannes Classics which this year boasts the premiere of Showtime‘s doc “Becoming Cary Grant,” which we really want to catch). Join us for our coverage from the sunny, overpriced South of France from next Wednesday, and meantime, let us know what you’re most excited about in the comments below. Or hey, start up a premature book on the likely Palme winner.
