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CONTENTS Page 4 5-8
Editorial Knight of Cups A writer indulging in all that Los Angeles and Las Vegas has to offer undertakes a search for love and self via a series of adventures with six different women.
9-12
Disorder Vincent is an ex-soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, who is hired to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman while he’s out of town. Despite the apparent tranquillity of their luxurious home, Vincent perceives an external threat.
13-16
Louder Than Bombs The fractious family of a father and his two sons confront their different feelings and memories of their deceased wife and mother and famed war photographer.
17-20
The Man Who Knew Infinity Growing up poor in Madras, India, Srinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar earns admittance to Cambridge University during WWI, where he becomes a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor, G.H. Hardy.
21 — 24
Jane Got a Gun A woman asks her ex-lover for help in order to save her outlaw husband from a gang out to kill him.
25 — 30
Film Fest Follower Cannes A selection of some of the films being premiered at the glitziest and most famous film festival in the world.
31 32
Disorder Knight of Cups PHOTO CREDITS: Studio Canal: 1,5,7,8,32 Soda Pictures:2,9,11,12,13,15,16,31 Lionsgate: 21,23,24 Warner Bros.UK 17,19,20
Acknowledgements We would like to thank the following for their invaluable help: Asa Martin of Studio Canal Ed Frost of Soda Pictures Saffeya Shebli of Soda Pictures Hollie Christian-Brookes of Warner Bros. UK Emma Orlando of Grapevine. Saynaree Oudomvilay of Grapevine. Helen Sim – ddapr.com
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EDITORIAL “The truth is I had no idea how I was going to do what I was saying I was going to do. If you don’t experiment and do outrageous things like that, how can you move forward?” - Frances Ford Coppola
The director of The Godfather is talking about the future of cinema and the way he sees it going. His next film Distant Vision, he says, will take five years to complete and will encompass all his ambitious plans of creating ‘live-cinema’, a process that would combine live performance and traditional filmmaking, which could either be viewed in a theatre or on a television. Coppola has not worked out all of the logistics yet, like how to make a live performance with the visual appearance of film. Distant Vision will follow four generations of a fictional Italian family. The script’s length so far runs to 500 pages. Frances Ford Coppola is a maverick filmmaker with focused foresight like Terrence Malick the director of this month’s cover feature film review Knight of Cups, starring Christian Bale. Like Coppola, Malick has broken all the rules of filmmaking to stamp his style on his films, and Knight of Cups is no exception in this brilliant study of the workings of Hollywood and the effect it has on a successful but unhappy screenwriter. Disorder is a nail-biting thriller with an incredible performance by Matthias Schoenaerts as a soldier returning to civilian life and suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Further reviews are: Louder than Bombs, Jane Got a Gun and The Man Who Knew Infinity. The buzz in the film world this month has been the speculative excitement about the Cannes Film Festival which announced its programme for May. We take a look at some of the major films to look forward to in FilmFest Follower. Cannes sets the standard for the rest of the year for cinema-going. So it is another bumper issue that hopefully reader you will find exhilarating to read and ponder over.
Enjoy the read Brian Mills Magazine Editor
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Paul Ridler Magazine Designer
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KNIGHT OF CUPS The beginning of the end. * Spoiler Alert *
Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring: Christian Bale. Cate Blanchett. Natalie Portman. Brian Dennehy. Antonio Banderas. Freida Pinto. Wes Bentley. Isabel Lucas. Teresa Palmer. Imogen Poots. All those years, living the life with someone I didn’t even know. - Rick Suffering. Rick (Christian Bale) is a comedy writer living in present-day Santa Monica. He is suffering because he longs for something else in his life but doesn’t know what that something is. Rick’s father (Brian Dennehy) used to tell him a story as a boy about a young prince whose father, the king of the East, sent him down to Egypt to find a pearl. But when the prince arrived, the people poured him a cup. Drinking it, he forgot he was the son of a king, forgot about the pearl and fell into a deep sleep.
The death of his brother, Billy, hangs over him like a shadow. His father bears a sense of guilt for Billy’s death. A surviving brother, Barry (Wes Bentley), down on his luck, has just moved to LA from where they grew up, in Missouri. Rick has been helping him get back on his feet. Rick survives to be distracted and he finds that in the company of women: lots of them. Nancy (Cate Blanchett) his ex-wife, with whom he didn’t have children, to his regret. There was his tender relationship with a married woman Elizabeth (Natalie Portman); a Hollywood starlet Della (Imogen Poots), a model Helen (Freida Pinto) and a pole dancer (Teresa Palmer). And it is women who understand him, and no matter how fleeting their relationships were they were insightfully significant and nailed his heart to the wall: You don’t want love, you want a love experience, says the pole dancer. Rick’s life is filled with images – a jittery juxtaposition of confusion – a vacuous void.
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Malick’s films are an acquired taste – there is no in between. He makes films in a totally different way to the majority of filmmakers: there is no screenplay – you bring your own feelings to the character which you are playing. He makes it his own, that’s the way it should be. - Brian Dennehy The philosophy behind it was let’s start before we’re ready. - Christian Bale
They’re calling me now and I don’t know what I’m going to do. - Antonio Banderas. Places and situations that Rick would hesitate to call beautiful, because the production of beauty in a world of suffering and from his own suffering is the closest thing to a higher calling that an artist has to the religious experience that art has to offer as a priest Father Zeitlinger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) reminds us at the end. While Rick seeks redemption in the company of a Buddhist named Christopher (Peter Matthiessen) in a final sequence. The end title of the film is Begin.
Award winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki is untethered to storyboards, roaming freely around and past the actions, collecting images that embody Malick’s ideas and emotions without being overdetermined by the intentions. No less important than the images is the freedom with which Malick edits them. Recognizing that the memorable things that people say aren’t necessarily memorable moments of life, he separates the image and the sound, including snippets of voiceovers, turning the words themselves into images. There are times when Rick’s character is expected to comment but instead remains taciturn. If ever there was an example of showing that movies are a visual medium that are meant to move then this is it. Knight of Cups is also a Los Angeles movie, and it features some of the most aesthetically ambivalent architectural modernism since Michangelo Antonioni’s heyday. Rick can’t help delighting in the soaring forms and shining light of the modern city, from glass-and steel-towers and marble halls to the lights and lines of the street as seen from the rush of the cars that he drives. Like all classic works of art Knight of Cups will be studied and revered over and over again. It is a masterpiece.
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Christian Bale in Knight of Cups
Christian Bale & Natalie Portman in Knight of Cups
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Cate Blanchett in Knight of Cups
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DISORDER *
Spoiler Alert *
Directed by Alice Winocour. Starring: Matthias Schoenaerts. Diane Kruger. Paul Hamy. Zaid Errougui-Demonsant. Percy Kemp. Victor Pontecorvo. Vincent is a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder, and he is responsible for ensuring the safety of Jessie, the wife of a wealthy businessman in his “Maryland” property. While he feels a strange fascination for the woman he must protect, Vincent is prone to anxiety and hallucinations. Despite the apparent tranquillity on “Maryland”, Vincent perceives an external threat. Civilian life is not kind to Vincent, at least in combat in Afghanistan he had a mission and a purpose. Now he finds himself at loose ends and is almost constantly battling the thumping noise of the warzone in his head. A friend of his offers him the opportunity of taking a job as part of a security team with his military pals. His introduction to his job is attending a party and meeting a pretty woman who it ensues he will be asked by the owner of the mansion, a wealthy Lebanese businessman, to be her bodyguard and their child’s, while he is away on business. At the party, Vincent notes some alarming signs as he secures the palatial estate. The uncertainty that Vincent feels about the suspicious ambiance of the place and the threat that he perceives as danger is matched by our own uncertainty about Vincent: how much of what he sees is real and how much is merely a figment of his tortured mind and imprisoned imagination? Simple sounds reverberate through his head sending psychotic messages having him concentrate on the jangling of women’s jewellery as a bevy of blondes sway to the dance music. Is it all really happening or is he trying to overcome the growing obsession that he won’t be called to return to army duty? This is to be his lot and he is doubting his ability to tackle it. The tension is particular the Gesaffelstein. this one – but
emphasised by the outstanding soundtrack and in astute use of Winocour’s choice of French techno DJ It is rare that music amplifies a character as well as oh, it does…like blood running through his veins.
But the ultimate success of this film is the perfect casting of Matthias Schoenaerts as its protagonist. So let’s look at his career
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and its highlights and what has led to this powerful performance and his future prospects. MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS.
I like good cinema, whether it’s small independent cinema or a huge project. For me it’s all about, is it going to blow people’s minds, in a creative way, in an emotional way, that’s the experience we’re sharing with an audience when we go to a movie theatre. His parents are Dominique Wiche and actor Julien Schoenaerts. He made his film debut at the age of 13, alongside his father in the Belgian film Daens which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He then enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Antwerp and was acting professionally in small roles on Belgian television and in Belgian film. By the time he graduated in 2003, he was already named one of “Europe’s Shooting Stars” by the influential marketing organization, European Film Promotion. The film that made him a star in his homeland came in 2008, in Erik Van Looy’s Loft. The dramatic thriller was a smash hit, becoming the top-grossing Flemish film of all time. Three years later, Matthias starred in Bullhead, as a cattle farmer who becomes entangled with the underworld of bovine hormones and steroids. His powerful performance in the tragic role won awards at numerous film festivals and propelled the film to an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. The following year, Schoenaerts got the lead role opposite Marion Cotillard in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone. He played an exboxer who falls in love with Cotillard’s character. The film received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening and was a critical and box office hit in France. It earned Schoenaerts a Cesar Award for Most Promising Actor in 2013. On the director Jacques Audiard, he said: I don’t know if he’s crazy. Maybe all the other ones are crazy for not being like him. He wants to film truth, he doesn’t want to film acting. Acting for him isn’t about tricks and vanity; it’s about being simple and authentic and sincere. He’s the first true actor’s director I’ve ever worked with. Other films of note which have followed have been: Blood Ties, The Drop, A Little Chaos, Suite Française, in which he played a Nazi Officer, and of course the romantic lead in Far from the Madding Crowd opposite Carey Mulligan. Matthias Schoenaerts is an actor of exceptional talent and his performance in Disorder is white-knuckle gripping.
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Diane Kruger & Matthias Schoenaerts in Disorder
Diane Kruger in Disorder
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Matthias Schoenaerts in Disorder
Diane Kruger, Paul Hamy, Matthias Schoenaerts in Disorder 12
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LOUDER THAN BOMBS * Spoiler Alert *
Directed by Joachim Trier. Starring: Gabriel Byrne. Isabelle Huppert. Jesse Eisenberg. Devin Druid. Amy Ryan. Ruby Jerins. Megan Ketch. David Strathairn. They know what really happened, right? Jonah knows, but Conrad, he was twelve. - Richard. A matriarchal premise about an ace war photographer played by Isabelle Huppert who is remembered by her two sons and her husband on how her death from a car accident effected them. It is a torturous journey that is constantly rehashed and brings her eldest son Jonah back to the family house forcing him to spend more time with his father and his grossly withdrawn younger brother. Gene, the dad, is forced to connect with his two sons, but they struggle to reconcile their feelings about the woman they remember so differently. Why Louder Than Bombs? The director Joachim Trier explained it this way: I think we were looking for a title that mirrored the balance between the small and tender pains of family life set up against the great ambitions and experiences of a mother who is working abroad as a war photographer. The incomparability of pain is something which I find intriguing. The title refers to the band ‘The Smith’s’ first American album, a compilation of their songs as they were approaching America for the first time. But the film is about neither war nor The Smiths. I also discovered that The Smiths borrowed the title from the American poet Elizabeth Smart, and her book “By Grand Central Station. I Sat Down and Wept.” I loved that those words had a specifically American provenance as I worked on this film set in the US. For Joachim Trier, shooting in New York, the team was much bigger than he had ever experienced in Norway, but as a director his responsibility was to find ways to create a work environment around the camera that fits your story and your actors, so procedurally he went about it as any other previous production. On the characters: Gene (Gabriel Byrne) is about a modern father. He has become a teacher and given up his career as an actor to be
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closer to his kids. He is trying to keep his family together, but he is struggling to connect with his fifteen year old son Conrad, who is engulfed in a computer games and an online life, which makes it difficult for him to understand his father. Gene even attempts to create an avatar and venture into a game to meet his son, with unforeseen consequences. Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is an over achiever, who feels he was closer to his mom than anyone else. His story is about delayed grief, and how the façade crumbles when revaluating the image of his mother. Eisenberg gives the most convincing performance of the entire cast. Conrad (Devin Druid) seems at the outset of the story to have been struck the hardest by the loss of his mother, but as the story progresses, he is in many ways the most surprising of all the characters, while at the same, because of his adolescence – the most irritating. Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert) finds her work conflicts with the need to be with her family. Though her character is not on the screen the most, her presence is always coming in the story as it proceeds, and it is hard to imagine any other actor playing this enigmatic and intriguing mother. There is a scene where Conrad remembers a childhood memory of hide and seek with his mother. While he thinks about this for the first time in years, he realises the mother’s perspective of the same scene, and how she must have known where he was hiding all along. It appears in retrospect that it is Conrad, not Jonah, that was closest to his mother until the very end, but who could have predicted the accident…if in indeed it was one. It is Jonah who offers his own theory to his father’s question about the accident. His father asked “You think he deserves to know the truth?”
The Truth? What is the truth? There is no story in a car accident. So people have to make one up. They have to invent sometimes, so they have someone to blame. - Jonah
Ultimately Louder Than Bombs is not an easy film to watch, let alone one to remember.
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Jesse Eisenberg & Devin Druid in Louder Than Bombs
Jesse Eisenberg in Louder Than Bombs
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Gabriel Byrne & Amy Ryan in Louder Than Bombs
Devin Druid & Gabriel Byrne in Louder Than Bombs 16
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THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY DIRECTED BY MATT BROWN Starring: JEREMY IRONS. DEV PATEL. TOBY JONES. There are no proofs. Are we just to take him at his word? No, you are to take him at mine. - G.H. Hardy
The cerebral subject of mathematical geniuses have long provided the framework of films and here it concentrates on a little known young man named Scrinivasa Ramanujan Iyengar (Dev Patel) who grew up in poverty in Madras, India and earnt his admittance to Cambridge University during WWI, where he became a pioneer in mathematical theories with the guidance of his professor, G.H. Hardy (Jeremy Irons). Ramanujan was self-taught, who some say could decipher the very fabric of existence. The story is extraordinary in many ways, not least because it reveals that he was a mathematical prodigy by the age of 11, or that at the height of his powers, few could fathom his genius. It is based on a true story adapted from a 1991 book of the same name. The film begins in 1914 in Madras where we see him scribbling theorems on slate before sending samples of his work to intellectuals in Cambridge. Receiving the latter’s theories, G. H. Hardy is not only astounded, but invites the young man to study in England – both as his protégé and the missing link since Isaac Newton. Forced to leave behind his young wife Janaki (Devika Bhise) with his mother, this would be the start of many of his problems but not before going on to make profound discoveries in his field of study. What the film reveals is that almost a century after his death, intellectuals using modern day computers are still baffled by his integrals and integers. Only as recent as 2012 have scientists confirmed Ramanujan’s incredible intuition that suggests the existence of black holes in deep space – a concept that was virtually unknown during his time. The standard of films about mathematics peaked in 1997 with Good Will Hunting. It told of a janitor at M.I.T., who has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life. Matt Damon starred as Will Hunting as the wayward young man struggling to find his identity, living in a world where he can solve any problem, except the one brewing within himself, until one day he meets his soul mate who opens his mind and his heart. 17 www.moviesbymills.com
Robin Williams was superb in his role. Minnie Driver and Matt Damon’s on-screen chemistry was electric. It wrapped on a beautiful ending. Proof showed what it is like to live in the shadow of brilliance and what happens when that person’s genius crosses the line into insanity and how a daughter reacts. The film starred Gwyneth Paltrow as the daughter of a genius but mentally disturbed mathematician, recently deceased, trying to come to terms with her possible inheritance: his madness. Anthony Hopkins played Catherine’s (Paltrow’s) father. In addition, one of her father’s ex-students Harold Dobbs (Jake Gyllenhaal) is eager to search through his papers and her estranged sister shows up to help settle his affairs. Another mind-bender was John Nash played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind. After his astounding achievements in mathematics, he accepts secret work in cryptography, his life nose-dives from notoriety to the depths of depravity. He stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful, and harrowing journey of selfdiscovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally – late in life – received the Nobel Prize. Further films worth mentioning about this fascinating subject are Pi. A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature. It starred Sean Guilette as Max Cohen who built a supercomputer at home that provided something that could be understood as a key for understanding all existence. He suffered from intense headaches, delusions and some paranoia. He looked into patterns in the stock market only to find his ability sought by both Wall Street trader, Marcy Dawson, and a Hasidic, Lenny Meyer, who both wanted the code for different reasons. In 2014 there were two films, one about Alan Turing who tried to crack the enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians. The Imitation Game starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing. The other film was about the famous physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and called The Theory of Everything, which mainly concerned itself with the relationship between Hawking and his wife.
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Dev Patel in The Man Who Knew Infinity
Dev Patel & Stephen Fry in The Man Who Knew Infinity
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Jeremy Irons & Dev Patel in The Man Who Knew Infinity
Dev Patel, Jeremy Irons, Toby Jones in The Man Who Knew Infinity 20
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JANE GOT A GUN Directed by Gavin O’Connor. Starring: Natalie Portman. Joel Edgerton. Ewan McGregor. Noah Emmerich. When you lose your purpose, you lose your life. - Dan Frost
The above quote from the film by Joel Edgerton’s character is ironically prophetic of the history and ultimately the exhibition of Jane Got a Gun, the story of which would inevitably have made a better film than this. It has taken three years for the film to be finally made, its troubles beginning in pre-production when Michael Fassbender who was cast as Dan Frost left the project after clashing with its director Lynne Ramsay. Filming was then scheduled to commence the following week but Ramsay complained about alleged fraudulent behaviour of the producer-financier Scott Steindorff, mainly trying to force upon her an impossible schedule at the last minute that she couldn’t accept. She felt tricked with false promises and left the production because the producers made it impossible to direct the movie the way she had planned. Gavin O’Connor was hired to replace Ramsay after she did not show up on the first day of the shoot. Next up, Jude Law quit before shooting began citing that he had signed on to work with Ramsay. Bradley Cooper, Tobey Maguire, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hiddleston were all in the firing line to be the villain John Bishop, but it finally went to Ewan McGregor after Jake Gyllenhaal refused the role. Another who rode off into the sunset with Lynne Ramsay was celebrated cinematographer Darius Khondji. If the producers needed any further signs that Jane Got a Gun was cursed, they did not have to wait long: It was set to have its world premiere at the Parisian cinema UGC Normandie on November 16, 2015, followed by a wide release in France on November 25. However, following the terror attacks on the French capital on the night of November 13, both premiere and press junket were cancelled, and the wide release was delayed to early 2016.
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The story is about a woman Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) who hires her former lover Dan Frost (Joel Edgerton) to help her to use a gun so she can hunt down the three outlaws who raped her and shot her husband, Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich). The opening sequence is impressive with Jane telling her young daughter stories and playing out roles. Unfortunately once it gets into the heart of the film it loses its purpose and its life. The narrative goes backwards and forwards in time to pick-up and attempt to make the backstory interesting – it fails miserably. Jane is out to defend her home and her severely wounded husband who has been shot by the notorious Bishop gang headed by John Bishop played by Ewan McGregor who is armed with a convincing accent but otherwise is a stereotype villain that you know must meet his comeuppance and at the hands of Jane. Because the storyline is weak and insufferable McGregor’s accent provides distraction but not enough to relieve one from a tedious plot that is saddle-sore from the get-go. Western genre is always a tough one to win over and by having a female protagonist is not an original sexist option but this is no Johnny Guitar. Jane and Dan Frost have a better chance of surviving against the Bishop gang than the audience of watching them, whom by the end will probably have fallen asleep. Shame. It could have been a worthwhile film but as it is..one can’t help but wonder, why did they bother to even greenlight it…the vultures had eaten everything off the bone. You would expect that everyone would have read the foreboding signs that this film was doomed in more ways than one, but then neither did the critics when the Weinstein’s cancelled all press screenings. If the production company has no confidence in what they are selling…why should we? The characters have a better chance of getting through this than the audience.
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Child with Natalie Portman in Jane Got A Gun
Natalie Portman in Jane Got A Gun
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Natalie Portman & Joel Edgerton in Jane Got A Gun
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FILMFEST FOLLOWER CANNES May 2016 *MbM recommends OPENING FILM *CAFÉ SOCIETY Directed by Woody Allen Starring: Kristen Stewart. Jesse Eisenberg. Blake Lively. A young man arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry. There, he falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that defined the spirit of the age.
OFFICIAL SELECTION TONI ERDMANN Directed by Maren Ade Starring: Peter Simonischek. Sandra Huller. Lucy Russell. A father tries to reconnect with his adult daughter.
JULIETA Directed by Pedro Almodovar Starring: Adriana Ugarte. Michelle Jenner. Rosy de Palma. Julieta’s life in 2015 finds her on the verge of madness; 30 years earlier we see a more prosperous time in her life.
*AMERICAN HONEY Directed by Andrea Arnold Starring: Sasha Lane. Shia La Beauf. McCall Lombardi. A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a travelling magazine sales crew and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
*PERSONAL SHOPPER Directed by Olivier Assayas Starring: Kristin Stewart. Anders Danielsen. Lars Eidinger. Revolves around a ghost story that takes place in the fashion underworld of Paris.
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THE UNKNOWN GIRL Directed by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardennes Starring: Adele Haenel. Jeremie Renier. Olivier Gourmet. A doctor attempts to uncover the identity of a patient who died after she refused her treatment.
IT’S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD Directed by Xavier Dolan Starring: Lea Seydoux. Marion Cotillard. Vincent Cassel. Louis, a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.
MA LOUTE Directed by Bruno Dumont Starring: Fabrice Luchini. Juliette Binoche. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Several tourists have gone missing while relaxing on the beautiful of the channel coast. Famous inspectors gather that the epi centre is Slack Bay.
MAL DE PIERRES Directed by Nicole Garcia Starring: Marion Cotillard. Louis Garrel. Alex Brendemuhl. A passionate woman who is in a loveless marriage and falls for another man. Spans a period of 20 years.
*PATERSON Directed by Jim Jarmusch Starring: Adam Driver. Golshifteh Kara Hayward. Set in the present in Paterson, New Jersey, this is a tale about a bus driver and a poet.
AQUARIUS Directed by Kleber Filho Mendonca Starring: Sonia Braga. Jeff Rosick. Clara, a 65 year old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Brazil. She is the last resident in Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s in the upper class seaside resort.
I, DANIEL BLAKE Directed by Ken Loach Starring: Hayley Squires. Mickey McGregor. A middle-aged carpenter who requires state welfare after injuring himself, and is joined by a single mother in a similar situation. 26
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BACALAUREAT Directed by Cristian Mungiu Starring: Vlad Ivanov. Maria Victoria Dragus. Joachim Clobanu. A film about the implications of the parent’s role.
LOVING Directed by Jeff Nichols Starring: Michael Shannon. Joel Edgerton. Marton Csokas. Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple are sentenced to prison in 1958 for getting married.
*THE LAST FACE Directed by Sean Penn. Starring: Charlize Theron. Javier Bardem. Jean Reno. A director of an agency in Africa meets a relief aid doctor amidst a political/social revolution, and together face tough choices.
SIERANEVADA Directed by Cristi Puiu Starring: Mimi Breneschi. Andi Vasluianu. Centres around a family gathering on the anniversary of a patriarch’s recent death.
*THE NEON DEMON Directed by Nicholas Winding Refn Starring: Elle Fanning. Keeanu Reeves. Christina Hendricks. Jena Malone. When aspiring model Jesse moves to Los Angeles, her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will take any means necessary to get what they want.
*ELLE Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Starring: Isabelle Huppert. Christian Berkel. Virginie Efira. Michelle seems indestructible. Head of a successful video game company, she brings the same ruthless attitude to her love life as to business. But being attacked in her home by an unknown assailant changes her life forever.
*THE HANDMAIDEN Directed by Chan-wook Park Starring: Jung-woo Ha. Min-hee Kim. Jin-woong Jo. An heiress falls in love with a petty thief. A modernised Korean version of Sarah Walters’s novel “Fingersmith”.
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OUT OF COMPETITION *THE NICE GUYS Directed by Shane Black Starring: Ryan Gosling. Russell Crowe. A private eye investigates the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s, Los Angeles and uncovers a conspiracy.
*MONEY MONSTER Directed by Jodie Foster Starring: Caitriona Balfe. Julia Roberts. George Clooney. Jack O’Connell. Financial TV host Lee Gates and his producer are put in an explosive situation when an irate investor takes over their studio.
*GOKSUNG Directed by Na Hong-Jin Starring: Woo-hee Chun. Jo Han-Chun. A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.
*THE BFG Directed by Steven Spielberg Starring: Rebecca Hall. Mark Rylance. Bill Hader. A girl named Sophie encounters a giant, who despite his intimidating appearance, turns out to be a kind-hearted soul.
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT Major Selection *SWEET DREAMS Directed by Marco Bellocchio Starring: Valerio Mastandrea. Berenice Bejo. A journalist comes to terms with the trauma of his mother’s premature death when he was nine.
*L’ECONOMIE DU COUPLE Directed by Joachim Lafosse Starring: Berenice Bejo. Marthe Keller. Cedric Kahn. A couple, Marie and Thierry, break up after living together for ten years. She bought the apartment they live in with their children but he’s the one who completely renovated it. As Thierry can’t afford to find somewhere else to live, they are forced to remain living together. On the day of reckoning, each tries to hold on to what they think they contributed to their life together.
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THE AQUATIC EFFECT Directed by Solveig Anspach Starring: Florence Lloret. Didder Jondottir. Samir Guesmi. Samir, a lanky forty-year-old crane operator falls in love with Agathe. As she is a swimming coach at the local pool, he decides to take lessons with her, even though he is a perfect swimmer. His intent is to get closer to her only lasts three lessons – she hates liars!
LIKE CRAZY Directed by Paolo Virzi Starring: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Micaela Ramazzotti. Two mental patients – one claims to be a rich countess, while the other keeps her delusions to herself, who escape their institution, their subsequent encounters blurring the lines between sanity and insanity.
MERCENAIRE Directed by Sacha Wolff Starring: Toki Pilioko. Six weeks in the life of a young South Pacific immigrant who joins a French rugby team.
MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE Directed by Claude Barras Stop-Motion. A boy who’s taken away from his abusive alcoholic mother and into a group where he tries to find his place among the other misfit kids.
NERUDA Directed by Pablo Larrain Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal. Alfredo Castro. Capturing the Nobel prize winner over 1946-48, ,on the run and hounded by a dogged police inspector.
DOG EAT DOG Directed by Paul Schrader Starring: Nicolas Cage. Willem Dafoe. Louisa Kreuse. Paul Schrader. Three men who are all out of prison and now have the task of adapting themselves to civilian life.
CANNES CLASSICS WORLD PREMIERE OF BERTRAND TAVERNIER’S DOCUMENTARY ABOUT FRENCH CINEMA. VOYAGE A TRAVERS LE CINEMA FRANCAIS Directed by Bertrand Tavernier www.moviesbymills.com
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NINE DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT CINEMA THE CINEMA TRAVELER By Shirley Abraham & Amit Madheshiya THE FAMILY WHISTLE By Michele Russo CINEMA NOVO By Eryk Rocha MIDNIGHT RETURNS: THE STORY OF BILLY HAYES AND TURKEY By Sally Sussman
*BRIGHT LIGHTS By Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens Starring: Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds GENTLEMAN RISSIENT By Benoit Jacquot, Pascal Merigeau and Guy Selgmann CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH VILMOS ZSIGMOND By Pierre Filmon *WOMEN WHO RUN HOLLYWOOD By Clara and Julia Kuperberg BERNADETTE LAFONT ET DIEU CREA LA FEMME LIBRE By Esther Hoffenberg
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