Tag: Three Monkeys
Cannes 05/16 – Arnaud Desplechin’s ‘A Christmas Tale’ and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Three Monkeys’
Arnaud Desplechin’s ‘A Christmas Tale’
In the first US sale of a Competition title at Cannes, Wild Bunch has sold Arnaud Desplechin’ s A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël) to IFC.
The family drama, which screens here on Friday, stars an ensemble cast including Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric, Chiara Mastroianni, Emmanuelle Devos, Anne Consigny and Melvil Poupaud.
Arnaud Desplechin has made a movie rife with dire family secrets, ghosts and tortured survivors. “Un conte de Noël” is a wild Christmas story set in cold, provincial northern France.
Catherine Deneuve is regal Junon, the mother. She and her husband, Abel, played by Jean-Paul Roussillon, are having their children over for the holidays. Joseph, their youngest, died as a child of a rare genetic illness, but his memory hovers over the household. There is a daughter played by Anne Cosigny, who seems to live in perpetual mourning.
Then, there are the surviving sons and their women: Chiara Mastroianni plays the wife of Ivan, (Melvil Poupaud), and Emmanuelle Devos, a passing fancy of Henri, the tormented, unloved son, (Mathieu Amalric). His parents conceived him in the hope that, through a bone marrow transplant, he could save Joseph, but he failed, and thus failed to win their love. He has come home to wreak some havoc.
Cannes Film Festival – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Good news arrived for Turkish cinema this week when Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan was included alongside Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Wim Wenders in the competition for this year’s grand Palme d’Or prize at the 61st Cannes Film Festival.
Ceylan might have visited Cannes more than his hometown since the beginning of his impressive career, having won both the Grand Jury and Fipresci prizes during the last five years. Ceylan’s first visit to the Cannes Film Festival was in 1995 when his first black and white short film, ‘Koza‘ (Cocoon), was screened at the festival. His film ‘Uzak‘ (Distant) won the Grand Jury and the Best Actor prizes in 2003, while his film ‘İklimler‘ (Climates) won the Fipresci Movie Critics award two years ago. Better known among highbrow cinephiles in Turkey and Europe than the mainstream Turkish audience, the Turkish auteur received his Grand Jury award from Sting in 2003, with the music legend putting his name next to celebrated filmmakers Fellini, Tarkowski, Von Trier, and Angelopoulos.
