Festival de Cannes 2008 by Mandy_Rodgers

    So isn't the French Riviera supposed to be pretty, warm and lovely weather? Unlike last year's cloudless week and a half in Cannes, this year has been covered with clouds and overcast skies - I've just been waiting for the rain to come...and third day of the Festival...it did.
    I got up in time to go to an 8:30 a.m. premiere. I got the ticket through another girl in the group of students I'm staying with, and she was supposed to go with me, but after I knocked on her door three times and called the room twice, I decided she wasn't going to make it and went ahead...feeling kind of guilty since she got the ticket for me but not too guilty because when she heard that A) the movie was at 8:30 a.m., B) it was 2hr 30min and C) it was in French with subtitles, she didn't seem too excited to join anyway...but I digress.
   
    This morning's premiere (in competition) was of the new French film, Un Conte de Noel or A Christmas Tale. Starring French film royalty, Catherine Deneuve and one of the Festival's most talked about actors of last year, Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Un Conte de Noel is a complex family drama set around Christmas time.
    In some ways I had to agree with the girl who slept late: the early morning premiere, serious tone and long running length, was a little hard to handle, but all in all the film's enjoyable. The performances (not just Deneuve and Amalric), drive the film above what it might normally be with such a story. Definitely a talky movie but also well acted and enjoyable.


    Then it was off to battle the rain and get to a re-screening of Kung Fu Panda. Nice to have a fun, animated film in the middle of all of the super sad, depressing and dramatic ones, definitely. By now, it's full blown raining, and I'm dressed/prepared for a pretty day in Cannes...no umbrella and no warm clothes. Out of no where, tons of people are on the street selling cheap umbrellas for ten euro a pop...I of course buy one, being desperate. Then, I'm off to find a sweatshirt or something warm to wear, especially since the theaters are blasting the air conditioning extra on this day. Every store I run into though, does not sell anything with sleeves and scoffs at the idea. "It's summer time - no long sleeves," they say, while looking outside at the winter-clothed Festival-goers....so I buy a big beach towel with "Cannes" written all over it and trek to the next theater.
   
    Lion's Den (Leonera) premiered (in competition) at Cannes the previous night, and I caught the cast's reaction to the film and coming back out to the onlookers. The main actress, Martina Gusman, was crying at the positive reaction from the theater, and I was intrigued to see it. Another in a string of prison films (Blindness, Hunger), Lion's Den (from Argentina) follows Julia (Gusman), as she wakes up with a dead man in her apartment and no recollection of the previous events. She's thrown into jail, but because she's also pregnant, she's kept in a separate "family" sect of the ward and raises her son there. Very captivating film, with Gusman exceeding expectations.