“Precious” (Lee Daniels)
A big hit this year at Sundance, picking up virtually every award the festival has to offer, “Precious” (previously and awkwardly titled “Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire,” but changed due to a similarly titled lame duck sci-fi film) arrives at Cannes as an Un Certain Regard selection amidst some amount of controversy – the film is being warred over by the Weinstein Company and Lionsgate, the former believing they have dibs while the latter claims to have “officially” bought it, so a lawsuit is brewing. Of course, that shouldn’t have much bearing on the film’s quality – many of our favorite films at Cannes went largely unnoticed by the jury, and some of the most critically reviled were honored. “Precious” is a tough-as-nails tale set in the heart of Harlem, circa 1987, where the titular, very overweight 16-year-old African American (Gabourney Sidibe, in a pretty excellent break out role), copes with deplorable parenting (her father has given her two children), hazing from classmates, and not a single friend in sight. It’s tough material to be sure, and Lee Daniels (he behind the obnoxious, thoroughly pretentious “Shadowboxer”) doesn’t have the delicacy to navigate the more tender moments of Damien Paul’s adapted screenplay. With a strong push from Oprah (a producer on the film) and the urban community perhaps desperate for cinema that doesn’t involve an overgrown man in a dress, “Precious” should do well. And it’s not without its merits: both Sidibe and, much to our surprise, Mo’Nique as Precious’s vitriolic, hateful mother, give commanding performances that just make Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz’s light-weight work look that much more out-of-place by comparison. [B-] Sam Mac
“Fish Tank” (Andrea Arnold)
A.O. Scott noticed a growing trend in cinema toward what he deemed “Neo Neo Realism,” and he angered some people who couldn’t comprehend what’s so special about films like “Goodbye Solo” and “The Class,” for instance. What it comes down to is that you either find cinema’s potential to observe the banalities of everyday life to be fascinating or boring. Scott won’t change your mind any more than we will, but from this vantage British director Andrea Arnold’s “Fish Tank” is compelling cinema. Not quite on the level of either of the aforementioned works, but certainly in the same vein, the protagonist of “Fish Tank” is a very real, very unpleasant teenage girl living in a slimy region of England, mouthing-off to everyone, head-butting posers and pretty much fighting anything that moves. She’s not that intimidating either – she’s a skinny little white girl with attitude, but one definitely gets the feeling that she may run into someone twice her size to teach her a lesson some day (hint, hint). Like many films in-competition at Cannes ’09, the home life of our young protagonist is pretty scummy, with mom a known floozy who displays little interest in her kids and little sis seemingly trying to one-up her sibling’s foul language. These aren’t particularly pleasant people to spend any amount of time with, and though the introduction of a good natured boyfriend at first seems like some kind of saving grace for the group as a familial unit, it’s all too obvious that it won’t last. But “Fish Tank’s” biggest issue is its turn to thriller tropes towards the end (with a pitch not unlike this filmmaker’s last film, “Red Road”), undermining the more level-headed depiction of its aimless characters and feeling tonally off from the rest of the picture. Still, see “Fish Tank” for the remarkable, controlled lead performance from newcomer Katie Jarvis, whose a magnetic screen presence despite her character being so venomous, and miraculously makes us care about what happens to her. The film tied with Park Chan-Wook’s “Thirst” for the Jury Prize. [B] SM
“Les Herbes Folles” [“Wild Grass”] (Alain Resnais)
What bliss this Alain Resnais film is – that’s right, “bliss,” not exactly a word you would expect to hear applied to the work of the man that brought us such challenging cinematic puzzles as “Last Year at Marienbad” and “Hiroshima Mon Amour.” But in a competition slate at Cannes filled with films about maiming, self-maiming or otherwise, Resnais’ “Les Herbes Folles” was a pretty welcome breath of fresh air. Not all that surprising either: if you’ve been following the man’s late-period, you would know that his last film, the Altman-esque mosaic “Private Fears in Public Places,” is just as wry and comedic as this new one. Of course what makes “Les Herbes Folles” particularly laudable is its likelihood of being the now 86-year-old French master’s swan song. It’s a gracefully fluid but altogether pretty irreverent romantic melodrama, and it feels decidedly minor even in comparison to the uneven but kinda sprawling ‘Private Fears.’ Like that film, there’s generous, almost Godard-ian application of color (becoming a signature of late-period Resnais’ aesthetic), but the unfocused and often slap-dash film doesn’t seem to be saying anything new or anything particularly clear about the nature of love. Instead, it contemplates the nature of coincidence, and how very coincidental life is in rather whimsically and implausibly silly ways. Nothing revolutionary, but for the sheer fact that we can count a tried-and-true rom-com among the Cannes elite, and one by fucking Alain Resnais, now in something like his 50th year as a filmmaker, makes “Les Herbes Folles” worthy in some sense. And then there’s the cast, a veritable whose-who of delicious French icons: Mathieu Amalric (“The Diving Bell & The Butterfly”), Emmanuelle Devos (Arnaud Desplechin’s “Kings & Queen” and “A Christmas Tale”) and Anne Consigny (of both ‘Diving Bell’ and ‘Christmas Tale’), among others. [B-] SM