Record-breaking crowds thronged stairways and sidewalks at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and sunny weather prevailed along the French Riviera. And if none of this year's crop of new films from around the world caused much of a storm - of indignation or wild adoration - at least a good part of them were almost as agreeable as the Cote d'Azur's mild temperatures.
Most surprisingly satisfying perhaps was Yugoslavia's entry, "The Time of the Gypsies" with its haunting sound track and memorable characters. Director Emir Kustirica has captured the rise of an awkward, even backward, youth into a cigar-smoking, fedora-sporting gypsy leader with subtlety and abundant local color and folklore, making the film an engaging account of a corrupted innocent trying to recapture the virtues he's lost.Equally moving, if not as original, is "Reunion" written by Harold Pinter. Much like last year's acclaimed "Au Revoir les Enfants," the film chronicles in flashback a friendship between a Jewish youth and the young German man who befriends him. Contrasting with this extended sepia-tinted central sequence are opening and closing sections, in color, in which Jason Robards Jr., as the Jewish boy grown up, finally goes back to Berlin after almost 50 years, to try to reconstruct what happened and, if possible, learn what became of the German friend he lost.
This subject has been done many times as has the subject of basically good boys corrupted by reform schools treated in Hugh Hudson's "Lost Angels." But whereas Hudson's shoddy treatment boggles our minds that this tired and essentially inept film was done by the director of the excellent "Chariots of Fire," the racial/friendship conflict in "Reunion" is handled so exquisitely in its flashback sequences that is as fresh and heartbreaking as if we were seeing it for the first time.
From Algeria comes "Louss" - a visually beautiful story of a physically deformed boy who, armless and able to propel his misshapen torso only by scooting himself along the sand on the one bent leg beneath him. But this is a gentle little film that avoids being either maudlin or repellant because of the quiet dignity and affecting aspirations of the central character.
Turkey's entry in the festival was "Sis" (fog or mist) - a mature and sophisticated look into the dilemma of a father who, when one of his sons is suddenly killed, begins to suspect that his other son may be the assassin. It's a Swedish-Swiss-Turkish co-production set in present-day Istanbul and director Zulfa Livaneli brings it off with subtlety and distinction.
"Nui Peng" (or "China, My Sorrow") is another co-production with class. Basically produced by the French, it is an entirely Chinese film set in China during the Cultural Revolution and providing an intimate and painful look into one boy's humiliation and supposed "re-education" in a remote mountain area.
As usual, there were a number of excellent new films, shown outside the competition, that deserve attention, and among the best are Denmark's engrossing "Heaven and Hell," Hungary's "The Midas Touch," and Holland's "Rituals."
Though German director Percy Adlon's "Rosalie Goes Shopping" is a far cry from his quietly beautiful and delicately artistic "Celeste," it does star Marianne Sagebrecht, the buxom heroine of his recent "Sugarbaby" and "Bagdad Cafe." And this time Adlon not only directs in English but also uses Brad Davis ("Midnight Express") and Judge Reinhold ("Outrageous Fortune"/"Vice Versa") as Sagebrecht's middle-class husband and befuddled minister respectively. Bordering on the John Waters-style of comic hyperbole, "Rosalie" offers little profundity or subtlety but is nevertheless a fun romp through America's mania for putting things on credit.
Another slice of Americana is found in another entry, "Mystery Train" by American avant-garde director Jim Jarmusch. Though glossier and more commercial-looking than his inventive "Stranger Than Paradise" and "Down by Law," Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" nevertheless captures the laid-back bluesy atmosphere of a run-down section of Memphis, Tenn.
Essentially three different stories, each featuring a foreign traveler (Japanese, Italian and British) undergoing culture shock in Elvis-country, this lightweight film playfully links all three with an early morning radio show and a mysterious gunshot which only come together in the last few minutes of the film.
All in all, it was really America's festival this year. Not only did the festival begin with the Woody Allen-Scorsese-Coppola "New York Stories" and end with Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda premiering in the the long-awaited "Old Gringo," but it was America's "sex, lies, and videotape" that walked away with the jury's decision for the coveted Golden Palm award.
Not only a modestly budgeted independent film but also the first feature film by director Steven Soderbergh, "sex, lies, and videotape" caught the award ceremony's audience off-guard when its win was announced Tuesday night.
It was shown earlier this year in the United States Film Festival at Park City, and though it failed to place in that competition, it did, interestingly enough, win the audience's vote as their favorite film.
Two more coups for America came with the acting awards - young James Spader for "sex, lies, and videotape" (a real surprise) and (no surprise) Meryl Streep for "A Cry in the Dark."
Still, though a great year for America at Cannes, it was not, nevertheless, one of the festival's better years. With many new films already before the cameras around the world, one can always hope that next year at Cannes might be the great one.
But will the great film of that great year be Mel Gibson and, reportedly, Glenn Close, in Zeffirelli's new version of "Hamlet"? One doubts that it would be Elizabeth Taylor and Mark Harmon in the now-being-remade "Sweet Bird of Youth" (which almost 30 years ago, starred Geraldine Page and Paul Newman) - but Raul Julia and Julia Migenes-Johnson in "MacHeath," a remake of Weill's "Three-penny Opera," at least sounds promising.
Who knows? Maybe they'll all turn out to be turkeys. And maybe none of them will even make it to Cannes. Maybe, in fact, a first-time director is just now beginning to put together a low-budget little domestic drama like "sex, lies, and videotape" that will once again surprise us all.
But we'll see.