CANNES’ BIG NEW STAR? A MUTT CALLED MARVIN
THE movie I have enjoyed most at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hell
Or High Water, isn’t even in the running for the main gong, the Palme d’or.
It is in the less illustrious Un Certain Regard competition, but is a first-rate modern-day western, by British director David Mackenzie, about two Texan brothers on a bank-robbing spree.
They are wonderfully played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster, in what in some ways is a grittier, more violent version of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (the script is by Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote last year’s thrilling Sicario).
But the performance that really makes you want to hug yourself with delight is that of Jeff Bridges, as one of the cops on their trail, counting the days to his impending retirement and eager to crack one last case. It’s a marvellous film.
Another picture worth seeing when it comes out in September is Captain
Fantastic, written and directed by Matt Ross. It stars Viggo Mortensen as a shaggy-bearded idealist raising his six kids deep in a forest way up in America’s Pacific north-west.
There, he teaches them hunting and foraging skills, while also making sure they are well-versed in great works of literature. he seems like a paragon of fatherhood, too good to be true, which in a way he is.
When tragic news arrives, he and the children set off on a road trip to a funeral, exposing them to a society that befuddles them, and challenging his ideas about parenting. It’s a little
unsubtle at times, but highly entertaining and thought-provoking.
Other pictures that have caught my eye at Cannes include the Jeff Nichols film Loving, a moving account of the interracial marriage in Fifties Virginia that brought about a change in America’s appalling miscegenation laws.
Loving could well be a 2017 Academy Awards contender, and not just as a consciencestricken reaction to the fuss about the spurning of black talent at this year’s Oscars. But I don’t think it will win the Palme D’Or.
The film I’d like to see triumph is American Honey, the first U.S.- set movie by British writer- director Andrea Arnold.
It’s an exquisitely observed road movie following Star (brilliantly played by newcomer Sasha Lane), a young woman on the margins of society, who is recruited by Jake (Shia LaBeouf, on top form) to join an energetic band of travelling teenage deadbeats, misfits and adventurers. In theory, they sell magazines door to door, but basically they are conning and thieving their way across the U.S. Jake teams up with and duly falls for Star, but he is utterly in the thrall of the group’s domineering leader Krystal (Riley Keough, who apart from being very good indeed, is also Elvis Presley’s granddaughter). It’s an extremely long film, and not exactly likely to break boxoffice records, but an endorsement from the world’s most famous film festival would give it richly deserved momentum. Finally, while I can’t say for sure what film will win the Palme D’Or, I’d be amazed if the Palme Dog, the spoof award for the festival’s best canine performer, doesn’t go to an English bulldog called Marvin (left), who all but steals the show in Jim Jarmusch’s defiantly uneventful, sweetly thoughtful film, Paterson.