Day two of the festival and the programme is chock full of things to see. I had 4 films on my to do list today, unfortunately it looks like I'm only going to get to see 2 of them. I missed one this morning due to a change in the bus timetable which I was unaware of until too late. This change was due to it being a French public holiday today. Another I just missed several minutes ago as me and my fellow yellows were turned away after having queued for half an hour. Still haven't worked out what happened. It doesn't matter though as they are shown again next week.
This morning I saw a Portugese film called
The Strange Case of Angelica in the Un Certain Regard section of the competition. Frankly, more interesting than the film itself was the fact that it was directed by the world's oldest working filmmaker, Manoel De Oliveira, who is unbelievable 102 years old. After seeing him in the press conference I can say seriously the man doesn't look a day over 70. The film itself was, dare I say, pretty boring. Or maybe pretty
and boring would be a better way of describing it. Each shot is beautifully composed but is lingered on for way too long. The hokum story of the film goes like this; A photographer is called late at night by the mother of a recently deceased young woman to take a photo of the corpse. As he is setting up for the shot and looking through the lens the woman smiles at him. At first he believes it to have been an hallucination but then it happens again when he is developing the photos.
The woman also appears in ghost form a couple of times and he grows more and more obsessed with her as the film progresses, eventually falling in love with her. It finishes with him dying so that they can be together for all eternity. No really. The film received a huge applause. My hands remained still. The other film I saw today was called
Tuesday, After Christmas by Romanian auteur Radu Muntean. A well observed drama about the break up of a marriage due to an affair.
Tomorrow, Oliver Stone's Wall Street 2 is being shown out of competition and there's also a Hideo Nakata film called Chatroom which i'm looking forward to.
and to round off the report, Here are some photos I've taken so far.
The infamous Yellow badge.
As you can see, I am a natural photographer. In the heat of the mement I managed to get this perfect shot of Russell Crowe as he walked into the press conference. Taking this photo actually cost me the chance to get into the press conference as it meant I missed the 30 second window that yellow badge press people were allowed in. Doh.
Cate Blanchett this time. By photographing the back of her head I was attempting to make an artistic statement about the nature of celebrity . In truth, I panicked, put the camera on the wrong setting and completely mistimed it.
Slightly better than the other two, Tim Burton, who is head of the jury, heading into the jury press conference.
People resort to begging to get their mits on the hottest ticket in town for the world premiere of Robin Hood.
The masses gather to watch the spectacle from afar.
Security is tight. Come on guys, this isn't West Ham-Millwall.
May 11, 2009, 06:21:47 PM
