BackCannes Film Festival | Regard for the classics
Asides and observations from the prestigious movie event
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I was very fortunate to have attended a Master Class by veteran actor Sophia Loren at the Cannes Film Festival, where she reflected on her glorious and turbulent life. Loren is the guest of honour this year, and it is wonderful to see Human Voice, a 25-minute film featuring her and directed by her son, Edoardo Conti. The film is inspired by Jean Cocteau’s play about a woman from Naples who has one last telephone conversation with her lover, who is leaving her for another woman.
Indian director Kanu Behl’s Titli had a mixed reaction here after its screening in the Un Certain Regard section, which many in Cannes wickedly call the Uncertain Regard. I hope the film will get a proper release in India after all the media attention it has received there. Several Indian movies screened at Cannes and other prestigious festivals have not been fortunate enough to find similar attention back home, such as Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely (the French media anointed the director as the Wong Kar-wai of India after his film showed at Cannes two years ago) and Murali Nair’s three films, including Marana Simhasanam, which won the best debut award at Cannes in 1999. Vasan Bala’s Peddlers and Anurag Kashyap’s Ugly have not been released in India after doing the festival rounds. The exception is Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox, which has proved to be a break-out hit across the world.
It appears as though the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne will score a hat-trick for the Palme d’Or with their superb new film, Two Days, One Night. The gorgeous Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, who has just one weekend to convince her colleagues to help her save her job. Cotillard faces tough competition for the Best Actor award from Anne Dorval and Antoine Olivier Pilon in Xavier Dolan’s s Mommy, about the tense relationship between a single mom and her attention-deficit son. Dorval received a standing ovation for her performance, as did Cotillard.
Sunil Doshi is a producer, talent agent and founder-director of Lumiere Movies and The Adaptation Company. He lives in Mumbai and France.
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