Nisimazine Cannes #3

Nisimazine the magazine by NISI MASA - European Network of Young Cinema

CANNES

Thursday 22nd May 2014

Lost River Les Combattants A Hard Day The Captive

from Lost River by Ryan Gosling

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CREDITS

Editorial

NISIMAZINE CANNES 14 -25 May 2014 th

Edition #3

by Fernando Vasquez (Portugal)

A magazine published by NISI MASA in the framework of a film journalism workshop for young Europeans

last, but never least, of course the main competition has in many ways headed the trend with veteran actor Tommy Lee Jones stealing much of the spotlight with The Homesman.

In a place like Cannes this sort of phenomena are unavoidable. Regardless of the quality and merit of each attempt, if you are an actor chances are you´ll find your name on the selection sheet. It does not always mean it´s a good idea. We just need to go back to 2003 and remember the premiere of Vicent Galo´s Brown Bunny and how it redefined the meaning of the word “Failure”.

But to be fair, this frenzy does bring a particular buzz to these proceedings and judging by many rumours and comments flying around, and by what you are about to read on these pages, Gosling’s baffling first feature is courageous enough to justify the hype and the long queues, making this disease a less scary threat.

We end this editorial on a heartbreaking note, as news just came in that Belgium writer Olivier Croughs, a Nisimazine Cannes participant in 2010, has just passed away. We would like to dedicate this third issue to his memory.

EDITORIAL STAFF Director Fernando Vasquez Coordinator Mirona Nicola Tutor Lee Marshall Layout Francesca Merlo Contributors to this issue Alexandra CôrteReal, Robyn Davies, Alexandra Fechete, Simran Hans, Bernardo Lopes, Fernando Vasquez, Martin I. Petrov NISI MASA European Network of Young Cinema 99 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 75010, Paris, France +33 (0)1 48 01 65 31 europe@nisimasa.com www.nisimasa.com www.nisimazine.eu Special thanks to Christine Aimé, Jean- Charles Canu, Dany de Seille

With the support of the Youth in Action of the European Union. This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

© Alexandra Côrte-Real (Portugal)

Picture of the day

There is an illness in the air and none of you strolling around in Cannes right now is safe. There is not much you can do about it to be honest.

Actors in particular beware, you are easy targets! At any minute now you might feel the sudden urge to pick up a camera and begin shooting a film. If you feel any of the symptoms do not worry, everything will be alright, and one of the festivals here in Cannes will most likely select whatever you come up with.

Judging by the frenzy felt in and around the Palais du Festival with the premiere of Ryan Gosling´s debut behind the camera, Lost River, this is unquestionably the year of the actor- turned-filmmaker, and the disease is spreading like wildfire, much to the delight of fans and critics alike.

Only a couple of days before, a little bit further down the Croisette, the Semaine de la Critique was going through its own similar blissful experience, even if at a different scale, with Melanie Laurent´s first attempt at directing, Respire. The Un Certain Regard section is certainly no safe heaven either, with Mathieu Amalric´s The Blue Room being on display right at the beginning of the festival and Asia Argento´s Misunderstood pretty much closing it. And

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Lost River

review

Ryan Gosling, UK/Un Certain Regard

When it was announced that Ryan Gosling would be showing his face in Cannes this year, not as an actor but as a director, the questions on everyone’s lips were A) What does he have to say as a filmmaker? and B) Will he be any good? As the credits rolled following the afternoon premiere of Lost River, it’s safe to say that we’re still none the wiser.

Dripping with surrealism, it’s often difficult to decipher what’s real and what isn’t in this strange and somewhat sad fictional town to which we’re introduced. A community that has long since been abandoned by all but a few, its houses are rapidly being demolished. Single mother Billy (Christina Hendricks) is desperate to hang on to her own home that she grew up in with children Bones (Ian De Caestrecker) and little Franky (who gives the most adorable performance you’ll see all year) To keep up with her loan repayments, she takes on a job at a fetish club while Bones seeks out scrap metal to sell and becomes increasingly obsessed with a sunken city at the bottom of the reservoir.

There’s a constant sense of threat throughout the film that has quite a mesmerising effect, and one of the main contributors to this is the character of Bully (Matt Smith). He patrols the town shouting distorted and bizarre statements (“look at my muscles, look at my muscles!”) through a microphone - at once bewildering and terrifying. Violent and unhinged, he keeps the characters and the audience on edge. Sadly, the threatening atmosphere is one of the only things that is constant. The narrative is incredibly jumpy and incoherent with scenes thrown together seemingly at random, and at times it’s abstract to the point of being inaccessible, which will lose the attention of some. We can never be sure of Gosling’s intentions or what the film is trying to comment on, despite some subtle inferences at the state of the economy, and it suffers from this lack of a solid focal point.

As to whether he’s any good as a director, there’s no denying that he knows how to make a film look beautiful. His use of colour is masterful, contrasting bright neons against the gloom and despair, and the repetitive symbol of fire is totally hypnotic. He utilises an interesting filming style that has an almost voyeuristic feel to it, often situating a shaky camera behind the characters to make us feel in uncomfortably close proximity to the action (and therefore the threats). The sound design is also hugely impressive, expertly contributing to the atmosphere with jarring juxtapositions and music that lingers long after the end.

It’s probably fairly reasonable to propose that had this film been made by somebody less high profile, it wouldn’t have caused quite as much of a stir. Gosling’s celebrity status, along with his recent association with Winding Refn, created a certain buzz that almost predetermined people’s expectations – good or bad. And it’s this that has perhaps hindered the new director’s success, because it’s not a film that comes across as concerned with satisfying anyone. It’s self-indulgent and self-aware, a vision inside Gosling’s mind which lacks that concrete backbone to allow audiences to grasp onto it as well. But confusing as it may be, it’s an intoxicating trip that everyone should take at least once.

by Robyn Davies (UK)

3 in memory of Olivier

#3

review

Les Combattants

Thomas Cailley, France/ Director’s Fortnight

Life is a warzone and love is the trigger: it’s with this premise in mind that Arnaud (Kevin Azais) and Madeleine (Adèle Haenel) establish a self-exploratory relationship thoroughly focused on the desire of divaricating off society and the humanly natural trouble of emerging as an adult. Nevertheless, its wry humor combined with its smooth language make Les Combattants an extremely easy going and likeable romantic comedy.

Set in a southwestern village in France, Thomas Calley’s first feature film begins with Arnaud participating in a self-defense exercise and being thrown down to the ground unexpectedly by local tomboy Madeleine. She is a rough, wild-hearted adventurer who ambitions to become a survivor – in its most literal sense. Coincidentally, Arnaud starts working as a carpenter at her house, and becomes infatuated by this incipient woman who sways him into apply for an intense regiment special training course.

Their true grit is developed only in the last third of this hourand-a-half film. Since their arrival at the camp, we get the fee-

ling that they switch roles as they fight for their autonomy and positive freedom. This happens mostly due to the fact that their discoveries reveal contrasting reactions, Madeleine becoming more vulnerable and Arnaud more confident and strengthened.

Adéle Haenel, a Caesar winning actress with her supporting role in Suzanne (dir. Katell Quillévéré, 2013) had a tough job ahead of her. Stereotypically molded to portray a cold-hearted teenager, Madeleine is strongly interpreted by this young starlet who gives us a partially over-dramatized but convincing performance. Surprisingly, the novice actor Kevin Azaïs absolutely proves his talent with a budding performance that deserves to be mentioned. In complementarity, their authentic affinity is the most appreciable factor in Les Combattants.

Although the film succeeds in its objective, it doesn’t actually deserve rhapsody when we analyze it from an artistic standpoint. Despite the scene where Arnaud and Madeleine are affectionately kissing each other in the woods, Cailley demonstrates a will to let go with his instincts. He was not particularly preoccupied by the film’s form, using the camera as an intermediate between the audience and the story, withholding us his sensibility and vision.

Its dullness, for better or worse, can be considered as the key element that sets the film aside. The flatly written screenplay makes us judge its feature-film length, when it could unquestionably work as a short. In addition, Les Combattants’s subject matter is exceedingly focused on the couple’s chemistry, when it could be better served if it had been purely concentrated on their personalities and instinctive reactions towards the situations they are confronted with.

This romantic comedy fails to urge as a work of art – not advisable for art house audiences. However, it’s unarguably a Hollywood-style promising feature, and having the crowd’s lauding reaction after the premiere as a valid argument, Les Combattants has all the reasons to become a commercial success and to make you fall for its charm, as its English title suggests - Love At First Fight.

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by Bernardo Lopes (Portugal)

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reviews

A Hard Day

Kim Seong-hoon, South Korea/Directors’ Fortnight The action genre is starting to become a tough nut to crack, mainly because the nut has been successfully cracked so many times in the past, that it’s hard to bring something new to the table without feeling like a case of “been there, done that”. However, leave it to the South Koreans to take matters into their own hands, since Kim Seong-hoon’s second directorial effort in 9 years proves that there is still fresh blood to be pumped into the veins of the genre.

While story wise “A Hard Day” isn’t particularly groundbreaking, it’s the storytelling rather than the story itself which turns the movie into a quite glorious achievement. The protagonist, homicide detective Ko Gun-su (Lee Sun-kyun), is driving to his mother’s funeral and, as we will learn throughout the course of the film, oddly enough, that’s the least of his problems. On his way, he receives alarming phone calls from his colleague, warning him that they are about to get busted for bribery. And to make matters worse, he runs down a man. Left with a dead body and the police patrolling on the streets, his survival instincts kick in as he

The Captive

Atom Egoyan, Canada/Competition

hides the corpse in the trunk.

Gun-su is not your typical righteous cop and the movie doesn’t make any attempts to portray him differently – yet, there is an endearing quality about him. He doesn’t beg for sympathy, being quite cynical, impulsive and corrupt to an extent. Despite being in a position of power, Gun-su’s story feels like the one you would normally attribute to the hapless underdog for whom when nothing goes right, he turns left and there is a police car waiting. It’s a hard day indeed, as he goes to great lengths to cover his tracks and even uses his mother’s coffin as the perfect hideout for the body. As he is ready to take a breath of relief, the dead man’s phone starts ringing, turning the coffin into a morbid music box – a running gag throughout the movie. The chain of unfortunate events gets one more link when Gun-su is being blackmailed by Park Chang-min (Cho Jin-woong), who witnessed the accident. Let the cat and mouse game begin!

The strength of “A Hard Day” lies in its tight script, written by the same Kim Seong-hoon. It steps on the accelerating pedal right from the start and it never uses the brakes or crashes, like Gun-su. The on-the-edgeof-your-seat moments sprinkled with carefully orchestrated action sequences are balanced with the delicious situation comedy. It has you biting your nails, but just when you were ready to break them, wellplaced gags manage to cut the tension before getting past its boiling point. The actors make it work through their deadpan deliveries, because while they are in a fun movie, it’s not supposed to be fun for them.

Even though the suspension of disbelief is occasionally stretched, you are having such a blast by that time, that you are just going along with the otherwise masterfully crafted plot. It also manages to play with our expectations in a cheeky way, avoiding the sentimentality route in favor of a more cynical, but genuine approach. It’s for the win.

“A Hard Day” could very well be THE madly entertaining feature of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, being the clear example of why I love watching films in first place.

by Alexandra Fechete (Romania)

obsessive private investigator Nicole (Rosario Dawson) and her impulsive colleague Jeffrey (Scott Speedman) and concluding with Kevin Durand as a paedophile kidnapper, in probably the most noticeable performance of the film.

Touching on various issues the film could be an interesting observation on a phenomenon that remains common in great parts of Canada and the US. What is achieved though is a totally flat narration that persists on obvious details instead of digging deeper into the characters’ psychosis. This makes these characters look demotivated and bizarrely out of time and space. The image is probably the only captivating part of the film, with breathtaking landscapes and perfectly shaped spherical angles that create the feeling of hostility and engaging at the same time.

The master of psychological thrillers, Atom Egoyan returns to the Croisette with a rather stiff and mostly predictable story based on true events from his native Canada.

The Captive takes us to Niagara Falls where we observe the undisturbed and rather boring life of the local community. The idyllic atmosphere is smashed in a moment when the nine year old Cassandra disappears without any trace from the back seat of her father’s (Ryan Reynolds) car.

Egoyan follows his well-established technique of going back and forth in time and delivering his story through numerous flashbacks that sometimes is unclear if are there to deliberately confuse the storyline, or shed light on it. For the next two hours we swing in time adding details to the puzzle of events that lead to the untangling of the mystery behind the young girls’ disappearance.

Covering eight years of exhaustive search, Egoyan introduces one by one his characters, starting from the passionate and

Remembering one of Egoyan’s greatest moments The Sweet Hereafter, The Captive is a carbon copy of the 1997 thriller. Starting from the snowy landscape and the eternal winter - although in The Captive the story covers eight consequent years - and coming to more important parts as the plot itself, the two films are the same card played twice- something that obviously doesn’t look good outside of the Hollywood blockbuster genre.

All in all, Egoyan creates the atmosphere of a well executed thriller, especially in the second hour where the tension is kept on higher levels. However, both acting and directing seem overpolished, throwing the film totally on the other side of the river, that of non-festival films. The characters remain isolated and unapproachable and no matter how much one tries to connect to the story, there is always a sudden push-back. With a digestible scenario that almost no one could hate, The Captive does not contribute to Egoyan’s career as a distinguished filmmaker but it certainly is an alternative to an overall heavier Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

by Martin I. Petrov (UK)

5

in memory of Olivier

Thomas Calley

interview

Director of Les Combattants, France/Directors’ Fortnight

As a romantic comedy with an action twist plus a couple of charismatic lead actors to boot, Les Combattants has all it needs to be a darling to audiences far wider than film festivals. We met up with first time feature director Thomas Cailley to discuss his learning process on this project and his expectations for his future career.

How was the experience of transitioning from shorts to feature?

Before Les Combattants I made a 25 minutes short film, called Paris Shanghai, with a tone that is very similar to this one. The transition from short to long came quite naturally. The biggest difference is the endurance it requires. For a feature you have to work for a longer time, so it is a matter of maintaining the energy and the desire to follow through with the project through the writing process, the financing, the shooting, the editing...

On that short film, just like on this first feature, the director of photography was your brother. How is the experience of working with a family member?

It’s actually a great thing. We have the same cultural background, we grew up together watching the same films and series on television. We can understand each other without having to talk. And that is something that on a set is very useful. Every time that he proposes a specific frame, or a specific light, it is exactly what I want. And in addition I can exploit him as much as I want, because he’s my brother so he won’t say no to anything.

How was the experience of working on your first feature with an actor that is in the same situation?

Les Combattants was a learning experience for many of us in the team: for me, for Kevin, for my brother, for the editor, for the make up artist, for the sound editor, for three quarters of the team this was the first feature.

For Adéle Haenel, the main actrice, this was not the case though.

She already has some experience as an actress. How did this help the film?

It definitely added a lot of value, because this created precisely the relation between the characters at the beginning of the story: she has experience, beliefs, and this she is sure about. He, on the other hand, is more ‘permeable’ for the experience. So having a more experienced actress play the role of Madeleine and an unexperienced one to play Arnaud fitted very well with this.

Especially because we decided to shoot the script in continous order and that also had an impact in the way the two actors interacted. So as we went, we saw the character grow just as much as Kevin did, both as an actor, as well as on a personal level.

At the first screening in the festival the audience really liked the film. How do you appreciate the commercial appeal of Les Combattants?

I don’t have any specific expectations. I just hope that we will get a chance to meet our audience, because it is important for us not only to have them see the film, but also to discuss with them. So I’m hoping we will travel with this film in order to have the opportunity to do that.

But do you envision any specific target, in terms of age, for example?

I think it is still a bit too early to define to whom exactly the film 6 in memory of Olivier

speaks. We have had positive feedback from people recently out of their teens, but also from adults in their fifties and sixties. They have not all seen the same things in it- some like its romance side, other appreciate its action component, or the humour. This a reaction that has to do with the fact that we play with different genres, going from a romantic comedy to an adventure movie, from a love story to anticipation. So this can appeal- or not- to a lot of different people.

The film deals with the themes of love and life, as well as their relationship with war. How was your preparation process in terms of balancing these three themes within the film?

For me, Les Combattants is a love film just as much as it is one about survival. The two things go together because survival is not just subordinate to life, but it can also be above it.

by Bernardo Lopes (Portugal) & Mirona Nicola (Romania)

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The Female Push

With just 5 films in 5 years directed by women in the main competition (out of a total of 81 competition films), it’s not surprising that the lack of female representation at Cannes is a talking point that gets revisited every year. It seems unfair to single out Cannes as the sole perpetrator of gender inequality in the film world, when problems of representation pervade the industry as a whole. However, the burden of championing good practice is one that the world’s most influential film festival must bear, and after La Monde’s damning open letter in 2012 (“At Cannes, women show their breasts, men show their films”), gender inclusivity is a responsibility that it cannot afford to neglect.

This year Cannes is making an active attempt to be more inclusive, with festival director Thierry Fremaux using the press launch as an opportunity to point out that 15 of the 49 films in the programme were directed by women.

This, coupled with the presence of Palme d’Or alumni Jane Campion, who presides over a majority female jury (including Sofia Coppola, Leila Hatami, Joen Do-Yeon and Carole Bouquet), seems like a promising response to the accusations of misogyny levied at the festival.

However, much has been made of the fact that just 2 female directors – Naomi Kawase (Still the Water) and Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders) – feature in the main competition. Does Fremaux’s statement mark a genuine effort, or is it simply a gesture of face? Could it be that this ‘female push’ is nothing more than a tokenistic attempt to placate the festival’s critics?

In an interview with Indiewire, Campion revealed that women directed just 7% of the 1,800 films submitted to Cannes this year. But what does this statistic actually mean? The figure that she cites might not be so shocking if it is proportional to the amount of films being made by women. There’s very little data on this subject globally, though an infographic created by the New York Film Academy, roughly 9% of directors in the US are women. However, while the US has a strong presence in Cannes (8 films across the programme), this is certainly not unanimously representative across the globe. Indeed, one only has to look across the pond to the UK to witness the new wave of British female auteurs like Joanna Hogg, Clio Barnard, Andrea Arnold and Amma Asante that is taking the independent film world by storm. France itself isn’t doing too badly either, with Celine Sciamma and Katell Quilévéré following in the steps of Claire Denis and fast becoming household names.

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Research shows that women support women. According to a study done by the Sundance Institute, films directed by women feature more women in all roles – be that on screen or behind the scenes in production and postproduction.

The report’s findings show a 21% increase in women working on a narrative film when there is a female director, and a 24% of women working on documentaries.

We need more female directors; I don’t doubt that, but – and there is a but – I think looking at the festival in this way is doing the women of Cannes a disservice. Perhaps a more productive, and certainly, a more encouraging way of measuring Cannes’ attitude towards women is by looking at the female stories present in this year’s programme.

One of the most compelling, fully-realised female characters I’ve seen this year is Winter Sleep’s Nihal (Melisa Sözen). Though Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s story is an intimate portrait of a man who has spent his entire life marinating in male privilege, his young wife Nihal is just as well drawn.

With a bright intelligence that burns behind her eyes, Sözen brings a radiance to her role as a passionate woman who has sacrificed her own dreams to enable her husband’s.

From Jonas Alexander Arnby’s smart riff on the monstrous feminine When Animals Dream, which screened in the Critics’ Week sidebar, to Ned Benson’s Un Certain Regard entry The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, which was inspired by and written for its lead actress Jessica Chastain, there are plenty of stories that treat its women with respect and reverence. Other honourable mentions include Celine Sciamma’s loveable Afro-Franco girl gang in Girlhood, the ageing eponymous Party Girl and a pair of brilliantly ballsy performances from Julianne Moore and Mia Wasikowska in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars.

Last, but certainly not least, the talk of the festival doesn’t seem to be about who will win the coveted Palme d’Or but whether or not Marion Cotillard will win the Prix d’interprétation feminine for her role as the plucky Sandra in the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night.

Women are at the heart of many of this year’s films, a pattern that feels more revolutionary than any sort of quota.

The sheer range of women -- complex, nuanced, flawed women -- being championed here is something worth celebrating.

by Simran Hans (UK)

7 in memory of Olivier