Actor Sean Penn receives Cesar of Honor for life achievement
The French film industry showered honors on "Timbuktu" at Friday's 40th annual Cesar awards — France's equivalent of the Oscars — selecting it as best movie, one in seven prizes it scooped up days before competing in Hollywood for an Oscar for best foreign film.
Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian, took best director's prize for "Timbuktu," set in the ancient north Malian city when it was under control of Muslim extremists.
Sean Penn was the other shining star at the Cesar ceremonies, given a Cesar of Honor for his life's work, and a standing ovation from the elegant crowd at the sumptuous Chatelet Theater. Penn was accompanied to the ceremony by Charlize Theron, who lit up with pride during her beau's award speech.
"Sean, France loves you," said Marion Cotillard as she presented the award.
Kristen Stewart was the other American given honors by the French with a Cesar for best actress in a second role for Olivier Assayas' "Sils Marie," a French-Swiss-German production starring Juliette Binoche.
Best actor and best actress awards went to France's new generation of young actors, Pierre Niney for "Yves Saint Laurent" in which he played the designer and Adele Haenel for "The Combattants."
"Timbuktu" was the star of the ceremony, nominated for awards in eight categories and sweeping up seven.
Sissako, accepting the best director prize, thanked his native Mauritania, where "Timbuktu" was filmed and his foreign crew was "protected," and France for proving it is a nation "open to others" by showering his work with awards.
"Timbuktu" is competing for an Oscar for best foreign film at Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony. The movie plays out in Timbuktu during its occupation in 2012 by Muslim extremists who oversaw harsh Sharia law. Despite the reality he portrayed, Sissako revealed his humanist and optimistic view as he accepted best director's award.
"There is no shock of civilization. It doesn't exist," he said. "There is an encounter between civilizations."
Review: Writer-Director Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance”
In its first two hours, "The Substance" is a well-made, entertaining movie. Writer-director Coralie Fargeat treats audiences to a heavy dose of biting social commentary on ageism and sexism in Hollywood, with a spoonful of sugar- and sparkle-doused body horror.
But the film's deliciously unhinged, blood-soaked and inevitably polarizing third act is what makes it unforgettable.
What begins as a dread-inducing but still relatively palatable sci-fi flick spirals deeper into absurdism and violence, eventually erupting โ quite literally โ into a full-blown monster movie. Let the viewer decide who the monster is.
Fargeat โ who won best screenplay at this year's Cannes Film Festival โ has been vocal about her reverence for "The Fly" director David Cronenberg, and fans of the godfather of body horror will see his unmistakable influence. But "The Substance" is also wholly unique and benefits from Fargeat's perspective, which, according to the French filmmaker, has involved extensive grappling with her own relationship to her body and society's scrutiny.
"The Substance" tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a famed aerobics instructor with a televised show, played by a powerfully vulnerable Demi Moore. Sparkle is fired on her 50th birthday by a ruthless executive โ a perfectly cast Dennis Quaid, who nails sleazy and gross.
Feeling rejected by a town that once loved her and despairing over her bygone star power, Sparkle learns from a handsome young nurse about a black-market drug that promises to create a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of its user. Though she initially tosses the phone number in the trash, she soon fishes it out in a desperate panic and places an order.
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