By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
CANNES, France (AP) --Unveiling a new chapter in her already-considerable career, Nicole Kidman has brought four projects to Cannes this year, making her almost ubiquitous at the French Riviera festival.
"I'm at that place in my life where I'm trying to pretend I'm 21 and starting my career," Kidman, who turns 50 next month, told reporters on Monday. "I want to try new things and support the filmmakers I believe in."
Kidman's projects at Cannes include Yorgos Lanthimos's brutally dark family comedy "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," which premiered Monday. On Sunday, the actress' "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" – a 1970s punk-alien romantic romp by John Cameron Mitchell – debuted.
Still to come is Sofia Coppola's "The Beguiled," a female-perspective remake of the 1971 Clint Eastwood film, and the second season of Jane Campion's acclaimed series "Top of the Lake," in which she plays a character she's described as a "radical feminist lesbian."
Kidman's omnipresence at the festival – along with her typically royal poise on the red carpet – has earned her the nickname "Queen of Cannes."
"That's sort of a confluence of events," said Kidman said of her extensive Cannes lineup. "It's not something I was aware would happen."
But she did grant that the films, which follow her turn on the HBO miniseries "Big Little Lies" and her Oscar-nominated performance in "Lion," are the all the result of her resolution to "stay bold and open" to challenging material.
"I still have that passion, at this age, for acting and cinema and storytelling and pushing boundaries and moving out of my comfort zone to try things with an abandon," said Kidman.
As would be expected from Lanthimos' previous films ("The Lobster," ''Dogtooth"), the reaction in Cannes was sharply divided over the Greek filmmaker's latest. Both cheers and boos followed its morning screening, though critics largely praised Lanthimos' allegorical horror.
"The material is brutal in accumulation," said Lanthimos. "We never dealt with it with seriousness. Nicole likes to say that I told her all the time that this is a comedy, and I believe that."
Kidman repeatedly spoke about her hunger as an actress, and her desire at this stage of her life to work with young and uncompromising filmmakers.
"I've worked a lot. I don't have to work. I work because it's my passion. I work because it's how I express myself," said Kidman. "I've always had that slightly rebel spirit where I don't want to conform and I want to find a way not to. That's who I am."
But Kidman also said she keeps her work life separate from her family with singer Keith Urban and her four children.
"This film," she said of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer," ''my children will not be seeing."
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More