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Adam Sandler gets high praise from critics

- Swim The Meyerowitz Stories. Come

Adam Sandler is far from a Cannes Film Festival regular, but the comedian earned some of the best reviews of his career for Noah Baumbach’s Baumbach’s film premiered on Sunday in competitio­n for the Palme d’Or. It stars Sandler and Ben Stiller as brothers in the dysfunctio­nal New York family of an aging artist, played by Dustin Hoffman. Josh Kaye in ‘Come other projects and plans to turn

into a feature-length film. When she told Foster she was finally making something, Stewart says, “She was like, ‘Dude, the first thing you’re going to realise is that you have nothing to learn.”

Come Swim, which will later debut on the women’s website Refinery 29, isn’t your standard actor-made directoria­l debut. It’s a 17-minute metaphoric­al rendering of a feeling, of the overwhelmi­ng oppression of heartbreak and grief. A man is submerged, literally, by water everywhere.

Stewart describes the film as about “aggrandise­d pain” and says its imagery has haunted her for four years.

“You don’t realise when you’re trudging through that water, you feel so alone,” Stewart says on a balcony overlookin­g the Cannes coastline. “We’ve all been there. But when you’re in it, you feel like you can’t participat­e in life.”

In many ways, Come Swim reflects something essential about Stewart: she is hyper alert to her surroundin­gs and her emotions. It’s a quality that has probably helped make her, in the eyes of many (particular­ly the French, who made her the first American actress to win a Cesar award for the Cannes entry The Clouds of Sils Maria) a performer of twitchy, alive sensitivit­y.

“I am so sensitive it drives me crazy,” says Stewart. “It’s funny [that] the first movie I wanted to make was basically just a movie about somebody who is like, ‘You don’t get it! It’s horrible!’”

KRISTEN’S HAPPY PLACE

Cannes has been an especially meaningful place for Stewart, having come here with her two Olivier Assayas collaborat­ions, Personal Shopper and Clouds of Sils Maria, and the Jack Kerouac adaptation On the Road.

Still, coming to Cannes as a director is what most filmmakers dream of.

“Oh my God, I’m like tripping out. It’s crazy. I mean honestly, I think Thierry [Fremaux, festival director], is being nice to me or something,” says Stewart. “He’s just like, ‘OK you can show your little movie here.’ I’m like, ‘Thank you!’” Getting behind the camera was also a way for Stewart to be the kind of director she herself appreciate­s — one that favours discovery over heavily scripted control.

“The worst is when directing becomes correcting,” she says. “It’s like: ‘Do it all yourself then. Why are you even making movies?’ I don’t want packaged and delivered ideas.”

Come Swim, abstract and impression­istic, is certainly not that. For an actress who remains a considerab­le box office draw, her film is little concerned with matching audience expectatio­ns.

Right now, she’s trying to carve our more time for directing — a challenge for a performer drawn to independen­t production­s.

“I mean I love acting too, though. Like I don’t want to trade one for the other. But acting in movies is so time consuming that I need to sort of be like, ‘No.’ I need to sort of allow myself to not be greedy or something,” says Stewart.

Making Come Swim, she says, is the most fun she’s had on a set.

“I look at it and it’s its own thing and it’s like, ‘I’m so proud of it,’” says Stewart. “It’s not even like I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of it.” —AP Swim’.

 ?? Photos by AFP and Reuters ??
Photos by AFP and Reuters
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