Cannes 2009

• Bright Star Reviews from Cannes, Seoul, London + Las Vegas

  Published on: May 29, 2009

  Gems and the Cannes Film Festival
  The Seoul Times, May 30, 2009
  By Gautaman Bhaskaran, South Asia Correspondent

  Indeed a treat for romantics and poetry lovers, "Bright Star" may well be a joy forever marking Campion's return to Cannes after her 1993 Palm d'Or winner, "The Piano" Tracing the love story between a young Keats and his Hamstead neighbour, Fanny Brawne, Campion never losses sight of period details. Scenes of Brawne with a fine needle and thread, Keats with his pen and paper creating poetic pleasure that much after his death helped the world realise his genius and the passion between the two only restrained by the rigid social mores of the day have been frozen on frame with a classic touch.

  Photo: Seoul Times

  Biteback: at Cannes
  The Sunday Times, May 24, 2009
  By Richard Brooks

  I admired Bright Star, the story of the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, but was not smitten. Well acted, well directed and well shot, it lacked a point. I was amused when its producer, Jan Chapman, told me she was determined not to make a costume drama. What? Brawne (Abbie Cornish) parades in about 30 different outfits. I know she was a good seamstress, but she was only 18 and her mum was widowed, with two other youngsters to bring up. How was this not a “frocks” movie?

  Dispatch from Cannes
  Las Vegas Weekly, Thu, May 28, 2009
  By Mike D'Angelo

  Heavyweight auteurs mostly fail to thrill at the world’s top film festival, {snip} But in the end, despite its endless parade of auteurs, Cannes 2009 served up only a handful of truly memorable movies, none of them masterpieces. The first few days, in particular, were a long haul, as even the better films tread exceedingly familiar ground. Campion, who hadn’t made a feature since 2003’s critically reviled In the Cut, received respectful notices for Bright Star, her portrait of the doomed relationship between Romantic poet John Keats and his muse, Fanny Brawne, but seeing this once-ferocious filmmaker (even In the Cut has its queasy moments) reduced to a genteel literary biopic only made me sad.

  

  Cannes. "Bright Star"
  "The Daily" on IFC.com, 05/15/2009
  By David Hudson

  "Jane Campion has put herself in line for her second Palme d'Or here at the Cannes film festival with a film which I think could be the best of her career; an affecting and deeply considered study of the last years in the short life of John Keats [Ben Whishaw], and the ecstasy of loss which suffuses his love affair with Fanny Brawne [Abbie Cornish] - a love thwarted not due to illness, but to a pernicious web of money worries, social scruples and irrelevant male loyalties." The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "Campion brings to this story an unfashionable, unapologetic reverence for romance and romantic love, and she responds to Keats's life and work with intelligence and grace."

  "Refreshingly, ['Bright Star'] is free of the hysterics so often associated with films about writers and deftly avoids the distracting surface tendencies that can plague British period pieces set in the 18th and 19th centuries," writes Time Out London's Dave Calhoun. "It's also remarkable in its lightness of touch: the film barely tries to persuade us that Keats is a valid object of this girl's affection or that he is a fine literary talent; we are left to learn both incidentally. They're wise choices, leaving Campion to concentrate on character and emotion rather than any special pleading about genius and its offshoots."

  

  Cannes 09 ‘Bright Star’ Press Conference with Abbie Cornish
  MovieSet.com Cannes coverage, Monday, May 18, 2009
  By Phillip Nakov

  We sat down for a chat with Abbie Cornish this week at the 62^nd annual Cannes Film Festival to chat about her role as Fanny Brawne in Jane Campion’s latest work “Bright Star“. The movie is about the life, love and work of the famous English romantic poet John Keats.

  As she draws near the table, she sits down slowly exhales. She is wearing a dainty lace top that looks delicate and light atop a darker black under shirt. I noticed immediately she is back to a lighter hair color as she was dark haired for the movie.  She smiles as we start to chat about working with Jane Campion, what it meant to her to accept this role and what she expects on the set of her next movie with Zach Synder which she starts shooting in June.

  {snip}

  Q: So what’s coming up next for you?

  A: My next film is going to be “Sucker Punch.” Directed by Zach Snyder. He did ‘300′ and the ‘Watchmen‘. It’s totally different to anything I‘ve ever done. It’s going to be a little wild and a little crazy.

  Q: Have you started already?

  A: No, I start in June.

  Q: Who will you be playing?

  A: I play the character of Sweet Pea. Essentially it’s the story of five girls in the 1950’s who get together and try to escape a psychiatric ward. They are all in this thing and they are all like let’s get out of here. The interesting thing to me is that the films Zach has directed he hasn’t written. They haven’t been his concepts from the beginning. This is the first time he’s ever made a concept film that he wrote. I am interested to see what he does with it. I think he has an incredible talent in regards to contemporary cutting edge cinema. I think he is a bit of the master at the action sequences.

  

  More on MovieSet

  Jane Champion’s 'Bright Star' stars Abbie Cornish, Thomas Sangster and Paul Schneider. Not much is know about the movie yet, but you can check out some stuff at the Official Page and in the vidcast "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Bright Star and Cannes Wrap-up - Behind the Scenes #42".

  Abbie Cornish Press Conference Photo Credit: MovieSet.com-  Actress Abbie Cornish smiles with director Jane Campion at press conference for ‘Bright Star’ - movie about poet John Keats

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• Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon wins Palme d'Or

  Published on: May 24, 2009

  The director accepted the award – his third major prize at the festival – from jury president Isabelle Huppert who starred in his 2001 prize winner La Pianiste. The film tells the story of a life in a small German town beset my tragedies and strange occurences as the First World War approaches.

  Speaking about the win, Haneke said that he could finally tell his wife: “I can say this is a moment where I am truly happy.” The film is handled by France’s Les Films du Losange for international sales; Sony Pictures Classics has US distribution rights.

  SPC also has US rights to Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, which won the Grand Jury Prize but failed to score any other awards despite lead actor Tahar Rahim having been heavily favored. The top actor honour went to Christoph Waltz for his portrayal of Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. The stunned Waltz thanked his director saying, “You gave me my vocation back.” In keeping with his character’s linguistic prowess, Waltz mixed French, German and English into his speech.

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• Violence Reaps Rewards at Cannes Festival

  Published on: May 24, 2009

  

  Francois Durand/Getty Images

  The big winners at Cannes: The director Michael Haneke, left, and the actors Christoph Waltz and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

  By MANOHLA DARGIS

  CANNES, France — “The White Ribbon,” a meticulous examination of patriarchal domination, won the Palme d’Or at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. Directed by the Austrian-born Michael Haneke and shot in black and white, the much-admired film — a foundation story about National Socialism set in a rural pre-World War I German community — turns on a series of violent events that appear to be the work of some children. In 2001 Mr. Haneke won the Grand Prix (effectively second place) for his harrowing drama “The Piano Teacher,” which starred Isabelle Huppert, president of this year’s competition jury.

  The Grand Prix, also announced on Sunday, went to “A Prophet,” a pitch-perfect film from the French director Jacques Audiard about a young inmate who becomes a master criminal during a prison stretch. The film was the critical favorite throughout the festival, and Mr. Audiard received a standing ovation from the audience when he mounted the stage. Far more surprising was the Jury Prize (third place), which was split between “Fish Tank,” a slice of Brit-grit realism from Andrea Arnold, and the neo-exploitation vampire flick “Thirst,” from the South Korean director Park Chan-Wook. Both were booed by the press watching the show via live broadcast.

  The director Terry Gilliam, here with the noncompetition film “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” delivered some funny onstage shtick by pretending to accept the directing prize, which he was meant to bestow. (“Terry, you don’t receive, you give,” the host explained, promising that Mr. Gilliam could have something next year if he didn’t create a scandal.) The actual winner of the director award was Brillante Mendoza, from the Philippines, whose grisly, widely loathed shocker, “Kinatay” (“Slaughter”), hinges on a man who doesn’t prevent a murder. The screenwriting award went to Mei Feng for “Spring Fever,” a rather baggy if underappreciated drama about young Chinese malaise.

  Ms. Huppert handed the prize for best actress to Charlotte Gainsbourg, who delivers a wild, fearless performance as a grieving mother in “Antichrist,” an English-language film from the Danish director Lars von Trier. It’s easy to imagine that Ms. Huppert and her fellow juror, the actress Asia Argento, both ferocious screen performers, were impressed with the intensity of Ms. Gainsbourg’s performance, which involves a fair amount of nudity and some frantic (and graphic) backwoods masturbation.

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