Cannes In Keswick
Imagine the limousines gunning along the Corniche from Grange down to Portinscale...
On a fleet of Sunseeker motor yachts moored at Nichol End it’s party time for the cigar-chomping executives, the exotic stars and the glamorous hangers on, in Keswick to wheel and deal, the crème de la crème of international movie land.
The paparazzi hustling for boats at the launch landings to get closer to that intimate exclusive and piling out of the Square Orange to catch the frocks and smiles on the red carpet outside the Alhambra.
Meanwhile, holed up in the Studio at Theatre by the Lake, Steven Spielberg and his Festival Jury defend their decision to give prizes to films containing extreme violence (A Touch of Sin, Heli) or explicit sex (Blue is the Warmest Colour).
And out in the Market Square the world’s press try desperately to broadcast the controversy over that elusive mobile phone signal.
...Cannes 2013 comes to Keswick!
Featuring
Inspired by four shocking, allegedly true, events that forced the world's fastest growing economy into a period of self-examination, written and directed by master filmmaker Jia Zhangke (The World, Still Life), this daring, poetic and grand-scale film focuses on four characters, each living in different provinces of China, who are driven to violent ends.
"The violence hangs over the film like a haze: gunshot wounds to the face, ugly and very real-looking fistfights. This is a bitter, jagged, disaffected drama, pessimistic about China, pessimistic about the whole world. One character asks another if he ever feels like travelling abroad. 'Why would I?' he replies. 'Everywhere is broke. Foreigners come here now.' Jia Zhangke's movie gives us a brutal unwelcome." (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
Director/Writer Jia won the 2013 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Screenplay.
Thanks to Arrow Films
Based upon Julie Maroh's award winning graphic novel La vie d’Adèle, Blue is the Warmest Colour follows the tumultuous relationship of student Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Emma, a young woman with blue hair (Léa Seydoux), both of whom are struggling to establish their own identity, as they emerge painfully into adulthood. An epic and erotic love story the film includes extended and explicit sex scenes.
For the first time at Cannes, the 2013 Festival jury insisted that the Palme d’Or prize should be accepted not only by the Franco-Tunisian director but also by his two young stars.
Thanks to Artificial Eye
Koreeda's last film I Wish was a highlight of last year's KFF. His piercing new film starts from a conundrum: what if it were discovered, six years after the event, that a hospital had inadvertently swapped two male babies and given them to the wrong parents? Despite marked differences in class, temperament and approaches to parenting, the Nonomiya and Saiki couples respond to this bombshell by exchanging their sons.
Thanks to Arrow Films
Heli tells the story of the titular protagonist (Armando Espitia), a seventeen-year-old boy living with his wife (Linda González) and his sister, Estela (Andrea Vergara). The film follows the arcs of these characters and Estela's boyfriend (Juan Eduardo Palacios) as they struggle with drugs, violence, and corruption. Their plight appears to be hopeless since it's almost impossible to tell the difference between drug dealers, police and soldiers.
The movie is, shocking and dispiriting, and one assumes this was Escalante's intention: to testify, unflinchingly, to the horrors of his country’s drug war. A damning indictment of contemporary Mexico. (IMDB)
Please note that there is one scene of sadistic violence and you need to be prepared to be shocked.
Thanks to Network Releasing