Image series: The Loneliness of the Artist (and Michel Piccoli)
Daniel KasmanFrom La Belle noiseuse (1991); featuring Michel Piccoli and Jane Birkin; directed by Jacques Rivette; cinematography by William Lubtchansky:
May 2008
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: wrap-up
Daniel KasmanClick the below links for all coverage of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and stay tuned for some shorter round-up pieces later this week:Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt, USA) Frontier of Dawn (Garrel, France
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"Frontier of Dawn" (Garrel, France)
Daniel KasmanAbove: Laura Smet (left) and Louis Garrel (right) as the the first pair of lovers in Philippe Garrel's Frontier of Dawn. Philippe Garrel's cinema—which tends towards the suicidal—questions whether everything
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Wendy and Lucy" (Reichardt, USA)
Daniel KasmanAbove: Michelle Williams as Wendy. Remember the utter destitution of Old Joy's final scene, Will Oldham ejected from a deep, but expired and uncomfortable friendship into the unforgiving city streets
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At the cinematheque: "History is Made at Night" (Borzage, USA, 1937)
Daniel KasmanAbove: A studio production still unintentionally captures the Borzage essence, two lovers, Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur, transcendentally alone in their bliss. "Is it something like love?" "It is
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "The Headless Woman" (Martel, Argentina)
Daniel KasmanAbove: Vero (María Onetto) in one of the film's many emblematic, ghostly uses of foreground and background in its compositions. Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel (The Holy Girl, La Ciénaga) curls
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Ashes of Time Redux" (Wong, Hong Kong)
Daniel KasmanJonathan Rosenbaum rightly described Jim Jarmusch's 1995 film Dead Man as an "acid western," but I wonder if he had known that Wong Kar-wai beat Jarmusch to the punch in 1994 with his acid wuxia, Ashes
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "El Cant dels occels" (Serra, Spain)
Daniel KasmanSome stories are told so many times there is no longer any need for words. Albert Serra understands this. His digitalized, elliptical, nature-bound adaptation of Quixote, Honor de cavalleria, and now
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Two Lovers" (Gray, USA)
Daniel KasmanAbove: Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) with one of his two lovers, Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). James Gray has exactly what American cinema needs—sincerity. Gray deals in melodrama—and male melodrama at that—but
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Le Genou d'Artemide" (Straub, Italy) & "Itinéraire de Jean Bricard" (Straub/Huillet, France)
Daniel KasmanIt is easy to forget that the cinema is but light and shadow, and for such a simple admission, it takes someone like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet to remind us of this vital fact.Le Genou d'Artemide
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "La Vie moderne" (Depardon, France)
Daniel KasmanProduced as part of what I believe is a series of films for television on rural French life, Raymond Depardon's La Vie moderne (Modern Life) seems very fresh to these American eyes—a film that takes an
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Cannes Film Festival, 2008: "Liverpool" (Alonso, Argentina)
Daniel KasmanAbove: Farrel (Juan Fernandez) disembarks to visit his family in the mountains. "Anywhere but here" is the common phrase, but Liverpool's variation seems to be "anywhere but anywhere." Lisandro Alonso