Cannes 2014 line-up: Top films to look out for from Grace of Monaco to Winter Sleep
Get ready for a fortnight of high art and Eurotrash excess
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Your support makes all the difference.It’s a temple of cinema, a den of frenzied deals and a haven for hangers-on: yes, the Cannes film festival in all its variegated glory and notoriety is back, kicking off on Wednesday and running for 12 days. And if you’re not going to the Croisette, you’ll still be wanting to keep up to date with the reviews, photo-ops, press conference faux pas and raucous critical booing. So here is our armchair guide to the 10 films that will likely have everyone talking this year:
Grace of Monaco
When’s its premiere? Wednesday
What’s the story? Nicole Kidman stars as Hollywood actress turned Principality Princess Grace Kelly in this tale of her troubled marriage to Prince Rainier III (Tim Roth)
Why the buzz? Because the gleeful prospect looms: could this out-of-competition opener be the new Diana? After all, like that peerless 2013 cinematic dud, it is the controversial biopic of a troubled princess in possession of a respected European director (La vie en rose’s Olivier Dahan), A-list Australian actress and ominously overblown trailer, while its troubled gestation has included multiple release date changes and reported disagreements over the edit between Dahan and Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein. Which is to say: bring on the press conference!
Mr Turner
When’s its premiere? Thursday
What’s the story? Mike Leigh goes period once more with this biopic of that great British dauber JWM Turner starring regular muse Timothy Spall.
Why the buzz? Because when was the last time a Leigh film disappointed? In fact, has a Leigh film ever disappointed (fine, we’ll give you All Or Nothing at a stretch)? Plus the director has form in the mostly drearily unilluminating genre that is the artist biopic, as anyone who has seen his brilliant 1999 film Topsy Turvy, about comic opera duo Gilbert and Sullivan, will know.
Winter Sleep
When’s it premiere? Friday
What’s the story? The latest from highly revered Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan centring on a snowbound hotelier in the Anatolian steppes. There are no English subtitles on the trailer we’ve seen, but we did pick up on an air of unmitigated bleakness.
Why the buzz? Because as well as Ceylan’s standing within world cinema, less high-mindedly it is also Paddy Power’s favourite for the Palme d’Or. And anyone who has seen Ceylan’s last Cannes entry, 2011’s police-procedural-meets-Waiting-for-Godot number Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which won the runner-up Grand Prix gong, will know why: his glacial anti-dramas are the exactly the kind of high-cultural palate-cleanser that a jury might favour after two weeks of exposure to Eurotrash excess.
Foxcatcher
When’s its premiere? Monday 19 May
What’s the story? Another true-life, sports-related drama from Moneyball’s Bennett Miller about the 1996 killing of US wrestler Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) by his team sponsor, billionaire and paranoid schizophrenic John Du Pont (Steve Carell).
Why the buzz? Because Steve Carell is clearly giving it the full thespian. Ever since his breakout big-screen role as a depressed Proustian in Little Miss Sunshine, we’ve been waiting for the US Office star to flash us more of his dark side – but mostly he’s stuck to a blandly goofy breakfast-TV-presenter-cum-Rob Brydon comic persona in a succession of supremely middling films that we can barely remember if we have seen. With him sporting ageing prosthetics and a chilling monotone to inhabit the role of Du Pont, however, this might just be his Truman Show.
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Lost River
When’s its premiere? Tuesday 20 May
What’s the story? A magical-realist fantasy involving a single mother of two and an underwater town, it also marks the directing debut of Ryan Gosling.
Why the buzz? Because of the involvement of everybody’s favourite “aw-shucks” Hollywood-arthouse crossover lust object, obviously. You might say ducking behind the camera is a sensible move for a man who has become increasingly catatonic in front of it – but when it comes to actors-turned-directors, will the little Goose be more George Clooney or Johnny Depp? Only time will tell, though whatever the case, the world will still be able to appreciate the no doubt endless stream of photos of him pulling off Riviera smart-casual with effortless aplomb.
A film still from Ryan Gosling's directorial debut Lost River
Goodbye to Language
When’s its premiere? Wednesday 21 May
What’s the story? It’s a Jean-Luc Godard film, so don’t think you’re going to be handed a sentence-long synopsis, OK? We do know that it’s some kind of relationship drama and that “this ends in barking and a baby’s cries”.
Why the buzz? Because the latest from the increasingly obscure New Wave legend might well be the mad uncle of this year’s competition. Plus it’s the 83-year-old’s first feature in 3D: and if anyone can turn this overrated technology on its head, Godard can.
The Search
When’s its premiere? Wednesday 21 May
What’s the story? Michel Hazanavicius and Bérénice Bejo, the husband-wife director-star duo of silent, black-and-white Oscar-winner The Artist, reunite for this war drama about an NGO worker who bonds with a young boy in Chechnya.
Why the buzz? Because everyone’s dying to know: just how do you follow up a cinematic anomaly like The Artist? More traditionally, it would seem: The Search is both in colour and with sound, while the story is an update of a 1948 Fred Zinnemann film starring Montgomery Clift. In fact, Hazanavicius conducted the shoot in secret last year, reportedly in order to avoid media pressure. Naturally, that only makes us more curious.
The Oscar-winning directors behind The Artist present The Search
Mommy
When’s it premiere? Thursday 22 May
What’s the story? French-Canadian whizz kid Xavier Dolan directs this tale of a “mother who has custody of a child with a difficult past”.
Why the buzz? Because it’s cheering to see a precocious talent like Dolan in the main competition alongside all those venerable auteurs/straight old white men. Just 25, the three-times Cannes veteran grabbed the spotlight with a trio of pop-arthouse films, 2009’s I Killed My Mother, 2010’s Heartbeat and 2012’s Laurence Anyways, in which he combined eye-popping colour and high melodrama like a millennial Almodovar. But will this fifth feature follow in the footsteps of his recently released thriller Tom in the Farm in playing things more sinister?
Clouds of Sils Maria
When’s it premiere? Friday 23 May
What’s the story? Juliette Binoche plays an actress confronted by her mortality when she stars in a revival of the play that made her famous. Now, as the older lead, she must face off a precocious Hollywood starlet (Chloe Grace Moretz).
Why the buzz? Because, for one, there’s the Bechdel Test-friendly ensemble, with Binoche and Moretz joined by magna cum laude Twilight graduate Kristen Stewart as Binoche’s PA. And for another, there’s the fact that the story would seem to be riffing off All About Eve: and there’s no more delicious narrative in cinema than that Bette Davis tale of backstage backstabbery.
Kristen Stewart stars in Clouds of Sils Maria alongside Juliette Binoche
Pride
When’s it premiere? Friday 23 May
What’s the story? A comedy-drama about how gay and lesbian activists rallied around the miners during the miners strikes in the mid-80s.
Why the buzz? Because, between its social conscience, culture-clash dynamics and louche casting (that’s to say Bill Nighy and Dominic West appear), this Directors’ fortnight closer has Brit-hit written all over it: at a guess, we’re thinking Billy Eliot does The Full Monty while wearing some Kinky Boots, Made in Dagenham. And stage director Matthew Warchus, coming off a socking great crowdpleaser like Matilda: the Musical, is perfectly poised to make the transition to the big screen (we, like everyone else, have chosen to ignore Warchus’s notional feature-film debut, 1999’s horse-racing thriller Simpatico).
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