Soi Cowboy: With his assured but deeply unpleasant debut feature, The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael, the British director Thomas Clay established his credentials as both a cineaste with a defiantly arthouse tastes and an arch provocateur. The artfully photographed ultra-violence garnered plenty of news headlines and rather fewer positive reviews when the film premiered in Critic’s Week in Cannes 2005. Clay drew comparisons to the arthouse enfants terrible Bruno Dumont and Gaspar Noi. A British director, he had a decidedly un-British sensibility... [article continues]
Watch Wendy Ide's video report on Waltz With Bashir
Waltz With Bashir: Last year’s hints of an Israeli cinema renaissance are given further weight by this unsettling examination of the brutally surreal nature of modern combat. Ari Folman’s potent, deeply personal antiwar film, which has been screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is flagged up as the first feature-length animated documentary. In fact, it shares some common ground with last year’s Cannes competition title Persepolis – an eye-catchingly graphic animation style, a Middle Eastern setting, a backdrop of political unrest. But while the latter is a richly detailed memoir of a childhood in 1970s Iran, Waltz With Bashir deals with Folman’s almost complete lack of memories of a period in his late teens which is revealed to be so traumatic that he has inadvertently blocked out the details... [article continues]
Watch critic Wendy Ide give her verdict on Blindness
Blindness: The opening night film of the 61st edition of the Cannes Film Festival is a sour and unexpected shock. Blindness is the most miserable opening to an international festival I’ve ever seen. After the impossibly glamorous conveyor belt of stars last year to celebrate 60 sensational years of art-house premieres, the festival has switched off the fairy lights, tightened its belt, and got back to the grim business of showcasing the self-flagellating auteurs of the future.
Blindness will win precisely no fans. But plenty of trenchant admirers. I suspect that Sean Penn, the exotic and unpredictable chairman of this year’s offical competition, will champion the film wholeheartedly... [article continues]
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