(Cannes) Our special correspondent on the Croisette reports on the latest news from the Cannes Film Festival.
Surrounded by part of his cast, including Scarlett Johansson Jason Schwartzman and Bryan Cranston, Wes Anderson came to Cannes with Asteroid City, “a poetic meditation on the meaning of life” in the running for the Palme d’Or. Taking place in 1955 in a fictional town located in the middle of the desert, the plot notably echoes a cosmic event that occurred there. During a press conference held on Wednesday, the American filmmaker, who wrote his screenplay with Roman Coppola, spoke about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life. “To be honest, I wouldn’t trust my opinions on this in any way!” “, declared the one having for the third time a film selected in competition. “The exhaustive research we have done is nothing like what is taught in academies! Asteroid City hits theaters June 23 in Quebec.
Forming an alternative rock duo with his sidekick Carter Logan, Jim Jarmusch is in Cannes not as a filmmaker, but as a musician. His group Sqürl indeed imagined the music for four silent short films made in the 1920s by Man Ray. Presented as part of Cannes Classics, Le retour à la raison (1923), Emak-Bakia (1926), L’étoile de mer (1928) and Les mysteries du château du Dé (1929) are brought together in a program designed to a unique work of art. In another way, the director of Only Lovers Left Alive is also present in The Dead Leaves, the film by Aki Kaurismäki in the running for the Palme d’Or. The Finnish filmmaker has indeed used in his film an extract from The Dead Don’t Die, the most recent feature film by Jim Jarmusch which, in 2019, opened the Cannes Film Festival.
The 76th Cannes Film Festival is not yet over and speculation is already rife for the 80th Venice Film Festival, which will take place at the end of the summer. According to the British specialist newspaper Screen, artistic director Alberto Barbera should in principle set his sights on new films by Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things with Emma Stone), Matteo Garrone (Io Capitano), Pablo Larraín (El Conde, dark comedy about Augusto Pinochet), Bradley Cooper (Maestro on Leonard Bernstein), Michael Mann (Ferrari with Adam Driver) and Luca Guadagnino (Challengers with Zendaya and Josh O’Connor). Priscilla, by Sofia Coppola, and Napoleon, a blockbuster directed by Ridley Scott, are also expected.
