CANNES 2016: WOODY'S FRENCH FESTIVAL LOVE STORY

On May 11, Woody Allen will make history when his latest work, Café Society, has its World Premiere as the Opening Night film of the 69^th Cannes Film Festival. It will be the third feature from the revered director to debut in the prestigious slot – the first time that a filmmaker has earned that honour. For the 80 year-old New Yorker, it is the latest declaration of respect and admiration from the event that has feted his work for over three decades…

MANHATTAN debuts in 1979
Like the rest of the cinema-going world, French cinephiles warmed to Allen as a true auteur in the wake of his blockbuster hit, Annie Hall. His early comedies Sleeper and Love and Death had played well to Euro audiences, but it was the 1977 Best Picture Oscar winner that put him on the map; a huge French hit, it would be nominated for the Foreign Film Cesar. When it was announced his follow-up would be a cinematic love letter to The Big Apple, interest from the Cannes Film Festival organisers was piqued. Manhattan opened in the US on April 25 to positive reviews and audience favour; a fortnight later, it had its international premiere Out of Competition at the 32^nd Cannes Film Festival. Despite the reclusive Allen’s decision not to attend the screening (actress Mariel Hemingway represented), it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Cannes and Woody. The Cesar voting body said thank you by honouring Manhattan with the Best Foreign Film trophy. (Pictured, right; Mariel Hemingway in Cannes, 1979)

(Above: Woody Allen and Mia Farrow in Broadway Danny Rose)

Allen’s 80’s Americana – BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, RADIO DAYS and NEW YORK STORIES.
Allen’s cinematic fortune ebbed and flowed in the following years. Stardust Memories (1980) divided critics; A Midsummer’s Night Sex Comedy (1982) was considered a trifle; Zelig (1983) restored his critical lustre but only posted arthouse numbers. The resurgent career impetus that Allen would enjoy for the remainder of the 1980’s began when the 1984 Cannes Film Festival programmed out-of-competition the Oscar-nominated Broadway Danny Rose (the slot resonated with Allen, as it put him in the company of his film idol, Ingmar Bergman, who was presenting After the Rehearsal). Featuring a brilliant comic turn by then-wife Mia Farrow, Broadway Danny Rose was the first on Allen’s ‘Americana’ films, works that embraced the melancholy of show business’ early days, and the Cannes crowd loved them. The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) would win the coveted FIPRESCI Prize at the 1985 event; Radio Days (1987) screened Out of Competition in 1987. Allen’s first taste of Opening Night prestige was 1989’s New York Stories, an omnibus film that featured Allen’s ‘Oedipus Wrecks’ short alongside contributions by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola; the film garnered a mixed reaction and would be the last of Woody Allen’s film on the Croisette for over a decade.  

HOLLYWOOD ENDING opens the 2002 Cannes Films Festival.
Cannes gave Woody some breathing space throughout the 1990’s, a decade that featured some of his most revered works (Husbands and Wives, 1992; Bullets Over Broadway, 1994; Mighty Aphrodite, 1995; Sweet and Lowdown, 1999). It would not be until 2002 that Cannes rekindled the love affair when they afforded his contemporary LA-set comedy, Hollywood Ending, his first solo Opening Night red-carpet rollout. In hindsight, the film seems an odd choice; it is not regarded as one of Allen’s best and represents, alongside 2003’s Anything Else, what many consider a low point in the filmmaker’s output. But the coverage provided in the world’s press, trumpeting the appearance of Allen in Cannes for the first time in his long career, was pure showbiz and entirely in line with the A-list event glamour one expects from the Cannes Film Festival. (Pictured, right; Co-stars Tiffani Thiessen and Debra Messing accompany Allen and wife Soon-Yi at the Cannes 2002 premiere of Hollywood Ending).

The European Films of the 00’s – MATCH POINT, VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER.
The director sensed that true creative freedom and an enriched appreciation of his work were best explored in Europe (much of his funding had been sourced from continental backers in recent years). Despite the occasional sojourn to his homeland (the underappreciated Melinda and Melinda, 2004; Whatever Works, 2009), the 2000s brought a re-energised Allen back to the critical and commercial forefront with three European-lensed films that played to adoring Cannes audiences. In 2005, his potent London-set thriller Match Point played Out of Competition, the ecstatic response paving the way for his best box-office performer in 20 years; in 2008, the erotically-charged Vicky Christina Barcelona set the Croisette ablaze, premiering at Cannes ahead of a US$100million worldwide gross and a Supporting Actress Oscar for Penelope Cruz; and, in 2010, Allen returned to London, this time with Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin, for the whimsical drama, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, premiering Out of Competition. It was a prolific period of production that saw the director at the height of his craft, offering a run of films that culminated in Allen’s second Opening Night honour…

(Above: Allen at the You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger press conference, Cannes 2010)

The Triumph of MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.
Cannes organisers knew Allen’s 41^st film was something special when they secured it for the 64^th edition’s May 11 Opening Night slot in 2011. The Festival broke with tradition and opened the event to both industry types and the general public. It was a coup for Allen’s French distributor, who put the film into day-and-date national release, ensuring massive media coverage. The director jumped on board the promotional juggernaut, bringing to the Croisette his stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Michael Sheen, Adrien Brody and local starlet Lea Seydoux. And critics were unanimous; Midnight in Paris was Woody Allen’s best work in years, the time-hopping romantic fantasy ultimately earning Allen the Best Original Screenplay Oscar (from the pic’s four nomination). Robert Weide’s Woody Allen: A Documentary would follow in 2012, and the director himself would return in 2015 with his Emma Stone/Joaquin Phoenix starrer, Irrational Man, but the rapturous Midnight in Paris soiree remains the night to remember from the Cannes Film Festival’s long and affectionate romance with Woody Allen. (Pictured, right; Allen with his Midnight in Paris cast, Cannes 2011).

The 69th Festival International du Film de Cannes will launch with a screening of Woody Allen’s new film, Café Society, on Wednesday 11 May in the Palais des Festivals’s Grand Théâtre Lumière as an Official Selection Out of Competition title.

THE YEAR IN REVIEW, PART 3: OUR TEN FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2015

With only hours left until we welcome in a fresh new year of cinema-going, here’s the final Best of… list you’ll have to endure. Chosen from the 545 films I’ve watched this year (it’s true; check out star ratings of every one we’ve seen via our Letterboxd page), here they are - The SCREEN-SPACE Ten Favourite Films of 2015…

10. YOUTH
In the ironically titled Youth, Paolo Sorrentino explores the notion of wisdom, artistry and friendship; familiar ground for Italian director, the themes central to his 2013 stunner, The Great Beauty. If the auteur’s occasionally artful narrative proves testing, one can always bask in the stunning visuals; Youth is arguably the most beautifully lensed film of the year.
Best bits: Jane Fonda’s acerbic cameo; Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel get giddy while sharing a spa with a naked Miss Universe (the majestic Madalina Ghenea).

9. CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA
Like Sorrentino’s moody drama, Olivier Assayas’ finest work in years brings a bracing Euro-sensibility and vivid visual style to an exploration of how memory and melancholy work to redefine one’s later life. As the actress revisiting the seminal project of her career, a larger-than-life Juliette Binoche is warm and compelling; that Kirsten Stewart (pictured, right), as her insightful PA, matches her beat-for-beat is the film’s true revelation (earning the Twilight starlet serious new cred and a Supporting Actress Cesar).
Best bits: Stewart takes command of a line reading for Binoche’s struggling diva; the clouds, snaking through the alpine valleys.  

8. EX MACHINA
The directorial debut of writer Alex Garland (28 Days Later; The Beach; Sunshine) melds moody chamber-piece/single-setting character drama with near-future AI super-tech. The result is a chilling, low-key, high-voltage cyber thriller that pulsates with dark humour and sexual tension; as the dream-girl android Ava, Alicia Wikander earned her ‘2016 It-Girl’ status with an iconic genre performance.
Best bits: Oscar Isaac’s disco moves alongside Sonoya Mizuno; Ava’s breakout.

7. 99 HOMES
Capturing that moment during the 2008 housing market crash when a ruthless adherence to capitalism took hold, writer/director Ramin Bahrani’s Faustian morality tale pits compromised everyman Andrew Garfield against the soulless might of financial sector hyena Michael Shannon. As the middle-class evaporates and suburbs become ghost towns, the dark heart of the crumbling American empire is exposed with a fierce clarity in this Wall Street for the new millennium.
Best bits: That first eviction; “America doesn’t bail out losers. America was built by bailing out winners.”
Read the SCREEN-SPACE interview with director Ramin Bahrani here.

6. THE AGE OF ADALINE
“Krieger’s vivid, melancholic melodrama emerges as a major work in the tough-to-pull-off ‘romantic fantasy’ genre subset…”
Read the full SCREEN-SPACE review of The Age of Adaline here.

5. WILD
As real-life recovering addict and author Cheryl Strayed, Reese Witherspoon gives a career-best performance in Jean-Marc Vallee’s adaptation of the autobiographical bestseller, Wild. Every emotionally enriching, soul baring consequence of the 1,100 mile trek Strayed made along the Pacific Crest Trail is captured in Witherspoon’s interpretation; Vallee’s fluent non-linear narrative builds to a deeply moving denouement.
Best bits: The fox; losing the boot; Laura Dern.

4. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION
Tom Cruise’s fifth spin as super-agent Ethan Hunt gets the nod as 2015’s best action pic over Mad Max Fury Road, by a whisker (don’t worry, we rave about George Miller’s action epic here). Fury Road was pure kinetic energy and a technical marvel, but it was slight on story; Christopher McQuarrie’s slick, thrilling old-school spy adventure offered a dozen nail-biting moments and delirious B-movie plotting that both supported and drove the action. With Bond dropping the ball badly this year, Cruise’s M:I operative is cinema’s reigning superspy.
Best bits: Rebecca Ferguson; that plane stunt, of course; the virtuoso ‘opera house’ sequence.

3. IT FOLLOWS
Writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s first foray into horror riffed on every slasher pic trope in the book– the villain exists to punish the amorous; the ‘final girl’ archetype; absent and/or ineffectual adults; the final face-off. But It Follows was a study in deconstruction, and worked as a truly invigorating (and terrifying) new vision of those old standards. In Maika Monroe, horror has a fresh new muse; in the ever-walking force that stalks her, a classic new malevolence.
Best bits: The kitchen encounter; the old, naked guy on the roof; checking out every background extra to see if they are ‘it’.

2. LOVE & MERCY
“In succinct and sublime tones, Love & Mercy convinces that God only knows where American music would be without Brian Wilson…”
Read the full SCREEN-SPACE review of Love & Mercy here.

1. INSIDE OUT
That Pixar offered up another superb piece of smart, funny animated entertainment is not that surprising. It is a true family classic, the studio’s best film since Up, but something had to be. Inside Out is the year’s best film not because of its beautiful design elements or wonderful character rendering; instead, Pete Doctor’s and Ronnie Del Carmen’s vision soars as a profound study in teen anxiety, alienation, emotional upheaval and depression. Few films have ever conveyed the complexities of mental health with the clarity and devastating emotion achieved by this masterwork.
Best bits: Riley runs away; the mixing of the spheres; “Congratulations San Francisco, you've ruined pizza!”

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: Bridge of Spies, Shaun the Sheep, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Jupiter Ascending, The Visit, Everest.

Read The Year in Review, Part 1: The Ten Best Festival Sessions of 2015 here.
Read The Year in Review, Part 2: Australian Cinema in 2015 here. 

…AND THE WORST OF 2015:
2015 was a dire year for retread cinema, aka ‘The Reboot’ (Mad Max Fury Road being the exception that proves the rule). Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four got all the bad press, but it was a better film than the woefully ill-conceived Terminator: Genysis, the already-forgotten Poltergeist and the worthless new spin on Vacation. Worst of the bunch was JURASSIC WORLD, Universal’s wildly successful but grotesquely mounted bludgeoning of all that was enjoyable about the dino-trilogy to date. The box office suggested it worked for a new generation, but die-hard fans weren’t conned; like the genetic creation at the heart of its barely-there plotting, Jurassic World was borne of the same DNA as its ancestors but morphed into something both hideous and ridiculous.

DISHONOURABLE MENTIONS: Now Add Honey, Train Wreck, Chappie, Ride, The Walk, The Human Centipede 3 (Final Sequence), Get Hard.