Wrapping Cannes 09.

By David Hudson on 05/26/2009

[Updated through 6/1]

"This year's Cannes Film Festival was notable for its blood-splattered screens, digital projections and emergent and resurgent auteurs," writes Manohla Dargis in an overview for the New York Times blog, ArtsBeat. And she's got a nifty link, too, to a chart of rankings from French film critics in Le Film Français.

Via Neil Young, Christoph Huber's posted quick takes on films he caught during the first and second weeks at La lectora provisoria.

More summing up: Melissa Anderson (Artforum), Roger Ebert, indieWIRE, Eric Kohn (Wrap), Eric Lavallee (Ioncinema), Little White Lies, Geoffrey Macnab (Independent), Wesley Morris (Boston Globe) and Celia Walden (Telegraph).

Little White Lies looks back on the "Women of Cannes."

Glen Levy runs through a brief history of the Palme d'Or for Time.

Online listening tip. At GreenCine Daily, Aaron Hillis talks with one of the best dispatchers from Cannes this year, Mike D'Angelo, about "the unusual way he funded his 12-day expedition, why he feels Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon' was a lousy choice to win the Palme d'Or, the significance of Twitter in film journalism today, and why he never seems to like any of the movies he sees (or so you think)."

Online viewing tip. The Guardian's Catherine Shoard wraps it up.

Online viewing tips. Blake Ethridge is posting video and photos.

Updates, 5/27: "[I]f the most characteristic films selected for competition at Cannes were put under psychoanalysis, a fundamental, ontological anxiety might be revealed," writes J Hoberman in the Voice: "Do movies still move us? Does cinema still have the power to thrill? What does it take to provide a visceral experience? Not for nothing did [Gaspar] Noé describe 'Enter the Void' as a ghost story. Is the medium itself even alive? Unlike the past two festivals, Cannes 2009 did not offer a superabundance of cinematic riches. But the short answer is yes, of course."

"From indieWIRE's vantage point, there are twelve absolute must-see films from Cannes 09." Brian Brooks lists 'em. iW's also conducted a tidy little poll, and Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" has come out on top.

"Cannes is wonderful and horrible, a delight and a grind, an exaltation and an exhaustion. People wonder why you'd go to Cannes as a film journalist, and the fact is that it's essentially a time machine; in less than two weeks, you can see the 30 movies everyone'll be talking about (for good and ill) over the next two years, or discover the writers, directors and actors we'll be talking about for the next 10-20." At MSN, James Rocchi presents "the best and worst of the final films I managed to see at Cannes, with my bleary-eyed notes."

"Who came out ahead and behind on their Cannes jaunt this year?" Anne Thompson on how the studios and other industry movers and shakers moved and shook.

"As much as Cannes represents the pulse of contemporary international art cinema, there was a sense this year that that cinema may be a cinema of the past." Scott Macaulay explains at FilmInFocus.

Updates, 5/28: Scott Foundas offers an overview of another batch of Competition entries; also in the LA Weekly: "By this time, news should be out everywhere that Cannes this year was a special vintage," writes Philippe Garnier. "Not only did most of the selected 'usual suspects' outdo themselves in big and unexpected ways - or, like Alain Resnais, find new resources and verve which, frankly, we didn't know they had in them - but it is also a measure of how shockingly strong this year was that the fest still had room for very good fare in the 20-film Un Certain Regard sidebar, from Israeli first-timer Haim Tabakman's 'Eyes Wide Open' to the wonderful Colombian entry 'The Wind Journeys' by Ciro Guerra, in which an itinerant accordion player crosses the country from contest to contest - surprising challenges like saxophonists' bouts in 1930's Kansas City, or present-day rappers' gabfests."

In the Boston Phoenix, Lisa Nesselson looks back on another "grueling and exciting" edition of the festival.

"At Berlin and Venice, few get worked up over the results," writes Patrick Z McGavin at Stop Smiling. "At Cannes, the awards constitute the final act of showboating political theater."

In The Auteurs' Notebook, Daniel Kasman recalls his favorite moments from the final days of the festival.

Updates, 5/29: "A surgeon's smock replaced the customary tux or evening gown at this year's Cannes Film Festival as the most appropriate attire, so drenched in blood and gore were many of the major entries," writes James Quandt in the Japan Times. "To walk the red carpet became a wade in viscera, film after film offering all manner of mutilation and dismemberment. The once disreputable horror genre was everywhere, crossing over into the rarefied realms of the art film, whether to reflect the dire state of the world, or to capture a fast disappearing audience with a version of torture porn."

"Fittingly for a post-bubble Cannes, the festival began with inflated expectations. The competition lineup seemed almost perversely promising. They've got von Trier! Tarantino! Jane Campion! Michael Haneke! Pedro Almodóvar! Tsai Ming-liang! And one after another, most bowed with blah retreads of past work, solid in execution but limited in ambition. Until late in the fest, it seemed indisputable that the Un Certain Regard sidebar was superior." An overview from Ben Kenigsberg in Time Out Chicago.

Patrick Z McGavin ranks the Competition.

Update, 5/30: Amy Taubin for Artforum: "The coincidence of large numbers of films featuring women--either troubled or in trouble--with a jury headed by the reigning actress of French cinema, Isabelle Huppert, and on which the women (all of them actresses) outnumbered the men (all of them writers or directors) five to four, made for some very strange misogynist buzz on the Croisette."

Update, 5/31: Online viewing tips. "Cannes 09: Red Bucket Films Buttons."

Updates, 6/1: Blake Ethridge looks back on the best of the fest.

"In summarizing, analyzing, weighing what Cannes is, it becomes necessary to include the parallel Cannes, the Cannes of Un Certain Regard, the Directors' Fortnight, out of competition and Critics' Week." An overview from Patrick Z McGavin.

Anne Thompson posts "a gallery of leftover photos and videos I didn't use, just for fun and flavor."

The Auteurs: a Cannes index.

Tags: Cannes 2009