'Death Proof' reviewed in Cannes

Dave Calhoun reviews Tarantino's extended 'Grindhouse' entry and sees a likely Palme d'Or winner.

May 23 2007

Yesterday was a marathon day of screenings here in Cannes that began with a possible Palme d'Or-winner, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' from 'Basquiat' and 'Before Night Falls' director Julian Schnabel. It's not that Schnabel's French-language film is the best film playing in competition film here - although it's certainly one of them - but this inventive and moving adaptation of Jean-Dominque Bauby's popular memoir may well prove a jury favourite or at least a film on which jury president Stephen Frears and his eight jurors, including actresses Toni Collette and Sarah Polley and directors Marco Bellochio and Abderrahmane Sissako, can all agree. So far, I'd say that it's a straight toss-up for the top prize between Schnabel's movie and the Romanian film, Cristian Mungiu's '4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days' - with the Coen brothers' 'No Country for Old Men' sneaking up on the outside.

But it's important to remember that Cannes prizes are notoriously difficult to predict. Last year, no one expected Ken Loach to pick up the prize for 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' and there are still three more days of screenings to go at this year's festival, including new films from twice Palme d'Or-winner Emir Kusterica, French provocateur Catherine Breilliat and 'The Yards' director, James Gray. On that cautionary note, it's a good idea to put the betting-talk to one side and return to the films that unspooled yesterday.

'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' was a literary sensation when it was published in 1997 just days after the death of its author. Two years earlier, Bauby was the editor of French Elle magazine and suffered a major stroke while driving in the countryside with his young son, which left him with the very rare 'locked-in syndrome' - a condition which meant he was entirely paralysed apart from his left eye, which he learnt to use with precision to communicate with the outside world and, with the help of a dedicated speech therapist, write a book. There are hints here of Francois Ozon's 'Time to Leave' in the film's portrayal of a successful man unaware of his mortality having suddenly to confront serious illness and likely death, but this is a much more rich and unique affair that delights in its 'locked-in' perspective on Bauby's tragedy. Schnabel sidesteps a possibly cloying and sentimental bedside tale to tackle Bauby's state head-on and, most importantly, cinematically. Visually, this is a claustrophobic and imaginative treat as Schnabel and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, a Spielberg-veteran, take us behind Bauby's eyes and try to express his mental trauma through moments of visual poetry, from icebergs crashing into the sea to a diving-bell sinking into the ocean to snapshots of Marlon Brando. It's refreshing that a filmmaker has set himself such a tough filmic challenge and pulled it off with quite some verve.

Elsewhere, Quentin Tarantino presented his longer version of 'Death Proof' - the film that began life as one half of the ill-fated 'Grindhouse' double-bill - and it went down at the press screening like a bomb under the seats. The film now runs to over two hours and frankly it's a tedious affair whose smug tics soon wear off: a 20-minute car chase at the end had me crawling for the door and lamenting that all the fun was being had behind the camera at our expense. It's one for dedicated fan-boys only.

Marjane Satrapi's 'Persepolis', a feature-length animation based on a filtering of her confessional comic-books detailing a childhood spent both in Iran and Europe was funny and sometimes powerful and blessed with a striking black and white style and a ferocious dry wit. Afficionados of the comic book tell me that it's not so detailed, and there's a sense that the film skips over a young life rather than diving in headfirst, but respect to the festival for selecting such a diversion in the competition section.

At midnight last night, Harmony Korine's 'Mister Lonely', his first film in eight years, had its world premiere and immediately had critics divided as to its worth. It's a film that certainly needs an open mind and a forgiving eye as it tends to ramble and delights in its own obscurity - but this tale of a bunch of celebrity impersonators (James Fox as the Pope, Samantha Morton as Marilyn Monroe, Anita Pallenberg as the Queen, Diego Luna as Michael Jackson) certainly has its great charms and its most successful comic moments recall Monty Python, not least when Korine has nuns falling from the sky - urged on by Werner Herzog - in a side-parable about the dangers of seeking glory for life's miracles. It's definitely the most bonkers film in the festival and one that trades in honest emotions among its horseplay.

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