Oliver Stone
45 minutes ·
It’s been a delight here at the Cannes Film Festival to rediscover big screens, properly projected to packed and cheering auditoriums (black tie, no less), and movies not made under pressure of box office results or algorithms. It’s infectious to be here with its generous 10-15-minute standing ovations for films. With my “JFK: The Director’s Cut” (1991) shown on the beach at night, and three public screenings of my new documentary, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2021), I was only able to catch three of the main event films.
1. Sean Penn’s “Flag Day,” which is great, emotionally intense. Spurred on by his daughter Dylan, who’s quietly stunning in her debut, Sean gives us, I believe, his inner soul in one of his very best performances. The moving story of a fraud and criminal whose one loving treasure is his daughter in a career gone south, Penn as a director delivers a unique visual style.
2. Then there’s “Titane”! Get ready for this one. It will blowtorch your mind and scorch your other parts. The director, Julia Ducournau, is a blonde hurricane who made “Raw” as her first film. Not for everyone. My wife and a young female friend disliked it. But the auditorium went wild. The ‘bête noire’ of this rich lineup. An eruption of anger and love, of cars and androids, of gender fluidity that not for one second abides in the conventional, it comes across as a deeply personal catharsis with a lot of self-loathing evident -- but an “experience” on all levels.
3. Jacques (“The Prophet”) Audiard’s new film “Les Olympiades” is in the vein of intimate and humanistic ‘French’ cinema. But that’s not to ignore how completely beautifully evolved a parallel story he’s set in the mixed-race world of Paris’s 13th Arrondissement (from which the title is drawn). Especially notable is the sensual and sexual, ever-changing nature of people in love, which is so rarely seen in American cinema. Superb leading performances from Chinese Lucie Zhang, African Makita Samba, and French Noémie Merlant.
Of course, rumors and fiercely different opinions abound here, which makes it fun. I’ve heard, for instance, great things about Leos Carax’s opening night film, “Annette,” with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. Also, Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” with an all-star cast. Japan’s “Drive My Car,” a love tale from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, was touted by some as the big prize winner; others said it would be Asghar Farhadi’s “A Hero.”The ever-interesting Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta” is about a 17th century Italian nun, but Verhoeven of course has a way of enlivening everything with sex and sensuality. There’s also “Val,” an offbeat documentary on Val Kilmer, and Andrea Arnold’s “Cow,” a film about a cow and its fate, which is the object of adoration of the more sophisticated filmgoers who look for the classic oddball or outsider film. But there are so many pioneering films like this here. It’s all really what you can see in a week at the ultimate candy store. In the US, our metrics of judgement are increasingly box office and algorithms, which leaves little mercy for films that need the space to breathe and hang around.
The Palme d’Or turned out to be “Titane,” which surprised me -- film is definitely alive and well in Cannes.
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My response to Oliver Stone...
Very cool.
I love Cannes. I attended in 2000, and a film titled "Dancer in the Dark" won the Palme d' Or that year. It was a great crowd, I love the beach there, and the French make great chicken. And the night clubs in Cannes are amazing, you get to party with everyone from the international film community.
I have a script that I hope to premier at Cannes when I get it made. I wanted to get you to direct it, based on your work on "The Doors" starring Val Kilmer, this was a long time ago, and Hugh Hefner liked my script and he was going to put up the money if you would direct it, but you turned me down, Hef backed out, and I lost the backing. That was 20 years ago. I still have the script, but I do not know what to do with it. I was thinking about getting Ariana Grande to star, and see if she could help to get the backing to make the film, but I do not know. We will see what happens. Life is a journey.
Cannes is awesome, and I am glad that you had a great time. I am sure Cannes is happy to have you there, you are one of the best.
Salute,
Tony V.
