Cannes 2005: The Auteurs Strike Out

By Mark Peranson

Much was made among the cognoscenti who care about this year’s Cannes Competition being a return to form, though I for one wish they meant “form” in the cineaste’s sense. After a few scattershot years of risk-taking, Cannes 2005 appeared as if Thierry Frémaux and string-puller Gilles Jacob were assembling a loosely organized community college Intro to Cinema 101 class, with the debate framed in terms both aesthetic and content-driven: I. Politics and Cinema: A Problematic (Kilometre Zero, Bashing, Once You’re Born); II. Fathers and Sons (Broken Flowers, Don’t Come Knocking, L’enfant, Caché, etc.); III. The Western (A History of Violence, Don’t Come Knocking, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada); IV. What’s Wrong with French Cinema (Lemming, and its punching-bag-of-a-star, the ubiquitous and vapid Laurent Lucas). In Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times, screened on the last day, Cannes even managed to sneak in part of a silent film, though I suspect many of the apt pupils on the jury were dozing.

Your artists in question were a motley crew of Cannes vets, Team Auteur, whose attack/revenge/strike back/return (pick your aggressive Lucasian term) set the light saber high. This change of path by Frémaux et al represents a reactionary approach to setting a competition schedule; Cannes’ still stinging, the party line holds, from such past picks as The Brown Bunny (2003), a film which grows in weight, being unable to fit into one of those neat categories above that seems to appeal to middle-aged, male directors knee deep in midlife crisis and looking to their own pasts (and, in the best effort, Three Times, a nation’s as well). Let me be the one to note that there were no women directors in Competition, and only a shocking three in Official Selection. Maybe there weren’t enough crappy films around made by middle-aged women auteurs about paternity, perhaps because women weren’t really allowed to direct many movies when most of these guys were starting out.

At Cannes , the worlds of film and film criticism both come under heightened scrutiny—and, more often than not, both fail. Let me begin by proposing that there is an inherent difficulty, if not paradox, in film criticism that Cannes draws to the surface like a bump on the head: the need to treat each film on its own grounds, but also the historically determined desire to see each film as part of a continual development, for the most part, on the part of the director. And at Cannes , knee-jerk reactions are mandatory, especially when there’s barely enough time to sneak off for an espresso in between Competition screenings. By keeping my expectations low and by consciously taking the attitude of going into each film with eyes wide open—one which most critics claim to hold, but they are lying—I found myself agreeing with absolutely nobody across the board (meaning the polls in Screen Daily, Le Film Français, and at the Grand Hotel bar). I take this as a positive sign for my own mental health: 12 days at Cannes turns one’s brain to crème brûlée.

It’s fair to say that the general consensus on each major film was formed in the terms of particular histories and not, say, something like auteurism. Die-hard auteurs, for example, would defend the wheelbarrow of crap that Woody Allen has been pushing for the previous decade, as opposed to claiming that the Out of Competition Match Point is his greatest film since Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). That was the reaction of the journalist horde that crawled out of bed for the 8.30 screening after the rumour spread that this morning’s Woody was actually a strong one. Strong it may be, but anyone who makes the claim of brilliance for Match Point—and there are many—has to ignore the film’s typical late-Allen travesties, in the dramatic sense that the female characters halfway through suddenly plunge into caricature, and the universal sense that the exceedingly clever film is another of Allen’s post-Farrow wish-fulfillments, without the intentional, I-need-a-shower ickiness of Deconstructing Harry (1997). Indeed, we are actually meant to cheer for Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ sexy, scheming, snarling tennis pro turned society doyen Chris Wilton, as he initiates events most foul which I shall not reveal, however much I’d like to. Allen and his latest cameraperson Remi Adefarasin shoot the upper-class proceedings with a stateliness that is both distancing and inviting at once, just like the milieu he’s capturing (as opposed to examining) on film.

Though, like his main character, Allen escaped Cannes unscathed, indeed, fêted—precisely because of the irredeemable Anything Elses (2003) that preceded Match Point—the more common criticism directed at other auteurs was that this year’s film was better the first time around. Thus, Manderlay loses points in the cynic critic’s mind because von Trier does more with his Brechtian set-up in Dogville (2003). But this mindset overlooks both the strength of the new film’s Iraq allegory, plus the sense that the pedagogical Manderlay plantation is a much stronger view of community—perhaps, dare I say it, American community—than Dogville’s quiet little podunk, white-bread mountain town. Hou Hsiao-hsien, in some critical camps, gets rapped on the knuckles for revisiting territory already staked in, respectively, Dust in the Wind (1986), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), and Millennium Mambo (2001). Likewise Gus Van Sant, even if Elephant (2003) and Last Days have as much in common as, well, Elephant and Gerry (2002). Carlos Reygadas…well, where to begin? Suffice to say that what seemed enthralling to so many in Japón (2002) was now, in the much-re-edited Battle in Heaven, dismissed by many as a pretentious, insufferable spit in the crotch of the bourgeoisie. I, for one, disagree, as its lunatic, Herzog-inspired Latin Catholicism awash in oompah-bombast ritual made for a spiritual renewal halfway through this talky festival. And, in the most egregious case of French film criticism gone awry, the Dardennes are charged with merely making the same movie over and over again in their hometown of Seraing (the Hamilton of Belgium).

Where auteurism reared its two-faced head was with regards to David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, technically not a Canadian production—it was fully funded by New Line, and written by an American, though Cronenberg implied he made the script very much his. Still, like Atom Egoyan’s disappointment Where the Truth Lies, it came and left Cannes as French toast. Where many saw a genre reworking of the auteur’s foremost concerns, I saw a well-made film that ultimately failed to escape the genre’s ideological strictures, the conservative, restorative Fordian Western, where violence is a necessary evil to keep a particular American view of civilization (the small-town nuclear family) intact. If anyone other than Cronenberg had directed the film, would critics be talking about the virus of violence that infects the family? About the mind-body problem? Would anyone dare to claim the film a radical critique of family values, irrespective of the fact that Cronenberg isn’t our most radical director, by a long shot? Of course this hypothetic is unanswerable, though the perennial smile on Cronenberg’s face, the camera in his hand throughout press interviews, led me to think the very clever director was in on the joke.

Artists make their own universe, and invest it with rules—moral, ethical, or none—that’s the standard Woody Allen argument, and sometimes this even makes sense. Sometimes it comes down to agreeing or disagreeing with these rules, or even with the universe itself—for me, the vaguely macho, wholly Austrian Catholic retribution proposed by the one-time enfant terrible Michael Haneke (your day will come, colonialist, especially when you work in the television industry), and the scot-free nihilism proposed by Allen, are equally off-putting. In the case of the Emir Kusturica-helmed “very strange jury,” to quote runner-up Jim Jarmusch, there were strict rules as well for the rewarding of this year’s egghead Oscars: films that embody a balance of “artistic and public good.” Good enough.

I knew that Mr. No Smoking would fall for Broken Flowers the second time that catchy Mulatu Astatke Ethiopian jazz tune played; come to think of it, who knows how many illegitimate young Emirs are floating around Eastern Europe ? Kusturica’s musical tastes, however, surely deviate from Hou’s, he of the “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and the Aphrodite’s Child classic, “Rain and Tears” (now being downloaded onto critics’ iTunes worldwide). Yes, in what amounted to what drunks call a moment of clarity, this jury ignored Hou (who?), but such is the fate of a master. (A full assessment of the wonderful Three Times, along with an interview with Hou and actors Shu Qi and Chang Chen, will follow in a future issue, as this delicate film—like many here—should be seen again outside of the cattle call to be fairly assessed; it deserves its independence.)

But the Cannes hangover, combined with the conservative selection, created in the minds of the ideal critic a sense of been there, done that. Cannes played it safe in the Competition (but also in many of the sidebars—the Director’s Fortnight was atypically awful), and in playing it safe, you leave yourself open to certain criticisms. The perfect metaphor for this year’s Cannes might come at the end of Gitai’s typically pandering Free Zone, a last excruciating shot that I suspect much of the audience missed en route to the exits: the two actresses (standing in for their countries, standing in for film critics) in a futile, long-take argument, with no resolution in sight, the camera stable as the credits roll on top of the image.

Perhaps this sense of being stuck is even stronger considering that a number of the directors in question very much ingrain repetition as one of their typical motifs (Jarmusch, Hong Sang-soo, Van Sant); or that some directors pose their latest films as conscious reworkings, follow-ups, or commentaries on earlier films (Hou, Allen, von Trier, Wenders, Johnnie To); or that certain directors are so in tune with their subject matter and their chosen forms of representing it, that when either structural or thematic departures occur, they barely register on the global fault line of cinema (Dardennes, Hong). Finally, there are those filmmakers who fall into the category of out-of-touch, lame-duck auteurs, whose image of their land of discussion is just that—an image, with an attenuated connection to contemporary reality (Wenders, Gitai). These are the most dangerous, because they seem to be working in a vacuum, and it’s little coincidence that their greatest support seemed to come from the French, in particular, the Cahiers du Cinéma, who also were enthusiastic Sin City supporters, and who were dissenters on the Dardennes—precisely because of the arguments that I have been considering. Perhaps it’s a French-Belgian thing. In one of those priceless coincidences, if you visit the town of Seraing ’s website, there’s a link on the home page to the local action plan for energy control: it’s called Project P.A.L.M.E.

One of the most ridiculous critical statements of a festival that inevitably contains many came in Todd McCarthy’s useless mid-way wrap in Variety, which criticized many of the Competition titles to that point in a veiled critique of Gus Van Sant: “ The various influences of Chantal Ackerman [sic], the Dardenne Brothers and Bela [sic] Tarr have moved numerous filmmakers to abandon the shaping and dramatizing of events in favor of recording mundane daily activity and presenting repetitive behavior ad nauseum.” The only part of this fallacy I wish to unpack is the suggestion that the Dardennes (closet Woody Allen fans—and both directors are here inspired by Dostoyevsky) are anything other than narrative filmmakers: gripping, concise, and flawless, L’enfant is clearly the work of masters of narration; each scene begins and ends at the perfect moment; each scene fits into the whole, perfectly. They are more than auteurs, they are artists.

Over the course of each Dardennes film, their protagonist (inevitably a superb performance, here by Jérémie Renier as Bruno) actually comes to learn a life lesson, and we feel that it has been earned, not thrust down on them from some manipulative director on high; and this is a lesson very much about how to live in a world that may be hard, may have rewards. Unlike Allen, Haneke, or le Sin City, where morality is imposed, the values of the Dardennes’ universe are those their characters come to realize over the course of their films. The Dardennes’ filmmaking owes much to the truth (that’s right, truth) of documentary, and not just in the glib way of relying on shaky handheld realist camera, or examining on-the-margins characters. (Their docs, one could say, provide the historical context for their fiction films.) That this truth is shaped through painstaking fictional means—see their comments in the interview that follows—makes their efforts that much more impressive, and, ultimately, cinematic.

What makes L’enfant different from the other Dardennes films? Besides the fact that there are different characters placed in different situations having to accomplish different goals? Well, there’s a chase scene, for one, which ends in a situation where death is a very real possibility. This serves the purpose of driving home that their universe, the closest in the Competition to our universe, is truly a dangerous one. In the more formally radical Le fils (2002), where the camera tracks behind Olivier Gourmet’s skull as if trying to penetrate the carpenter’s inner world—in a storyline that invited an odd Jesus allegory, out of place in the Dardennes’ neo-Bressonian materialism—in L’enfant, the Dardennes often stand with Bruno as he waits, waits for a deal to be done, for his child to be picked up, for his life to truly begin. Bruno, Sonia, little Jimmy, Bruno’s cohort Steve—these are all children who have yet to buy into the codes of adulthood, or responsibility. Gourmet’s grieving father has a past to come to terms with, whereas Renier’s Bruno is a child thrust into adulthood, and he reacts the only way he knows how: an action invested with his life lessons learned up to his present (i.e., the time leading up to the point that his child is thrust into his own hands), where objects themselves do not contain any moral value—so it’s a simple step from using a child to get money as a beggar, to swapping said child for cash.

To return to the initial critical paradox, though: sometimes strengths and weaknesses of films are revealed in comparison not to the directors’ children, but to their kissin’ cousins. Rather than framing their paternity as an elder hunting down the child he never knew (a middle-aged man’s worst or best fantasy, depending on how rich and/or lonely he may be), the Dardennes deal with a young man having to confront his unwanted paternity as it happens: call L’enfant the shock of the present, yes, like Rosetta (1999), their previous Palmaire. But where Rosetta concerned itself with a character trying to impress her responsibility on the world, trying at all costs to keep her job, Bruno’s dilemma is more complex, as is his path to salvation: thievery is his occupation, which in itself could be the subject of its own film. (And did I mention that chase scene?) As opposed to Cannes ’ other riffs on fatherhood, which are about reconciling with the past, the urgent L’enfant is nothing less than triumphant.

The same could not be said for the rest of the Competition, which was again worse than on paper, containing films that have already been given more than enough showtime. While it doesn’t carry the weight of the Dardennes, Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers for me becomes much stronger when seen beside About Schmidt (2002), as Jarmusch is much warmer, more bittersweet, with regards to his view of America—an atypically placeless, suburban America—as opposed to Payne (I await P.T. Anderson’s version of the same story starring Burt Reynolds). The shoulda been a contender, Cristi Puiu’s mesmerizing, almost real time The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, was too daring, in this year, to merit a Competition slot (daring being an episode of ER, Romanian-style). And then, we are left with Hong Sang-soo’s quizzical Tale of Cinema, the best Woody Allen film since Match Point, and a film I am still finding hard to come to grips with, two weeks after seeing it. A film about life, cinema, and everything, that was virtually ignored at Cannes but continues to resonate, Hong’s zoom-heavy version of Stardust Memories (1980) includes a film within a film, yet manages to exist as his most linear work; that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to grasp on to the threads that connect its parts, or, indeed, connect it together as a film, or connect to it as a viewer. As seen through its Competition, Cannes was equally quizzical, reaching out to connect to its critics. It was a festival seeking to please everyone, and, perhaps as a consequence, ended up as one without all that much to say.

L’enfant

Spotlight: Cannes 2005

Cannes 2005: Revenge of the Auteur
by Mark Peranson

Where the Truth Lies by Liam Lacey

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu by Quintín

Shanghai Dreams by Jason Anderson

Battle in Heaven by Pedro Butcher

and in the magazine...

A History of Violence by Kent Jones

Last Days by Jason Anderson

Caché and Manderlay by Scott Foundas

Don’t Come Knocking and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada by Patrick Z. McGavin

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine by Christoph Huber

The Forsaken Land by Cameron Bailey

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