By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
CANNES, France (AP) --The Cannes Film Festival unrolled its red carpet with a socially minded French drama, striking a more serious tone than the high dose of glamour the festival often opens with.
"Standing Tall," a film about a juvenile delinquent co-starring Catherine Deneuve, screened Wednesday ahead of its evening premiere as the festival got underway beneath sunny French Riviera skies.
Directed by French actress-filmmaker Emmanuelle Bercot, "Standing Tall" is only the second film directed by a woman to open Cannes, which has sometimes been chided for having a dearth of female filmmakers.
"For the selection we pick films, artists — not men and women, young and old," said Thierry Fremaux, the festival's director. "But I don't want to say that it's not a problem. It is a problem. We need more women, more female directors, in world cinema."
"Standing Tall," which tracks an angry youth (Rod Paradot) through rehabilitation programs, received a lukewarm response from critics. But even a general shrug was an improvement over last year's immediately panned "Grace of Monaco," a Grace Kelly drama starring Nicole Kidman.
Joel and Ethan Coen are presiding over the jury that will decide Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or top prize this year. The Coens (who took the Palme in 1991 for "Barton Fink") were to introduce their jury, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Guillermo del Toro and Sienna Miller, later in the day.
A splash of movie-inspired ballet was also added to the opening festivities. Benjamin Millepied choreographed an ode to Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" to be performed ahead of the premiere of "Standing Tall." Millepied's wife, actress Natalie Portman, will later in the festival make her directorial debut with "A Tale of Love and Darkness," an Israeli drama.
There will, of course, be plenty of star wattage parading through Cannes over the next 12 days.
Thursday will bring George Miller's sequel "Mad Max: Fury Road" along with stars Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Woody Allen will premiere his latest, "Irrational Man," starring Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix. And the Pixar animation film "Inside Out" will take a bow on red carpet.
Among the most anticipated films are "Carol," a '50s lesbian drama starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, and "Macbeth," a Shakespeare adaptation with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard.
The first few days of the festival may be marked by art house entries that tend toward the bizarre. Matteo Garrone's "Tale of Tales," loosely adapted from 17th century fairy tales, promises the sight of Salma Hayek eating the heart of a beast. Yorgos Lanthimos' "The Lobster," with Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, is about a dystopian future where those who fail to find a mate are turned into an animal.
Cannes, already a media circus, may well turn into a zoo.
Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More