Cannes' Eight Buzziest Films

by Anne Thompson Info

Anne Thompson launched the daily ThompsononHollywood blog in March 2007, when she joined Variety as a columnist. Previously, she was deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, where she wrote the weekly syndicated column "Risky Business" and the Riskybizblog. She has also served as west coast editor of Premiere and Film Comment, and senior writer at Entertainment Weekly.

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The inside scoop on the films everyone on the Croisette is talking about—from Lars von Trier’s gore-fest to Tarantino’s World War II epic and Almodóvar’s so-so latest.

The Cannes Film Festival is nirvana for movie talent. But what Cannes giveth, Cannes can taketh away. Some invitees gain career cred; others earn public ridicule. On Sunday, the competition jury, led by French star Isabelle Huppert, will announce the winners of the Palme d'Or (Critical favorite Jacques Audiard's A Prophet is considered the likely winner). In the meantime, here are eight movies people are talking about on the Croisette, and the inside scoop from the Riviera.

Antichrist

Danish bad-boy/depressive Lars von Trier delivered both shock and awe with Antichrist, an intense marital drama starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple grieving over their dead child. The film quickly veers from a simple dark tale to a shocking gore-fest, rife with religious obsession and graphic sex—including genital mutilations and a bloody hand job that will earn the picture an NC-17 in the U.S….if anyone dares to release it. The press corps applauded and booed lustily after the first showing last Sunday night, and at the press conference goaded the director into declaring himself “the best director in the world.”

The Buzz: Von Trier may have finally gone too far. But he did grab the spotlight for the first time since 2003’s Dogville, and a U.S. distributor will likely buy the new film if he agrees to make some trims.

Bright Star

New Zealander Jane Campion returned to the festival 16 years after Palme d’Or-winner The Piano with Bright Star, an unabashed period piece about the unconsummated two-year romance between 23-year-old tubercular poet John Keats (up-and-coming Brit Ben Whishaw) and his 18-year-old neighbor, Fanny Brawne (Aussie breakout Abbie Cornish). Pathe International sold the film in advance of the fest to ex-Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and his financier-partner, Bill Pohlad, knowing that the duo have much to prove with their as-yet-unnamed specialty distributor. Targeting teen girls, they plan to launch Bright Star via the Toronto International Film Festival September 18.

The Buzz: If Bright Star and its two young stars catch on with audiences, it could last through Oscar season. But is it sexy enough? Adding more would be “absurd and inaccurate,” scoffs Campion, who was attracted to the purity of young love. “You have contraception now.”