Cannes Film Festival 2008 Competitors
Entre les murs – Teacher Franois Marin and his colleagues are preparing for another school year teaching at a racially mixed inner city high school in Paris. The teachers talk to each other about their prospective students, both the good and the bad. The teachers collectively want to inspire their students, but each teacher is an individual who will do things in his or her own way to achieve the results they desire. They also have differing viewpoints on the students themselves, and how best to praise and discipline them. The administration of the school tries to be as fair as possible, which includes having student representatives sit on the student evaluation committee. Marin’s class this year of fourteen and fifteen year olds is no different than previous years, although the names and faces have changed. Marin tries to get through to his students, sometimes with success and sometimes resulting in utter failure. Even Marin has his breaking point, which may result in him doing things he would probably admit to himself are wrong. But after all is said and done, there is next year and another group of students.
Linha de Passe – In the periphery of So Paulo, the pregnant single mother Cleuza works as maid in the apartment of a middle-class family. Each of her sons has a different unknown father: the oldest, Dnis, has a baby son that lives with his mother and he works as motorcycle courier; Dinho is a converted Christian and works as attendant in a gas station; Dario is an aspirant soccer player that is getting older without the expected chance in a team; and the youngest, Reginaldo, is obsessed about finding his father who works as a bus driver, and spends most of his spare time traveling by bus. Along the months, each brother experiences new deceptions and expectations while the family fights to survive.
My Magic – There’s plenty of buzz overseas surrounding Eric Khoo’s latest movie My Magic, which has recently been selected as Singapore’s official entry to the 2009 Oscars in the foreign language film category, hence the rush to have it screened this month to qualify. While his previous effort Be With Me was disqualified on a technicality in the same category (they really timed the amount of English or lack thereof in the film!), this time round Eric has crafted a movie in Tamil as the story tells of the love-hate relationship between an Indian father and son. I don’t recall any recent Tamil feature films being made in Singapore, save perhaps for the segment in Wee Li Lin’s Gone Shopping, and in the upcoming Salawati, so this marks a first that race and language didn’t become barriers, but celebrated that a filmmaker can transcend these issues or capitalize on what is uniquely Singapore given that universal themes apply anywhere. For a father-son story, the last which I enjoyed was Patrick Tam’s After This Our Exile, but of course this is a different story and setting altogether.
Changeling – On 09 March 1928 in Los Angeles, Christine Collins lives with her beloved son Walter in Lincoln Heights. When she is assigned to work in overtime on Saturday in The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph as supervisor, she promises Walter to return at 4:00 PM to watch the latest movie of Charles Chaplin on the movie theater with him. However, she arrives home late and does not find her son; after seeking the boy out in the neighborhood, she reports the missing child to the police, but the police officer tells that she should wait twenty-four hours to register the complain. Five months later, Captain J.J. Jones communicates Mrs. Collins that her son had been found in DeKalb, Illinois, and is heading back home by train to reunite with her. In the train station, Christine does not recognize the boy as being Walter, but Captain advises her that his appearance has changed in five months. Sooner she confirms that the boy is not her son, but the corrupt LAPD does not accept her arguments. When Mrs. Collins is approached by the St. Paul Presbyterian Church Pastor Gustav Briegleb, who daily broadcasts protests exposing the corruption of the police force, she decides to disclose the evidence she has about the changeling to the press. However, the abusive Captain Jones sends Christine to an asylum to intimidate her. Meanwhile the efficient Detective Lester Ybarra is assigned to arrest and deport an illegal Canadian boy that is hidden in a ranch in Wineville. He captures the boy, who discloses hideous crimes committed by his compatriot Gordon Northcott.
Che: Part One – I always find director Steven Soderbergh’s experiments interesting because they challenge the spectator and they go beyond the common.The Argentine also falls on that category.This a fascinating movie and it clearly is one of the best I have seen this year.Soderbergh made a wonderful work as a director because of the excellent performances he got from the cast and for his extreme attention to the details.Benicio del Toro brings a monumental performance as Che Guevara.He completely becomes on him and he never seems to be acting.Demin Bichir also brings a magnificent performance as Fidel Castro.This movie kept me very entertained and it brings a very valid and important message.The only fail I found on this movie was that it was a little bit long on a specific moment.But that’s a minor fail.The Argentine is a fascinating experiment I liked very much.This is one of that movies which challenge the spectator and have something to say and I really admire that.I totally recommend this film.
Synecdoche, New York – Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of Death of a Salesman, he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan’s theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mockup of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden’s own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany’s art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele’s friend, Maria. He’s helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. His is second daughter, Ariel, is disabled. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.
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