CANNES, France -- Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" arrived here Thursday and shot off some sparks. It's a hot, sprawling New York story rocked by the trends and events of 1977, and it centers on the effects of David Berkowitz's "Son of Sam" killing spree.
Finding pretexts for visiting tourist attractions from CBGB to Plato's Retreat, it weaves its nostalgia into the tale of how an insular Bronx neighborhood closes ranks against anyone different, even though virtually everyone in the movie leads some kind of double life.Adrien Brody, as a self-styled punk, and John Leguizamo and Mira Sorvino, as restless young marrieds with a "Saturday Night Fever" dance habit, head a large cast of actors with a conspicuous common trait.
"You say it," Lee prompted, sitting on the terrace at the Carlton Hotel here with the patient air of someone who knows the Cannes International Film Festival well. (He was unruffled by the festival-assigned bodyguard keeping an eye on him from behind a nearby billboard.) OK: This is a white cast, his first.
And if, as Disney hopes, it fares better commercially than his eminently worthy "He Got Game" of last year, Lee, who said his next project will be "pure Negroidal," said that could have something to do with it.
"Summer of Sam" also has the kind of raunch that nearly landed it an NC-17 rating, but the MPAA's eyebrows went up over steamy sequences, not serial killing.
Although this year's main competition features one American film with strong opinions on social issues (Tim Robbins' WPA mural of a movie, "Cradle Will Rock") and another about a black urban hero surrounded by laughably bigoted white gangsters (Jim Jarmusch's winningly insouciant "Ghost Dog," which stars Forest Whitaker and has the hippest score in town), there was mysteriously no room for Lee. So "Summer of Sam" is in the ever-more-interesting Directors' Fortnight sidebar in a year when the prestige of the main event looks more arbitrary than usual.
"I don't have to put on a tux and walk up the red carpet," Lee said. "We just want the film to be seen."
But he did point out, with reference to Gilles Jacob, the distinguished French official who oversees festival selections, that even Michael Jordan retired.
One of the most overwhelming films shown thus far is "L'Humanite," directed by Bruno Dumont ("The Life of Jesus") with a slow, punishing intensity that exerts a troubling fascination. Instinctively religious, terse almost to the point of arrogance, his new film leaves a powerful impression by immersing the viewer in the stillness of a nearly uneventful story, with a wide-eyed central character who silently registers the brutishness of life around him.
On a seriously different note, Takeshi Kitano's "Kikujiro" arrived Thursday trailing a lot more cute whimsy than might have been expected. It's a road movie that casts this filmmaker as a comically irascible loser traveling with a lonely little boy. Its deadpan physical clowning has more charm than its sweeter touches, though the flights of fancy can yield fringe benefits like a man made up as a watermelon.
Outside the main competition, another amusingly gruff patriarch is played by Om Puri in "East is East," a funny, ribald family story about the culture clash between English and Pakistani attitudes. It has Miramax behind it and good commercial prospects ahead.
Before Sunday night's awards ceremony, the festival has several major entries yet to unveil. They include (out of competition) "Dogma," in which Kevin Smith grapples with religion; "An Ideal Husband," Oliver Parker's enveloping version of the Oscar Wilde play; David Lynch's "Straight Story," eagerly anticipated although it is about a man named Straight on a long tractor ride; Peter Greenaway's "8 1/2 Women," and "Rosetta," from the Belgian brothers whose previous film was the haunting "La Promesse."
It will take a lot to change the fact that Pedro Almodovar's "All About My Mother" is the talk of the town.
Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, the former University of Central Florida film students who were this year's left-field heroes at Sundance, are here with "The Blair Witch Project," the horror movie they made with a clever pseudo-documentary conceit and a tiny budget.
"I've seen people here wearing more than the movie cost," said Myrick a few nervous moments before heading to the film's official evening screening.
There have been long lines for this sleeper, which has had a million hits at its Web site, www.blairwitch.com, and will spawn a comic book and assorted other tie-ins.