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.

This Christmas celebration starts with a terrible conundrum: Junon discovers she has the same fatal disease that killed her son; she can only be saved by a transplant from somebody who shares the gene. Who will it be? It is Henri, the unloved son who has inherited his mother’s bad blood.

Junon tells him that she doesn’t love him. And Henri is not devastated because this is an old story: He is the child who survived, he can never make it.

The more devastating the declarations of the lack of love between parents and children, and among the siblings, the more you sense another current running through this family.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Three Monkeys’ 

A familiar name in Cannes, - he presented the short Cocoon in 1995 and feature films Distant in 2003 and Climates in 2006, all in Competition – Nuri Bilge Ceylan is back on the Croisette with a dramatic feature entitled Three Monkeys. With a plot loaded with the violence of complicated events, the Turkish director focuses on the four-member family, who want desperately to stay together by not confronting the truth, thus qualifying the film as a fable like ‘three monkeys’ from which the title was drawn.

We previously wrote about Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s ‘Üç Maymun‘ (Three Monkeys) HERE

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.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, originally a photographer, is a true auteur with his unique minimalist style, themes of alienation and strong autobiographical elements predominant in all of his films. Ceylan’s cinema is not for those who view cinema as a form of entertainment, but for festival-followers who revere art-house filmmaking.

Ceylan’s films reflect his other identity as a photographer, with landscape photography drawing viewers into stillness, long sequences with amateur actors and minimum dialogue. His films are minimalist, in the truest sense of the word.

The strong autobiographical elements reflect the alienation of the individual in modern world, existential angst in the face of change, monotony as opposed to constant movement and the power of small details in everyday life. It’s not the easiest thing to engage in Ceylan’s movies. More than following the story, one need to immerse oneself in the still world of Ceylan’s rural landscape or decaying big cities.

Ceylan is not a big fan of visual or sound effects, dubbing, or even musical score. That’s one of the occasional critiques of his films. But he’s not one to give in to popular demand, or to high audience numbers. He has stories to tell. Or perhaps he has emotions to reflect. He’s often compared to another auteur, Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, with his awe of grand rural landscapes, child protagonists and themes on existential angst.

A quick look at the names of Ceylan’s movies would actually give an accurate picture of his filmmaking: ‘Cocoon’, ‘Small Town’, ‘Clouds of May’ (direct translation from Turkish would be Anguish or Boredom of May), ‘Distant’ and ‘Climates’.

His debut feature film is ‘Kasaba,’ and the second ‘Mayıs Sıkıntısı,’ both premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Ceylan’s most recent film prior to now, ‘İklimler,’ features Ceylan and his real life wife, Ebru Ceylan, as a troubled couple whose marriage is falling apart.

As for the recent ‘Üç Maymun,’ which will compete in Cannes, we know that it’s a family tragedy, starring his wife, Ebru, once again and famous Turkish singer Yavuz Bingöl. If Ceylan’s filmography really shows that things can only get better, the Turkish-French-Italian joint production might yet again make Turkish cinephiles proud.

You can find the trailer, photos and more about Ceylan’s work at  Nuri Bilge Ceylan official site

”A family dislocated when small failings blow up into extravagant lies battles against the odds to stay together by covering up the truth… In order to avoid hardship and responsibilities that would otherwise be impossible to endure, the family chooses to ignore the truth, not to see, hear or talk about it. But does playing “Three Monkeys” invalidate the truth of its existence?”