After a pleasant but low-key opening day, Cannes kicked into top gear on its first evening, with a line-up of stars other festivals could only dream of – not to mention sunshine, cloudless skies and a Mediterranean that helped the Cote d’Azur live up to its name.
In retrospect, its opening ceremony was an obvious magnet for paparazzi and rubber-neckers. This year’s jury has its share of major stars – jury chairman Robert De Niro, Uma Thurman and Jude Law. And the choice of a film to open the festival, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, proved a masterstroke. Allen likes to people his films with good-looking actors, and Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard and Adrien Brody showed up for the premiere, helping those who live by shooting red-carpet arrivals feel it was a major payday.
17.58 Lynne Ramsey, the director of WNTTAK, has described the film as "Ben Hur on a Blue Peter budget", and acknowledged that it is going to spark controversy: I think a film like this you're always going to have a bit of a controversial reaction but you know I feel good about the piece of work I've done. There was an nice sense of satisfaction at the end of making the film and Cannes was a bonus. It is material that occupies relatively taboo status, the concept of a mother, she is detached, who isn't in love with her son, it's a tough one.
17.34 We Need to Talk About Kevin stars Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly and director Lynne Ramsey have been giving a press conference about WNTTAK, in which they defend it against accusations of violence. Ah, but is it more violent than KFP2? That's a Tarantinoesque bloodbath, apparently:
17.14 Tim Robey has the verdict on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (POTCOST, from now on). He says that "The only way was up from At World's End", the last instalment which was, admittedly, incomprehensible. But, alas, it's still not great::
Out of the hands of director Gore Verbinski, whose indulgent brand of stoner-surrealism has found a satisfying new home in Rango, it has instead fallen into the clutches of Rob Marshall (Chicago, Nine). The movie he gives us is at once more eager to please and all the more blatantly third-rate. It clomps along, doing all the baseline things you expect from it, and nothing besides.