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EDITORIAL Welcome to the 13th issue of Movies by Mills We move into our second year of publication reflecting the highlights of the month which has spurned four film festivals: The London Independent Film Festival, Rendezvous with French Cinema UK, Sundance London, and The Sci-Fi London Film Festival. The first of these I report on in my film column in the current issue of Laissez Faire. www.laissezfairelondon.co.uk The Sci-Fi Film Festival I shall be looking at in the next issue of MbM. Lou-Lélia Demerliac, the 11 year old star of My Name is Hmmm... is on the cover. The film is this month’s main feature review and there is a Q & A with the director Agnés B and actor Douglas Gordon which followed the screening. This film as well as Bright Days Ahead, also reviewed, was part of Rendezvous with French Cinema season. Sundance London provided a varied package of movies: They Came Together, The Voices, The Trip To Italy, Little Accidents, all reviewed. One of the perks of the festival is that it brings the stars and directors over for the openings of their films. This year there were Gemma Arterton, Ryan Reynolds, Stanley Tucci, Sara Coleangelo, Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, David Wain, Marjane Satrapi... And of course they posed for the photographers and you can see a gallery of some of those pictures inside. For those of you who were unable to attend Sundance, I hope you get a feel of the ambiance of the festival that these pictures hopefully generate. You may have noticed that you have been receiving a weekly newsletter in your inbox of snippets of news and pictures from the film world. The reason why you are getting these is because it keeps you up to date with what is happening and previews a lot of things to whet your appetite. It was here that you would have read about two exciting films which are screening at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival: Mood Indigo and Upside Down, which will be reviewed in the next issue of MbM. The former is expected to be a magical journey into a fantasy world from the creative genius Michel Gondry who made the classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
CREDITS MbM would like to acknowledge the following people and companies for their assistance in providing material for this issue: Photographs: Sundance: Simone Devlin, Natasha Unalkat, Matty O’Riordan at Premiercomms.com Image.net. Elfilm.com Rendezvous with French Cinema: Caroline Aymar, Hannah Tatum at Unifrance. Thank you the readers who have shown your enthusiasm for Movies by Mills and keeping it alive. And finally to Paul Ridler, the designer of the magazine, whose dedication and belief in how the magazine should look is invaluable. Thank you, Paul. Enjoy the read.
Brian Mills 3
MY NAME IS HMMM... Spoiler Alert
This is the first feature by Agnés Troublé aka Agnés B. It tells the story of an 11 year old girl, Céline who runs away from home while on a school trip and hides in a big red truck. She has been sexually abused by her father, her reason for leaving home. So begins an adventure travelling across France in a huge vehicle driven by a man named Pete, who has lost his wife and family and has no one. Céline finds him to be kind and funny and makes her laugh again. He cannot speak French and plays loud music but she feels safe with him. For Pete, Céline is a lovely little girl, shy and unsophisticated and cannot speak English. He has found a friend. She answers only to the name Hmmm... perhaps subconsciously disowning her family name. The visual style of the film is very innovative with a mixture of different film stocks and ratios, jump cuts, freeze frames, a surreal dance sequence written text, drawings, a short film within a film all representative of the confusion, of trying to make sense of her now chaotic world and the complexity of the child’s mind but crossed with fun images too. The child has a doll that she talks to and it travels everywhere with her and that reflects the images too. The idea of the story came to Agnés B from a true life tragedy that she read about in an article in Le Monde. She wondered about the events that might have led to that incident. From that starting-point, fifteen years ago, she wrote the whole script in two days by hand on a notepad. She started in fashion and contemporary art originally being spotted by Elle magazine because of the way she was dressed, wearing stuff that she had found at a flea market, and that gave her the opportunity to earn some money. 4
The desire to be an artist had been there a long time and later she took lots of photographs and made short films, putting her clothes into stories. She learned to film and to edit, alongside Jeff Nicorosi who also edited this film. I wanted to make a movie against preconceptions. I wanted to say that it’s easy to accuse the wrong person when you don’t know the story and make it up for yourself, with approximations that may have serious consequences. In that light, I wanted to show various friends and family members, and the way they each perceive each other. Starting with the violence done to the little girl, there are shockwaves rippling out that are treated by each person as best they can. I wanted to talk about that. There is one sequence when Pete takes Céline into a cafe which he says is black and white nothing more and the sequence of this trashy cafe is shot in black and white. Agnés B’s film company Love Streams was created in homage to John Cassavetes and his vision of life, people and movies. It was the title of Cassavetes last film and one that she saved. Besides the many films the company has produced, it has also co-produced films by famous directors: Patrice Chereau, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Harmony Korine, Jonathan Caouette. In 208 it teamed up with Potemkine Films to create Agnés B. DVD/Potemkin collection, which already features sixty titles including Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, Jeff Nichols’s Shotgun Stories, Vincent Gallo’s Brown Bunny, the collected works of Andrej Tarkovski, and Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, and Paul Newman’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Music plays a very important role in the movie: Pete’s rock music from the 80’s. The Sonic Youth track was used for the beach scene. David Daniels the opera countertenor leans heavily throughout the soundtrack, reflecting childhood memories of the director. Then there was the classical music of Vivaldi by Jean-Benoit Dunckel from the band Air. Regarding the cast. Lou-Lélia Demerliac (Céline/Hmmm...) in her first film. Douglas Gordon (Pete) Glaswegian a major figure in the world of contemporary art. My Name is Hmmm...his film debut as an actor. Sylvie Testud won the award for Best Actress in Alain Corneau’s Stupeur et tremblements at Cannes in 2004. She made her directional debut with La Vie d’une autre, starring Matthieu Kassovitz and Juliette Binoche. Jacques Bonnaffé, who plays Céline’s father is an established actor who has worked with many directors including Jean-Luc Godard, Phillipe Garrel and Jacques Rivette. 5
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BRIGHT DAYS AHEAD Spoiler Alert
Fanny Ardant stars as a woman who reaches retirement and expects to enjoy the comforts of an unhurried domestic life. But suddenly faced with uneventful days ahead, she finds herself catapulted into the arms of a younger man. Elizabeth (Fanny Ardant) is grieving the recent death of her best friend from breast cancer and is forced into early retirement because of a controversial incident. As a married dentist, Elizabeth explores her options in trying to do something that will relieve her boredom. She inadvisably joins a senior’s club and in minutes of being there she is asked to come to the front of the drama class and told to laugh, really laugh. Elizabeth feels humiliated and leaves. But she decides to return and take another class on computers to try to solve a problem they have at home. She is shown how to correct the problem and at the same time starts an affair with the teacher, twenty years her junior. It is this affair that the film focuses on, perhaps too much as I felt the husband, played by Patrick Chesnay, was underplayed and that is one character that one can sympathise with. For Elizabeth is in every scene of the film and when the affair is ending, and her lover rightfully predicts that the woman always knows when it is, it is done in style, no fuss, no restraint. Poignantly, when her husband is ready to leave her, she pleads with him not to go. Then hold me back. Go on. But she can’t.
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Fanny Ardant, the protagonist Elizabeth in the film, has a rich filmography: Franco Zefferelli’s Callas Forever as Maria Callas in the last days of her life. In the Claude Lelouch thriller Roman de Gare as Judith Ralitzer, a writer collecting characters for a novel. 8 Women directed by François Oxon, as well as appearing in two omnibus films: Beyond the Clouds, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders, the latter helping to complete the film after Antonioni’s stroke. The second omnibus film was the outstanding Paris je t’aime comprising of eighteen vignettes about love in one of the arrondisements and directed by eighteen directors. Fanny’s segment was called Pigalle and was directed by Richard LaGravenese with Bob Hoskins as her co-star. Laurent Lafitte plays Elizabeth’s lover in Bright Days Ahead. His highlighted films have been: Guillaume Canet’s thriller Tell No One cast as Le Basque. The romantic comedy L’amour, c’est mieux a deux. And then the brilliant Little White Lies, as Antoine. The story tells of a near-fatal accident that leaves a friend in hospital, while the rest go on their annual vacation but their secrets and personal grief threaten to drive them apart. The film was again directed by Canet. The next film is the highly anticipated fantasy from the ingenious mind of Michel Gondry - Mood Indigo, starring Roman Duris, Audrey Tautou and Omar Sy. Laurent Lafitte plays the part of the director of society. Patrick Chesnais plays Elizabeth’s lomg-suffering husband. Chesnais has appeared in numerous TV films and his filmography is extensive too, but undoubtedly being cast in the classic The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as Doctor Lepage offered him a wonderful opportunity. In You Will Be My Son as François Amelot was another good film for him. His personal best was starring as a painter who no longer paints and is so depressed that he goes away not disclosing where he is going; the film – Welcome Aboard. 9
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LITTLE ACCIDENTS Spoiler Alert
The man watched his wife through the window listening to the boy who was crying and telling her something that she didn’t want to hear because she was reacting in a state of shock. In this compelling drama about coal mining truth is reluctant to unfold for the fear it might be too damaging to bear. We are pitched straight into a coalmine from the opening shot, where a miner is joking with his mates and pitching one a bottle of water and then it cuts to Amos (Boyd Holbrook) the only survivor of the accident that killed his fellow workers. At the independent inquiry that followed Amos is questioned about what he can recall of the disaster, which is little but promises that he may or may not remember more at a later time. Owen (Jacob Lofland) knows that his father was killed in the mine and now as he faces one of his tormentors who has chased him through the woods after he tells him that it was his father who was responsible for the safety of the workers. Suddenly he faces his own fear as the rock he has thrown at the boy to defend himself has accidently killed him. Later the man in question, Bill Doyle (Josh Lucas) and his wife Diana (Elizabeth Banks) hear the news that their son is missing. Meanwhile, Owen tells his younger mentally retarded brother who witnessed the killing not to tell anyone about what he saw. Diana Doyle seeks solace and distraction from the knowingness that her husband was guilty of neglect in his role of manager of the mine by finding a sincere listener to her TroublÊs in the arms of Amos and seeks every moment she can get to be with him. Her husband is told that he has been suspended from his job until after the result of the enquiry to the accident. How long will it be before the truth is known? Before Owen relieves himself of the guilt he is carrying? Before Amos chooses to name names of the ones responsible for the disaster and what could have prevented it from happening? As Amos is being pestered by the mining families to help them and befriending Owen and loving Diana may be a way of showing 12
his kindness and understanding, but is it not yet another dismissal of living with lies? His decision will affect the future of everyone in the town. Little Accidents is writer and director Sara Colangelo’s first feature film. It is an extension of her Short Film also called Little Accidents, which impressed the Sundance officials enough to ask her to develop a full-length feature on the subject. I wanted to create and in-depth portrait of three very different characters and how their lives were changed as a consequence of a single incident. It was two coal-mining accidents, one in West Virginia at the Upper Branch mine, in which 29 men died, and a cave-in of a mine in Chile, where 33 miners survived underground for over two months. These incidents took hold of Coleangelo’s imagination. I kept hearing about them on NPR and reading about them in the New York Times. These accidents were very much in the zeitgeist, but once the news stories disappeared and the press moved on, I couldn’t easily forget them. They continued to move me and rattle around in my brain. Producer Anne Carey was one of the film’s earliest supporters. This script was unusual for a first-time feature director in both its ambition and its scope. It is a very complex narrative intertwining the lives of three characters: a miner who was injured in the accident, a young boy who lost his father in the mine and the wife of the coal-mining executive most likely to be implicated in the accident. Most first-time features would tackle one of those threads and be satisfied. Sara managed to combine all three in a script that was compelling without being melodramatic and showed narrative ambition that was refreshing. Jason Berman and Thomas Fore joined the producing team at the behest of the Sundance Institute and Craig Kestrel at the William Morris Endeavor talent agency. Next Anne Carey called upon fellow producer Summer Shelton, and then finally Chris Columbus and his daughter Eleanor, who had just formed their own production company, Maiden Voyage Films. The Columbuses founded Maiden Voyage Films with the express intent of supporting first-time filmmakers. They had not planned to launch their efforts as early as they did, but Coleangelo’s script was too compelling to pass up. Eleanor was drawn to it. The characters are so real and so human that it makes the story feel completely full. Chris was attracted to the coal-mining backdrop of the story. My father was a coal miner, as was his father before him. It is a huge part of my past, but I had never found material that I felt spoke authentically to that world.
And Sara Coleangelo clarifies the theme like this: We can’t get outside of ourselves unless we connect with others. I saw Amos, Owen and Diana as three walking ghosts. Over the course of the film, they regain their humanity and better themselves by connecting with each other. 13
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THEY CAME TOGETHER *Spoiler Alert
The opening set piece is two couples having dinner together. Joel (Paul Rudd) and Molly (Amy Poehler) are relating to their friends Kystory. When they first collided, it was hate at first sight and things do not get any better for Joel and Molly at their next meeting at a book store, until they discover that they both love fiction and their grandmothers. Thus they fall in love and out of love and then in love again, with Joel hitching up with his previous girlfriend and Molly with an accountant. The idea that Molly is just an owner of a candy store and that Joel’s company is planning to put it out of business by opening a large candy store opposite leads to one of the film’s strongest scenes when Joel crashes his firm’s business meeting to tell them why they should embrace her store because they are not in the business for money but for selling candy. They Came Together deserves five stars for the courage and gall of making the film and calling it a comedy. The premise that New York is a character would have been funnier if the film had documented the city that never sleeps than this film that never wakes up, except for an irritating nocturnal twitch. Even a blind scientist would see that the chemistry between Rudd and Proehler does not mix; good actors though they are. The major fault of the film is the screenplay by David Wain and Michael Showalter which tries so hard to break all the rules of comedy with humour that is signposted before it arrives. There is only one subtle comedy scene in the movie which involves a dead body; the rest is vacuously vulgar and unfunny. One funny scene between Joel and a barman is ruined by repetition when it should have been cut. 16
Of course the whole of point of David Wain’s film is to poke fun at romantic comedies that follow the same pattern of boy meets girl, fall in love, out of love, and highlight the same old emotional relationships that tempt the couple to stray. Satirical comedy is a hard one to pull off unless you have the ear and talent for it, sadly the writers don’t. The film is exhaustingly long at 83 minutes which even at 60 minutes would have been a strain to sit through. Oh how I concurred with the sentiments of Joel and Molly’s dinner friends Kyle and Karen who admit to getting tired of the long tale that they have had to listen to. One can only hope that repetition is not a future theme of a so-called comedy from Paul Wain...or as Joel might comment: You can say that again. No, please let us not go there. Paul Wain has seen better days. Perhaps his strongest directed film was Wet Hot American Summer, which was mainly held together by David Hyde Price of Frazier fame. Paul Rudd has also had a somewhat mediocre career. This is Forty had him starring with Lesley Mann. Pete and Debbie are about to turn 40. Their kids hate each other, both of their businesses are failing, they‘re on the verge of losing their home and their relationship is falling apart. Rudd and Mann were ideally suited and believable. Wanderlust paired him with Jennifer Aniston, a couple facing alternate living options when he is fired from his job. They reluctantly decide to live on a rural commune where free love rules. The film which gained the most plaudits for him was the critically acclaimed Prince Avalanche which teamed him with Emile Hirsch as two highway workers who squabble and bicker their way through their boring job thinking about who and what they left behind in the city. It is quite a quirky story but it suits his style. So nothing memorable, but like painting that yellow line in the middle of the road, one can only hope it will lead him eventually to better roles. le (Bill Hader) and Karen (Ellie Kemper) why and how they broke up. They tell it like it was a movie and it starts with its setting, a shot of the New York skyline. The flashbacks are occasionally interrupted by Kyle and Karen’s questions, with a few gags by the guys thrown in at the expense of the women; which is a dire warning of the standard of humour that is to follow throughout the 17
THE VOICES Spoiler Alert
The freezer door opened and the three heads began to talk to each other. This is perhaps the weirdest film that has been released to unsuspecting cinema audiences in years. Its protagonist is Jerry who works at the Milton Bathtub Factory trying to show his boss that he is working hard, and being over polite in his eagerness to please. He is overjoyed when he is asked to organise the company picnic. At his bachelor home he relates these happenings to his companions a dog named Bosco, and a cat called Mr Whiskers. Nothing really wrong with that many people to talk to their pets, but Jerry’s talk back to him because...well, he hears voices. Bosco is positive and encouraging of Jerry, while Mr Whiskers is the ultimate doomsayer and foulmouthed feline. Jerry regularly reports back to his therapist who is happy to hear that he seems to be making some progress, particularly in that he has found a girl, Fiona, who works in the company’s office that he likes. So begins a slow descent into mayhem and madness for Jerry s as his behaviour becomes more bizarre by the minute. Fiona, who only agrees to date after she cancelled the first one, unfortunately realizes that he is mad too late to save her from his deranged actions. Things begin to get quite gory, which is probably the greatest understatement, because each act is hideously horrific. 18
One can only say that Jerry would have been better suited as a butcher than a packer of bathtubs. No one questions the disappearance of Fiona and life goes on, except for Fiona of course, as though nothing has happened. Jerry takes a liking to Lisa and asks her if she would like to go home with him and, foolish girl, she agrees. Where is this film going? It can’t be fitted into any genre, one moment funny, one moment horror, and ending as a musical. Ryan Reynolds, as Jerry, has a penchant for unconventional roles which he seems to be able to pull off. He is very good at being crazy, giving the impression that none of the insane acts would have happened if it had not been an accident in the first place. Tell that to the judge. Gemma Arterton as Fiona is the dream girl, beautiful and funny. What made her accept the role, well it could not have been the script because there probably wasn’t one. If it was the chance to be in something that was totally different – then this was it. Anna Kendrick may like to erase this experience from her filmography but then again how many stars get the chance of playing in something so ‘different’ but please Anna, once is enough. Marjane Satrapi directed and not quite all is forgiven. After all the ending was surprisingly uplifting after such dire scenes that preceded it. It was the best scene in the whole movie and definitely seemed ill placed but ironically needed. It is a musical number where the leading actors show off their dancing and singing skills and displaying the obvious fact that they were having fun or perhaps it was a celebration that the catastrophe had ended. I’ll settle on the latter. If this film gets a distributor then it is proof that insanity rules, but my forecast is that it will go straight to DVD. 19
THE TRIP TO ITALY Spoiler Alert
This is a reboot of the 2010 film, mainly improvised, directed by Michael Winterbottom and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Based on the TV series of the same name, it comes as welcome relief to a festival that has provided little to feel good about. The comic pair motor their way in their mini around the picturesque delights of Capri, Liguria, Tuscany, Rome and Amalfi, and as before they sample the culinary mouthwatering dishes of the places they stop at. There is the same brilliant banter of these two buddies cross impersonating Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Tom Hardy as they enjoy their own company and we enjoy theirs. They retrace the steps of the Romantic poets’ grand tour of Italy. There is a little sadness too when they reminisce about Father Time and how they are no longer young but middle-aged. Viewing the beauty of Italy lifts and transports your heart to this wonderful country that seems to have been embraced by the heavens as Rob and Steve walk the narrow streets or eat a meal on a balcony overlooking the sea. There is immediacy after watching this film to pack your bags and get away to this sun-drenched paradise. The vistas, the gastronomic treasures that tantalise the taste-buds, the serendipitous moments that awake them and us as they turn another corner or enter another building. Michael Winterbottom has handsomely directed a fine film that is a delightful experience and is much more than a celebrated travelogue. Italy is of course a country of dreams and dreamers where you can expect the unexpected, revel in the wonder of every day, and even bathe your ears in the romantic language that you hear. It has phrases that never leave you that you may not understand immediately but when you do it is like unwrapping a magical gift that you will want to share with others. Buona Notte e Sogni D’oro, meaning Goodnight, I wish you dreams of gold. And of course the country is a lover of films and has more film festivals and cinemas in Europe than any other and that is a definite plus. 20
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Q & A AGNÉS TROUBLÉ & DOUGLAS GORDON The following Q & A took place after the screening at the Curzon Soho of My Name is Hmmm... Q: Agnés, you have long been associated with film. In the last decade and a half you have supported some of the great iconic filmmakers of contemporary cinema. I am just curious that you mentioned that this was long in gestation as an idea. I am curious about the idea of you as a director, your desire to direct and how long you have had this sort of... AB: The story about twelve years ago. It was visual. I work a lot then two years ago they said I could do the film and then I was a scriptwriter and then I said to Douglas there is a role in the film. Why don’t you play the truck driver? DG: I don’t have a driving license. Q: So did you just rush out and get a HDV license? AB: No, he was in Berlin and he took a truck and a truck driver told him a little thing like how to open the door or maybe more...... DG: It’s like a horse on how to get on it and off it. Q: On developing the story, obviously you are known as a great visual stylist, but I am curious about your role as a writer... AB: At school I loved to write. I was very good at French. I loved to tell stories. I tell stories to my children and I like imagining stories and I think that when I wrote this story it was for me like therapy. Maybe I just needed to do it. And then I read this story about a man in a Judges’ office who killed himself and I thought about what made him do that and I had a story. And I gave it to my imagination and it is fiction, it is not my story. Sometimes I say I know a little about that as an adolescent. Many girls, boys, men, women can have that experience and you keep it with you all your life so you have to do something with that and I wanted to express myself in another way. In my work I love to make people happy with my clothes. I took pictures for a long time, drawing for a long time and it became a film. DG: Agnés and I have known each other since we were young and she was forty and I would be thirty-five. I think a film like this might take about fifteen years to be digested because sometimes a story that needs to be told...you are compelled to make it and then it has to be digested. And in fifteen years time the subject of this film will not have disappeared, that’s for sure. 27
Q: I am just curious about the French production and the fact that incest is still considered a misdemeanour. AB: Yes, it is not a crime. Q: What I found very fascinating about this film is that it is not a judgemental film. AB: No I am not judging anyone. Q: I just wonder how you might get questions about how you represent the father in the film. I mean for me an artist’s role is to pose questions not to give answers. I mean there is an non judgmental attitude to all the characters in the film and I am just curious about when you were writing it. Let us talk about your character Peter and the conversations you had in developing this character. AB: Five or ten minutes before we shot, we had no time to discuss. I was so confident in him. And he made surprises for me like when he began to sing this old Scottish song. I love to film music and he started to sing and I was with him by accident. DG: Shall we tell the real truth? AB: It was like in the westerns when they are lying down with their saddles and someone starts to sing and the fire and the pot of coffee. DG: Let us not get into Blazing Saddles. But there was something about the relationship between me and Lilia which was curious because she is not my daughter. I have a daughter and when my daughter sits on my knee that is an entirely different vibe. The first time I meet Lilia it was the first scene we shot and it was in the train station in Bordeaux. And I said bonjour...hello. In fact I can speak French better than in the film when I had to dumb it down. So the first scene we shot we had to go down into the photo machine, so we closed the curtain and I’ve got this girl on my knee. It probably gave it the right atmosphere because it was highly unusual. But her daddy was outside. There was a kind of energy in there that I could not have imagined...a kind of friction, AB: And I told them not to touch each other. Don’t hold her hand, don’t touch her. Keep your distance always, only when he tries to help her on the wall and not to fall down into the water there. But I was looking at them at being friends during the filmmaking. We spent three weeks in the South of France. In the studio where we built the apartment, everything was in place. I wanted at the beginning for everything to be a closed place. So in the beginning the parents are a little too loud and wanted the difference between inside and when she goes out for the first time. The first thing she needed was breath. And you give her breath. DG: I suspect, and I go back to the thing about longevity that I would be able to sit with her and this since I 28
have known her as an actor, I have to take this seriously. I imagine that I am going to have a relationship with this girl for the rest of my life. And I will talk to her about the roles we played and it is going to get more complexed as life goes on I think. Audience: I was just wondering that if you felt very protective to the girl during the process of filming because I mean she is just a child. I kept thinking about her wherewithal throughout the film. AB: She had a double for two scenes. The scene with the father and the scene where she explains what the father does. I didn’t want to spoil this girl. I love this girl. She understood exactly what I wanted each time. She is great. I really love her. Interesting thing I have been shown the film in different countries in Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, everywhere. I think people have been moved by the story because unfortunately this is a universal problem. So I was very surprised the way the people understand the film. Q: As a filmmaker, the question of how far you go. I think about the film Michael about the boy who is locked downstairs, loosely based on the Fritzel story. I just wondered not dealing with the idea of self-censorship but about the limitations as a filmmaker you have at expressing yourself. AB: I was not a filmmaker, maybe I am still not a filmmaker. I wanted to tell the story my own way I was free because I had no producers because no one wanted to give money to do the film. I was my own producer. I did the film for myself in a way. I used different cameras. Audience: I find that it is difficult to believe that you can have a girl disappear in a country when her picture is on television and in every newspaper and yet she is walking in public so it shows that something could happen, but from Pete’s perspective he knows because he is an adult. He must know as an adult that at some point he will be confronted and he must face an enquiry. AB: I think he knows. He lost his wife and child in an accident. No one is waiting for him. He is a little crazy. He starts to do a trick with the girl because he has found someone he loves. DG: When we were travelling down from Paris to Bordeaux, we dropped off at the cathedral in Chartres and to go there it was the best training I could have for my role because Peter was trapped. He lost the people that he loved and he is about to sacrifice himself and there is no redemption. Audience: You said that the story was in your mind and you found it therapeutic. How do you feel now? AB: I spent eight months in the editing room and I love to see the film. I have to assume the film the way it is. It never ends when it is something in your brain. 29
FILMFEST FOLLOWER MbM RECOMMENDS May 14th to 25th
Cannes Film Festival ADIEU AU LANGAGE
(Goodbye to Language) Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. A seventy minute film by the veteran Cinema Verite director Jean-Luc Godard’s first film in 3D
CAPTIVES Directed by Atom Egoyan Starring: Ryan Reynolds. Scott Speedman. Kirsten Stewart. A father tries to track down his kidnapped daughter.
DEUX JOURS, UNE NUIT Directed by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne. Starring: Marion Cotillard. Olivier Gourmet.
A young woman assisted by her husband has one weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job.
FOXCATCHER Directed by Bennett Miller. Starring: Channing Tatum. Mark Ruffalo. Steve Carell.
The story of Olympic Wrestling Champion Mark Schultz and how paranoid schizophrenic John du Pont killed his brother, Olympic Champion Dave Schultz.
THE HOMESMAN Directed Tommy Lee Jones. Starring: Tommy Lee Jones. Hilary Swank. A claim jumper and a pioneer woman team up to escort three insane women from Nebraska to Iowa.
MR TURNER Directed by Mike Leigh Starring: Timothy Spall. Tom Wlaschita. Roger
Ashton-Griffiths. A look at the life of British artist J.M.W. Turner. 30
LOST RIVER Directed by Ryan Gosling. Starring: Christina Hendricks. Saoirse Ronan. Eva Mendes.
A single mother is swept into a dark underworld while her teenage son discovers a road that leads him to a secret underwater town.
MAPS TO THE STARS Directed by Davod Cronenberg. Starring: Julianne Moore. Robert Pattinson. A complex look look at Hollywood and what it reveals about Western culture.
LE MERAVIGLIE
(The Marvel)
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Starring: Monica Bellucci. Alba Rohrwacher. Margarete Tiesel.
Set in the beautiful countryside of Umbria. A 14 year old girl Gelsomina’s sheltered life is disrupted by the arrival of a German criminal.
PARTY GIRL Directed by Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. Starring: Sonia Theis-Litzemburger.
An aging nightclub hostess decides to settle down and get married.
THE SEARCH Directed by Michel Hazanavicius Starring: Annette Bening. Berenice Bejo.
A woman who works for a non-govermental organization forms a special relationship with a young in war-torn Chechnya.
SILS MARIA Directed by Olivier Assayas Starring: Juliette Binoche. Robert Pattison. Mia Wasaikowska.
A successful actress has to face a newcomer who has been cast in the part that made her famous.
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