Cannes: Recession, Ceylan, Spring Fever
The carnival has begun in the true sense, though there is no mistaking the impact of recession. The American Pavilion at the Marche du Film has apparently witnessed around 30 per cent drop in pre-registrations, and the usual Hollywood star bandwagon is largely missing this time here, barring those starring in films being shown. One representative of a film company from India casually told me yesterday that on the first day of the market, he was hardly getting any inquiries, and while another joked that he was a victim of recession, so much so that he has not been able to take a stall this time at the market.
But then, the crowds have gathered, like they do every year, across the street from the Red Carpet on the Croisette, and outside historic festival hotels like Carlton, Majestic and Martinez, armed with their digital cameras, for that elusive glimpse of the stars. The stars this time, of course, are the real stars of cinema – the directors.
Outside the festival venues, it is the stars who dominate the proceedings, posing for the cameras on the Red Carpet – our own Aishwarya Rai, in a white, flowing dressing gown, did so yesterday, with her hubby Abhishek following a few steps behind, before the opening ceremony – waving to the crowds, and generally enjoying the attention.
But inside, it is the directors who are the real stars here at Cannes. We Indians would find it difficult to believe that the actors get lesser preference in the sitting arrangements at press conferences here, with the director always seated at the middle, even if that actor is Brad Pitt. Can you imagine a Hrithik Roshan not sitting at the centre in any Indian press conference while Anurag Basu will sit at the middle?
Yesterday was the jury press conference. And yes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan was there, along with chairperson Isabelle Huppert, our own Sharmila Tagore, Italian actress Asia Argento, Chinese beauty Shu Qi, and writer-filmmaker Hanif Kureishi from Britain. They all spoke generally about how they would judge the movies, and whatever they said, I am sure they would have a real tough time this time, with so many greats having their films in competition.
But Ceylan said the most interesting thing – “I don’t trust myself (in making an opinion about a film) because in the first viewing you might not like a work of cinema, and in subsequent viewings you might discover nuances that lay beneath the surface, and then begin to like the film”. Food for thought?
That is not to say that the Un Certain Regard or the parallel Directors’ Fortnight or the Critics Week do not have high-profile movies – Directors’ Fortnight will open with Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tetro”, no less, but quite surely the circumstances have ensured that this time the Competition will hog all the attention.
Last night saw (in the press screening – the advantage of being a journalist here is that you get to watch most of the official section films earlier than the rest of the delegates) Chinese director Lou Ye’s “Spring Fever”, which is being screened today at the festival. Lou has been a sort of rebel in the Chinese film industry, making films that have repeatedly run into problems. He was banned for five years from making any film when he showcased his “Summer Palace”, with the taboo subject of the Tiananmen Square massacre as the backdrop, here at Cannes in 2006.
Nevertheless, he has gone ahead and made his latest film, shot secretly in the city of Nanjing. It is a really bold film, tackling the theme of homosexual love. Made partly with French finance, the film will surely never get screened in China – which means it will also never get screened in India as China ensures through diplomatic pressure that Indian film fests never screen any film that it thinks could be detrimental to its image.
The film starts of innocuously enough, with two friends stopping their car on a muddy road amidst a storm to take a leak. Just moments later, through an explicit scene with lot of male nudity and kissing (no frontal nudity), we find that they are lovers. One of them is a married man, and is cheating on his wife.
One thing leads to another, and the wife, thorugh a spy, finds out about the affair. But the story takes a twist, when the spy and his girlfriend starts an affair with this man’s boyfriend. A rather complicated storyline and also complicated visualising, but with its mostly handheld camera (it was shot secretly, remember?) it gets a sort of edgy look. Edgy it is, with Lou once again taking a theme that has troubled quite a lot of recent Chinese and Japanese filmmakers, that of drifting individuals whose lives are made complicated by the circumstances they are in.
Tags: 62nd Cannes Film Festival, Lou Ye, marche du film, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Spring Fever, World Cinema
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Thanks Utpal…for such superb updates..
Utpal, you are doing a yeoman service to PFCites, this is awesome coverage. Get us the dope on the lesser known developing countries cinema, as the gems shall be there
wow. really envious of you, to be present and reporting where most of the the world wud give anything to just hv a dekko.
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SPRING fever after SUMMER Palace… hmmm, is the director upto some series / trilogy on “seasons” a la our Deepa Mehta or others? maybe u can get some soundbytes from him on this…
Here’s to our man in Cannes!
Recession or not, the Bachchans always manage to make an appearance for the cameras.. ;P
thx Utpal, for your great updates right from cannes. keep it coming bro.