MIXED MEDIA MOVING IMAGES
Stellet Licht was the most painterly film in competition,
but it was closely rivalled by the third feature by veteran
plate-smasher Julian Schnabel, now truly settled into his
alternative career as a filmmaker. The Diving Bell and the
THIS YEAR, TO CELEBRATE ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY, the Butterfly is based on the experience of paralysed writer Jean-
Cannes Film Festival invited 35 international A-list directors Dominique Bauby, who dictated his bestselling memoir with
to make three-minute films about their vision of cinema. Ken one eyelid. The result could easily have been a mawkish TV-
Loach contributed a vignette about a father and son queuing movie number, but Schnabel’s film brilliantly addresses the
for tickets in a London cinema; they dither over what to see, question of what kind of film language Bauby’s experience
then opt for football instead. In previous years, Loach would calls for: this entirely subjective film is focused either through
have had a point: football, or shopping, or a morning lie-in its protagonist’s one functioning eye (the world depicted
would have been infinitely safer bets than some of the follies at a blurred tilt) or through his hyperactive imagination.
that critics in Cannes have had to endure. This year, however, Schnabel adeptly skirts the reefs of virtuoso novelty: the film
Loach’s cynicism looked churlish: the festival selectors had is intelligent and immensely affecting, and actor Mathieu
pulled out all the stops, and world cinema once again looked Amalric, practically omnipresent in French cinema, is hugely
like a good reason for making the pilgrimage to the South impressive as a sort of virtual lead, seen sporadically but
of France. heard throughout voicing Bauby’s acidic commentary.
Few big names embarrassed themselves, and even But overall, it was a year of sombre, low-key pleasures.
Wong Kar-Wai’s wafer-thin fancy My Blueberry Nights, Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, about a teenage skateboarder
starring soporific crooneuse Norah Jones, was more or less in trouble, was a film so deeply interior that its dazzlingly
forgiven: no one expects too much of an opening film. And elastic sound mix made you feel as if the whole experience
if few films jumped out of the lineup with the words ‘timeless was being projected in someone’s head, quite possibly your
masterpiece’ emblazoned in searing neon, there was less own. There was also a major revival of Eastern European
overbearing nonsense and more keenly tuned vision on show gloom: apart from Mungiu’s winning film, Austria’s Ulrich
than there has been in years. The competition jury, under Seidl took us on a grim travelogue through the backwaters
Stephen Frears, for once agreed with the critics when they of Ukraine and Slovenia in his scabrous drama Import/Export;
gave the Palme d’Or to Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks Béla Tarr, Hungarian master of the extended take, ventured
and 2 Days, about the difficulty of obtaining an abortion in to forbidding new extremes with The Man from London, a
Ceauşescu-era Romania. Ostensibly a traditional realist Georges Simenon adaptation that may literally be the noir-est
drama, Mungiu’s film nevertheless displayed a steely patience film noir ever made; and Russian auteurs Aleksandr Sokurov
and an ability to entrap the viewer in claustrophobically (Alexandra) and Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Banishment)
agonising situations: it’s of a piece with the last great Romanian mused darkly on war and sacrifice respectively.
discovery, The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005), and But for sheer mischief, nothing in the competition
with the works of the Dardenne brothers. rivalled Catherine Breillat’s aggressively unorthodox costume
While Mungiu was this year’s great new discovery, drama Une Vieille Maîtresse. Based on the nineteenth-
my own competition favourite was Carlos Reygadas’s Stellet century novel by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, this was a brittle
Licht (Silent Light). The Mexican director horrified/thrilled provocation by a director who specialises in challenging,
the festival in 2005 with Battle in Heaven, a brazenly unholy highly formalised sexual psychodrama. European cinema’s
conjunction of murder, metaphysics and ugly sex, but his new favourite scandalista Asia Argento plays a Spanish courtesan
film ditched scandal in favour of the contemplative sublime. who won’t let go of the feminised fop with whom she’s long
The film is set in an area of northern Mexico inhabited by a enjoyed a torrid amour fou. Breillat’s feminist and extremely
sect of Mennonites, and its main language is Plautdeutsch, an graphic take on Romantic sexuality plays up the story’s
archaic form of German. Stellet Licht is about a Mennonite elements of misogyny, xenophobia and anxiety about age
man torn between wife and mistress but who, convinced (Argento’s character Vellini is considered old and hideous
that adultery is part of his God-given destiny, makes the at thirty-six), and Argento’s punkish insolence, often run-of-
most of the situation until tragedy strikes. The cast are the-mill in modern contexts, flourishes magnificently in staid , 2007, dir Catherine Breillat. Courtesy Studio Canal, Paris
largely Mennonites, and Reygadas observes the pensive salon surroundings. Her Vellini’s icily flamboyant “Adios” to
rhythms of the community’s lives with little commentary a senile husband was the single most relishable gesture of
before unleashing a melodrama all the more elemental for the fest: even Argento’s tongue-kissing a Rottweiler in Abel
its restrained handling. He and cinematographer Alexis Ferrara’s would-be raunchy Go Go Tales seemed pallid by
Zabe provided the festival’s single most striking image: the comparison.
film’s opening time-lapse evocation of a Mexican dawn, from Une Vieille Maîtresse
starry night to blazing red sky, sets a keynote of awe rather
than Reygadas’s usual shock.
one.linzero.linnine.lin ARTREVIEW
p108-109 Mixed Media AR Jul07.in109 109 6/6/07 02:58:00
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