Cannes Market Dailies

By Alex Deleon

Pedro Almodóvar heads the Cannes 70 Jury

Big name stars, especially in mainstream blockbusters, are no guarantee that a film will be worth seeing. However, there are certain stars who are known for their discretion in picking their roles and these are the kind of stars very much in evidence at the 70th Cannes edition. 

To start with perennial Australian beauty Nicole Kidman will appear in four festival films; 1. Competition entry "the Killing of a Sacred Deer" by Greek director Yogos Lanthimos co-starring Colin Farrel; 2. Sofia Coppola's competion entry "The Beguiled", again opposite Colin Farrel and co-starring Kirsten Dunst; 3. The non-conference entry with the intriguing title "How to Talk to Girls at Parties, directed by John Cameron Mitchell; 4. The special screening thriller "Top of the Lake: China Girl" directed by New Zealand distaff helmer Jane Campion.

Colin Farrell, in two films as indicated above, opposite Kidman.

Joaquin Phoenix in the competition thriller "You were never Really There" by Brit director Lynne Ramsay.

Diane Kruger and German star Ulrich Tukur, in Fatih Akin's "Aus dem Nichts", a German language competition entry,

Michael Haneke's competition film, "Happy End" is a family study with the great Isabelle Huppert, now ninetyish French star Jean-Louis Trintignant, (A Man a Woman, 1968!) Matthieu Kassovitz, and superb English character actor Toby Jones who turned in a remarkable leading role some seasons back as Truman Capote far superior to the Capote which earned Philip Seymour Hoffman a prestige Oscar the same  year.

A most interesting comp entry will be The French film "Le Redoutable" (The fearsome one) with Louis Garrel as Jean-Luc Godard in the critical year 1967 when he was shooting La Chinoise. Garrel, also had a strong supporting role in the festival opener "Les fantômes d'Ismael" which starred Charlotte Gainsbourg of recent Fame and infamy in Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac films.

Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller and Dustin Hoffman all appear in Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories.

Last bit not least, Julianne Moore, in the Todd Haynes competition film "Wonderstruck".

As for star directors, Roman Polanski is back with a new non-comp French film entitled "D'après une histoire vraie" (based on a true story) about a successful female writer with writers block who is rescued by another woman.

English one-time superstar Vanessa Redgrave, now eighty, is here with a soecial screening of "Sea of Sorrow", her first directorial  effort in which she also acts along with Ralph Fiennes and Emma Thompson.

Claude Lanzman, 92, best known for the famous Holocaust epic documentary Shoah (1985) has made a new feature film entitled "Napalm" which goes back to Viet nam and North Korea in 1958.

An American beauty leading the jury for Un Certain Regard is Uma Thurman. Also on that jury is Reda Kateb, the actor who was a startling Gypsy virtuoso Jazzman, Jango Rheinhard, in the film Django which premiered this year at Berlin.

Head of the International Jury is gay blade Spanish superstar director Pedro Almodóvar, so, any way you look at it Cannes 70 is nothing but Stars Galore, a galaxy of the brightest.

  Louis Garrel as Jean-Luc Godard in "Le Redoutable" by Michel Hazanavicius

  Uma Thurman is head of the Jury for Un Certain Regard