Clint Eastwood seems a shoo-in for the Palme d'Or, but there's competition from a drama about marginalised people in Belgium, and Cannes also got its annual jolt of graphic sex, writes Michael Dwyer
AS NOTED in last Friday's Reel News, certain factors favour Clint Eastwood's prospects of collecting a major award at Cannes this year. He is in competition at the festival for the fifth time without ever winning. He turns 78 tomorrow week. The president of this year's Cannes jury, Sean Penn, won his Oscar for Mystic River, directed by Eastwood, although Penn has insisted he will show no bias.
Now there's a far more potent argument for Eastwood to take a prize, or even go the distance and win the Palme d'Or. That is the quality of his new film, The Exchange (formerly titled Changeling), which had its world premiere at Cannes on Tuesday night.
Eastwood has been setting the bar high for himself in recent years, with such accomplished films as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and the companion pictures, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. His masterly new film sustains that remarkable standard, and it features Angelina Jolie in what is by some way the outstanding performance of her career to date.
The Exchange opens in Los Angeles in March 1928, introducing Christine Collins (Jolie) as a caring mother to her nine-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffin), whose father left home when the boy was born. Discovering he has been in a fight at school, she advises Walter never to throw the first punch, but always to throw the last.
We learn how tenacious Christine can be when she comes out punching. Returning home from work as a telephone-exchange supervisor, she is alarmed that her son is missing. After five long months of hope mixed with despair, she is told by the LAPD that Walter has been found in Illinois. As soon as she meets the boy, she instinctively realises he is not her son, even though there is a strong physical resemblance, and her suspicions are confirmed when she measures his height and notices that he's circumcised.
Not for the first time in a movie, the LAPD is depicted as steeped in corruption. Determined to mark the case closed and to claim credit for finding Walter, they ignore the protests of a mere woman, as they regard Christine. Her only ally is a pastor (an effectively restrained John Malkovich), who has been campaigning vigorously from the pulpit and on his radio show against the vice within the police force.
And that is just the beginning of a fascinating film that adds layers as its scenario expands to address a range of themes, some deeply unsettling and at least as pertinent in the present day. The screenplay by J Michael Straczynski is exceptional and delivers a succession of surprises all the way to the final revelation that it's based on a true story.
The largely unfamiliar cast is exemplary, the period detail is impeccable, and Eastwood contributes a low-key score to accompany the accumulating dramatic tension as the story unfolds. The Exchange seems assured of multiple Oscar nominations next spring, and it well deserves the Palme d'Or, to be presented by Robert De Niro on Sunday.
The other memorable movie from the midway stage at Cannes has been Lorna's Silence, directed by Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who have received the Palme d'Or twice in the past 10 years, for Rosetta and L'Enfant. If they win on Sunday, they will be the first film-makers to take the prize a third time. Although not as emotionally wrenching as L'Enfant, their new film is marked by the brothers' consistent concern for social outsiders and by their incisive skill with narrative.
Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is a young Albanian immigrant in Liege, where she has married a young heroin addict, Claudy (Jeremie Renier), to obtain Belgian citizenship. To her, this is a business arrangement. Of necessity, they live together, in a small apartment where she has the bed and he sleeps on the floor. As her legal status looms and his payment is due, Claudy surprises her by going cold turkey, desperately struggling against temptation as his dealer persistently tries to get him hooked again.
There are several startling twists in the scenario devised by the Dardennes as they pursue their preoccupation with frailty, inhumanity and exploitation in the modern world, and tough as their film is, it yields moments of unexpected tenderness that are deeply affecting.
Renier, who has been acting since he was 14 and was cast by the Dardennes in La Promesse, is establishing himself as one of the finest young actors in European cinema, and he gives a terrific performance in Lorna's Silence. In the title role, Dobroshi, who is from Kosovo, demonstrates striking screen presence as she subtly juggles the contradictions in her complicated character.
Dobroshi has to be a frontrunner for the best actress award on Sunday, although she faces strong competition from Brazilian contender Martina Gusman for the Argentine drama Lion's Den. Gusman plays Julia, a college student who finds the bloody bodies of two men in her apartment - her lover, who is dead, and the man they shared, who is seriously injured.
Julia, who is expecting her first child, is sent to a prison housing mothers and pregnant inmates. Seeing Lion's Den so soon after the Belfast-set Hunger prompted an initial sense of deja vu, but the film's original setting, in a prison where children live with their mothers, sets it apart, as does Gusman's formidable performance. The film is astutely directed by her husband, talented Argentine film-maker Pablo Trapero.
The most reviled competition entry at Cannes this year has been the Filipino film, (Service), which one commentator suggested was selected for one reason, "to give the festival its annual jolt of graphic oral sex". The principal setting is a rundown porn cinema - ironically named Family, although it's run by a dysfunctional extended family who live in the building - and it doubles as a pick-up joint for gay prostitutes. The closest this overacted, voyeuristic yarn comes to brilliance is in the director's name: Brillante Mendoza.
