Cannes diary part six: 'Southland Tales' disappoints

Geoff Andrew isn't impressed with Richard Kelly's long-awaited follow-up to 'Donnie Darko'.

May 22 2006

Historically, Cannes has frequently premiered some of its highest-profile titles over its first weekend; so it's arguably another sign of the renewed confidence of the Festival under Thierry Frémaux's directorship in the last two or three years that the films screened over the weekend this year were notable more for their sheer diversity than for any tried-and-trusted audience appeal.

Even the most jingoistic of British pundits would surely concede that 'Red Road', the first feature from Andrea Arnold, was not exactly the kind of movie to draw the biggest crowds; and clearly the same could be said for Un Certain Regard and Out-of-Competition films from Algeria, Indonesia, Egypt, Italy and Belgium.

As for the Competition itself, besides Arnold's impressive debut, we saw work from France's Nicole Garcia, Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and the USA's Richard Kelly (not, you'll probably agree, the most mainstream of contemporary American directors).

Of course, high-profile has nothing to do with high-quality, and the standard of work seen by this particular festivalier was very acceptable overall. For example, while most reckoned 'Charlie Says', by actress-turned-director Garcia, underwhelming, I found that its needlessly over-fragmented first hour – offering brief glimpses into three days in the lives of seven men all present in a Breton town that's hosting a scientific conference – was more or less compensated for by fine performances (Jean-Pierre Bacri, Vincent Lindon and the Benoîts Magimel and Poelvoorde are among the septet) and a pleasing eye and ear for the telling detail in a finally rather affecting study of male loneliness, loyalty and escapism.

'Bled Number One' ('Back Home'), by Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche, was notable primarily as a brave take on the more misogynist and oppressive aspects of life in today's Algeria, a tad meandering but generally compelling until its final 20 minutes or so, when it loses both plot and all sense of purpose almost completely.

And while Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kevern's 'Avida' is only sporadically as fruitful in its production of hilarious visual gags as was their earlier 'Aaltra', it certainly stands out as one of the most genuinely out-there efforts in the Festival so far, being a profoundly odd surreal fable that succeeds partly as a provocation and, with its cameos from Fernando Arrabal, Jean-Claude Carrière, Claude Chabrol et al, partly as an unfashionable tribute to notion that 'my art belongs to Dada'.

'Avida' at least makes sense as another example of Belgian cinema's tendency towards surrealism and has the virtue of a running-time of less than 90 mins, whereas Richard Kelly's 'Southland Tales' makes very little sense whatsoever and goes for an extremely wearisome 160 minutes.

You know very soon – immediately after the prologue, in fact, which shows a nuclear bomb mushrooming in Abilene, Texas on the Fourth of July, 2005 – that you're in trouble when you see a ludicrously made-up Wally Shawn (as if he needed the make up!!) and a dwarf playing the powers behind a conglomerate that's established a 'liquid karma' replaceable fuel installation in the Pacific just off Santa Monica.

We're now approaching the Fourth of July 2008, and besides the fact that the US has soldiers in Syria as well as Iraq, and surveillance-snipers are looking out for troublemakers on platforms on every LA street corner, and underground neo-Marxist groups are waging war on the increasingly oppressive establishment, and TV current affairs discussion is dominated by porn actresses… besides all this, the world is full of Felliniesque grotesques.

Kelly's interminable, incoherent and profoundly unrewarding apocalyptic sci-fi satire comes across as a messy mix of ideas (I use the word very loosely) filched from the Bible (Dwayne Johnson as JC, anyone?), 'La Dolce Vita', 'Metropolis'… and might that be 'The Fifth Element' in there, too? Morally and metaphysically confused, unfunny, heavy-handed, and as prone to waste, excess, idiocy and decadence as the emphatically allegorical world it imagines, it comes across as the dopehead nerd hipster's alternative to 'The Da Vinci Code'.

If 'Southland Tales' is a hugely disappointing follow-up to 'Donnie Darko', the same cannot be said for Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Climates', which is as subtle, substantial and sublimely beautiful as was his previous 'Uzak' ('Distant').

Like all his films to date, and again placing it at the opposite end of the spectrum from Kelly's mammoth folly, 'Climates' is both modest and (deceptively) simple, following the progress of an Istanbul couple (played by the writer-director and his real-life wife Ebru Ceylan) who during a summer holiday in Kas decide – at the man's suggestion – to break up.

The man starts seeing another woman, but after a while decides he misses his former partner, who's now working far away in snowy, mountainous Eastern Turkey. The climatic metaphor never feels forced, so delicately nuanced are the script, performances and quietly observant direction.

That said, this is no mere slice of lyricism; a sex scene, in particular, is extraordinarily tough, and Ceylan has lost none of his willingness to probe both the less attractive aspects of everyday human behaviour and the cruel ironies of life, so that the film feels almost painfully honest.

That said, he does so with such wit, intelligence and exquisite artistry – if the Festival comes up with more visually stunning film than this, I'll be very surprised – that the film confirms him as one of the most exciting cinematic talents to emerge in recent years.

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