BackCannes 2015: Splendour in the dark
The Little Prince, a non-fiction film on the late singer Amy Winehouse and more at Cannes Film Festival
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Last week, we picked films from the In Competition section we were most excited about at Cannes 2015. This time, we’re cherry-picking from the other sections.
Un Certain Regard
Nahid
Iranian director Ida Panahandeh has been making shorts, documentaries and feature films for a decade now. Her film Nahid, which stars Sareh Bayat and Pejman Bazeghi, is a love story.
Cemetery Of Splendour
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is one of the most critically admired film-makers in cinema today. His Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won the Palme d’Or in 2010, Tropical Malady won a jury prize in 2004, and Blissfully Yours won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section in 2002. He returns with this film about a housewife who, while tending to a soldier with sleeping sickness, starts experiencing strange hallucinations.
Out of competition
The Little Prince
Considering the lasting popularity of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic 1943 children’s novella, it’s surprising no one has made an animated version yet. Mark Osborne’s film is only partly based on the book—it has an additional storyline done in computer animation, while the Prince’s story unfolds in stop-motion. The trailer isn’t free of sentimentality, but the visuals are breathtaking.
Cannes classics
Battles Without Honor And Humanity
One of the “Restored Classics" at this year’s festival is Kinji Fukasaku’s 1973 Japanese gangster film, Battles Without Honor And Humanity. Fukasaku’s trademark shaky camera and gritty look made this a key film in the yakuza genre. It went on to inspire film-makers from William Friedkin to Quentin Tarantino.
Hitchcock-Truffaut
Kent Jones’ film about French director François Truffaut’s 1966 book-length interview with Alfred Hitchcock is in the “Documentaries on Cinema" section. In the film, directors like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Wes Anderson discuss the impact and influence of this seminal book.
Special screenings
A Tale Of Love And Darkness
Like many others, we’re keen on almost everything that Natalie Portman does. A Tale Of Love And Darkness is an intriguing move by the Black Swan star. She’s stepping behind the camera for the first time, adapting writer Amos Oz’s memoir (he has also worked on the screenplay) about growing up in newly formed Israel.
Amnesia
From Barbet Schroeder, director of Maîtresse (1975) and Barfly (1987), comes this drama about a 25-year-old DJ who falls in love with an older woman. As their relationship progresses, she’s forced to acknowledge the painful memories from her past that she’s kept buried. The film stars Marthe Keller, Max Riemelt and veteran German actor Bruno Ganz.
Midnight screenings
Amy
If Asif Kapadia’s last documentary, Senna (2010), was anything to go by, his new non-fiction film on the late singer Amy Winehouse should be nerve-wracking and revelatory. Amy has already generated a fair amount of interest as a result of its nervy trailer and because of complaints from the singer’s family that the film isn’t an accurate representation of Winehouse’s life.
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