Watch It! - Cannes Day: Heavyweights
By Jonathan Romney
It's quite possible that this will turn out to be a vintage Cannes, but on the present evidence, we shouldn't expect too much light relief. This has been as serious, as heavyweight a festival as we've seen in recent years, with art films and serious social statements the norm.
After opener Blindness, we've had Waltz With Bashir, the Israeli animation about the Sabra and Chatila massacre; Leonera, about a young Argentinian mother shut up with her child in a women's prison; and the British artist (pictured) Steve McQueen's startling and intense debut film Hunger, about Bobby Sands and other IRA hunger strikers in the Maze Prison.
More stark but compelling stuff came with the competition entry Three Monkeys, a departure by Turkish maestro Nuri Bilge Ceylan. As noir as thrillers come, this is the story of a working-class family breaking down when the father takes the rap for a hit-and-run accident. It starts in the Simenon bracket and ends up approaching Dostoevsky - with perhaps a dash of the Coens. Right now, it's my favourite contender for the Palme d'Or.
Meanwhile, a significant British discovery is the very oddball Soi Cowboy, a film made in Thailand by Thomas Clay, the young independent director whose debut The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael outraged many a couple of years ago.
The story of an obese Swede and his young Thai girlfriend, this oblique essay on sex tourism throws a decided curveball at the viewer by veering (apparently) way off-track in the last half-hour - and changing from black and white to colour - before giving us an ending that will qualify as one of the head-scratchers of the festival.
A very un-British director, Clay is doffing his hat here to auteurs such as Carlos Reygadas and Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Perhaps the least British UK film you've ever seen, Soi Cowboy confirms - as his first film didn't quite - that Clay is a man to watch.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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