Cannes 2012 Day One: “Refreshed” Bruce Willis from “Moonrise Kingdom” (video)

  May 16, 2012 - 21:42 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Comedy dominated the opening of the Cannes film festival on Wednesday, May 16 with Wes Anderson's child fantasy "Moonrise Kingdom" in a tussle with Sacha Baron Cohen's anarchic alter ego General Aladeen for the attention of the world's media.

Thousands of journalists and movie executives are in the glamorous Riviera resort for 12 hectic days of screenings, red carpets, parties and dealmaking, and the first day is typical of the diary clashes they face.

Anderson's film, starring Bruce Willis and Bill Murray, is the official opening entry in the main competition of 22 films, ensuring a splashy launch with a press screening, news briefing, interviews and red carpet gala premiere on Wednesday evening.

And the judges are...

Ewan McGregor may offer tips on how to win the coveted Cannes Film Festival main prize as he discusses his role as part of the jury panel, Belfast Telegraph reported.

The Trainspotting actor joins actress Diane Kruger and fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier on the jury at this year's festival in the South of France.

The nine-strong group, which also includes Wuthering Heights director Andrea Arnold, will decide which film wins the coveted Palme d'Or.

American filmmaker Alexander Payne, whose films include Election and Sideways, is also on the jury.

Young love in “Moonrise Kingdom”

The Cannes film festival kicked off with quirky U.S. comedy "Moonrise Kingdom", Wes Anderson's exploration of childhood and young love centred around two 12-year-olds who fall in love and run away together, Reuters said.

The touching tale, set in 1965 on an island off the coast of New England, was a popular opening movie in the French Riviera resort, drawing laughs and warm applause at a press screening ahead of the official evening world premiere.

Anderson, presenting a film for the first time in Cannes, had no such challenge, having been handed the coveted opening competition slot and boasting a cast that includes Bill Murray, Bruce Willis and Tilda Swinton.

His light-hearted, surreal picture also features two young actors marking their movie debuts -- Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward were just 12 when they auditioned for the parts of Sam and Suzy, respectively.

"I didn't know that I wanted to become an actor until I actually started working on the movie, and that's when I really began to realise that this is what I love doing," Hayward told reporters at a press conference.

In Moonrise Kingdom, Sam, an oddball and unpopular orphaned boy scout, runs away from his summer camp to meet up with Suzy, a girl with whom he has fallen in love. Suzy's parents, played by Murray and Frances McDormand, consider her to be a problem child, and she has no qualms in leaving them to be with Sam.

The young couple set up camp, read books, become friends, and experience sexual awakening away from the troubled world of adults, but when the grown-ups eventually catch up with them their dramatic adventure does not end.

Murray, who has appeared in most of Anderson's films including "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "Rushmore", joked that the director had become his sole employer, although he did not get paid for his troubles. "I really don't get any other work but through Wes. I just wait by the phone," he said in his trademark deadpan delivery.

"These are what we call art films. I don't know if you know what those are. They're films where you work very, very long hours for no money and...all we get is this trip to Cannes."

He also welcomed Willis into the Anderson "family". "Bruce is a serious crazy movie star, and for him to play the part of the town cop in this one-car town was fun, it was great and it really pays off. "He really does have the great heroic 'Die Hard' moment at the end of this silly little kids' film. It's one of the biggest laughs of any film I've ever been in."

For Willis, best known as an action hero, the chance to work on a low-budget, low-profile movie was a welcome change.

"I found it really refreshing to be directed, to be asked to perform the part in a really specific way," he told reporters. "In a world where a lot of films where you don't rehearse and no one really talks to you about it, it was so nice to be asked to work in a certain way. "It (the film) is about love, it's about new love and young love and love that has gotten mixed up and messed up. It's all still the same story of how everybody needs to be loved in some way."

Cannes 2012 Day Two

Cannes day two will feature After the Battle (Baad el Mawkeaa) is an upcoming Egyptian drama film directed by Yousry Nasrallah and Jacques Audiard’s film Rust & Bone. In the film follows Ali, a burly jock who finds himself homeless and looking for work while also burdened with his young son.