“Anatomical” Day Five at Cannes (video)

  May 21, 2012 - 16:15 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Cannes film festival Day Five: The Festival is normally associated with Hollywood royalty as the stars of the big screen descend on the French city.

But two of our more familiar stars were the centre of attention at the festivities on May 20.

Kelly Brook showed up with funnyman Keith Lemon, aka Leigh Francis, to promote his new movie Keith Lemon: The Film.

Lemon’s naked chaos

While Kelly showed off her best glamorous style, Leigh couldn't help but draw glares for all the wrong reasons.

Francis turned up in just a light pink V-neck T-shirt and some beige shorts - but he soon stripped to just a pair of leopard print pants.

And if that wasn't enough, he then proceeded to flash his bottom and even drink water from a pool out of Kelly's shoes.

The two stars posed as part of a photoshoot to promote the new movie and they were clearly having a lot of fun as they joked around and giggled while they cuddled each other.

While Kelly showed off her stunning figure in the frock, Keith held a beer bottle, which he took swigs from.

And she was obviously expecting some of his antics as she wrote on Twitter ahead of the trip: 'On our way to Cannes @LeighFrancis and the Chaos begins!!,' Daily Mail reported.

Michael Haneke's “Love”

Cannes Day Five featured Michael Haneke's new film “Amour”(Love).

The numerous critics and wide swath of public filmgoers attending the festival seem to have found common ground on a new movie: the mortality drama “Amour." Michael Haneke’s meticulous look at an octogenarian man and the wife he is slowly losing to the after-effects of a stroke (the French-language film is referred to as "Love" in English) scored raves from critics as well as a warmly enthusiastic reaction from the public when it premiered Sunday, May 20 in a rain-soaked Cannes.

Sunday night’s post-screening standing ovation, a key measure of Cannes sentiment, topped seven minutes, and audience members could be heard buzzing about the film on the way out in the manner you wouldn’t expect from a movie about a slow death.

Like its main characters’ existence, the film’s dramatic furniture is simple. Some problems with their grown daughter (Isabelle Huppert) notwithstanding, octogenarians Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Luis Trintignant) have led a comfortable, cultured life as music teachers, and seem to be enjoying a relaxed retirement. But when Anne is felled by a stroke, their idyll is destroyed. She begins declining mentally and physically, and he is pressed into a thousand difficult tasks while watching the love of his life fade away, asked to do a lot but not able to do anything where it really counts.

It’s the kind of movie that brings filmgoers starkly face-to-face with the realities of failing health and death. Older viewers will be more likely to focus on themselves; younger filmgoers will think of parents and grandparents, LA Times reported.

In their eighties themselves and, as a press conference indicated, more slow-footed than they once were, Riva and Trintignant hark back to an earlier time in entertainment. Riva, whose performance here makes her an instant Oscar contender, began her career in the wartime romance "Hiroshima Mon Amour" 53 years ago. (She would turn 86 the day of next year's Oscars, the oldest age of any nominee in history by about five years.)

Though 81, Trintignant has been working even longer, notably starring in movies such as Costa-Gavras’ best picture nominee “Z” over a remarkable 56-year career.

Still, Trintignant had been in retirement and hadn’t had a bona fide film part in nearly 15 years before Haneke lured him back. “I didn't want to act in films anymore,” Trintignant told reporters Sunday morning, saying he had been concentrating on occasional theater work. “But when Haneke offered me this part it was an exception,” describing how demanding the filmmaker is. He then added to some laughter, “I think he's one of the great directors in the world, and it’s a wonderful opportunity. But I won't do it again.”

Smoke without fire in “The Hunt”

Another competition film May 20 was Danish helmer Thomas Vinterberg's “The Hunt.”

The Danish director's Cannes Film Festival contender, the story of a small-town witch hunt triggered by a child's allegation of abuse, takes in sensitive subjects including masculinity, male-female relations and the presumed innocence of children.

Danish star Mads Mikkelsen — "Casino Royale'''s Bond villain Le Chiffre — plays Lucas, a kindergarten worker ostracized from his close-knit community after he is falsely accused of abusing a pupil.

Vinterberg said Sunday that in Denmark "we have a saying that children and drunk people always tell the truth."

"We are claiming that this is not always the truth," he told reporters in Cannes. "We are saying that sometimes people lie, also kids, but we are saying they are lying to satisfy the grownups around them."

"They say there's no smoke without fire," added actress Susse Wold, who plays the kindergarten principal. "This film is about smoke without fire and how dangerous that can be."

The film, which unfolds with the tension of a thriller as Lucas's world crumbles, has had a positive reception at Cannes, where Vinterberg's 1998 feature "Festen" ("The Celebration") won the third-place Jury Prize.

That film was a product of the pared-down Dogme 95 movement founded by Vinterberg and fellow Danish director Lars von Trier.

Vinterberg later abandoned the strict filmmaking rules of Dogme, which banned constructed sets, action sequences and special effects.

"I picked the fruit and there was no more fruit left on the tree," the director said. "So I had to abandon this way of filmmaking and look for other stuff."

But he is still drawn to muscular filmmaking and to dark tales from his homeland, whose writers and directors have a reputation for somber subjects.

"Denmark and Scandinavia in general have always been telling these dark tales," Vinterberg said. "This is not an entire image of our country. This is a dark tale from our country, which is a shire of happy little Hobbits — sometimes very stern Hobbits, but quite happy people in general," AP quoted him as saying.

Sebastien Lifshitz’s “Les Invisibles”

Sebastien Lifshitz’s contemplative documentary, Les Invisibles, featured in Un Certain Regard category is a reflection by a cross-section of older French gay men and lesbians on their youth in the shadows, their path to living openly, and the serenity they have achieved over the course of their lives.

Beautifully shot the film is uplifting and smart enough to be of interest to festivals and DVD labels receptive to gay-themed programming.

“There’s an abundance of historical documentation in film and literature on pre-Stonewall gay life in America. But European stories from places beyond the gay capitals are less well known. Lifshitz eschews Paris for subjects who live in the countryside or regional towns, and their perspectives differ significantly from those of the usual historical witnesses from, say, New York or Berlin. The most notable distinction is that their coming-out process seems to have been generally less linked to a collective movement than to a personal journey.

This is not the familiar celebration of pioneers who fought their way out of the margins and broke down barriers for subsequent generations. While discrimination is certainly acknowledged, what’s most disarming about Les Invisibles is the absence of victimhood. Instead, it’s a more uncommon view of lives lived, often with difficulty, compromise and loneliness, but ultimately with a joyous sense of self-discovery that is equally inspiring and perhaps even militant,” The Hollywood reported said.

“A Special Day” at Cannes

On May 20, the festival president, Gilles Jacob, whose written memoir was entitled Citizen Cannes, showed a charming documentary called A Special Day, chronicling the festival's 60th anniversary when all extant previous winners of the Palme d'Or reassembled on the Cannes stage.

While celebrating its own rich history, it was also confirming the flourishing careers of Cannes "graduates", such as Matteo Garrone, Jacques Audiard and Apichatpong Weerasetakul (the Thai film maker who won for Uncle Boonmee in 2010).

Gonzalo Tobal in Special Screenings category

A talented newcomer, Argentinean helmer Gonzalo Tobal debuted his film (Villegas) in the Special Screenings category at Cannes.

In the debut feature, two cousins meet again after a couple years. In their car, on the occasion of their grandpa's burial, they get lost together in the infinite pampean landscape. The film follows their reactions to the journey and the small conflicts, unforeseen events and emotions that slowly arise.

Before the film has been granted support by the Hubert Bals Plus Funds, INCAA, Cinefondation Cannes, and Municipality Villegas.

Cannes Day Six

Cannes Day Six will feature “You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet” by Alain Resnais, French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades; Abbas Kiarostami’s “Like Someone in Love,” and Sang-soo Hong’s “In Another Country” comedy.