We're five days into the 64th Cannes Film Festival in France. Just about halfway there. So, what's the best of the fest, so far?
In the latest FilmLinc podcast today, the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Gavin Smith and Scott Foundas named a new film that has had festival attendees buzzing this weekend. It's a new movie from Belgium by a pair of filmmaker who have already won the Palme d'Or twice: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au vélo).
Calling it the best film in competition so far, Film Comment editor Gavin Smith explained, “The Dardenne Brothers rarely deliver less than something great and I think this is up there with their strongest films.”
The film follows a young boy's ongoing struggle to reconnect with a lost parent.
“I was really stuck by how there is nothing that happens in this very terse ninety-minute narrative that doesn't count,” Smith added.
“Which I think you can say of almost all of the films of the Dardenne Brothers,” Film Society associate program director Scott Foundas explained, “They could have been making movies at Warner Bros in the 1930s.”
“There's not an inessential moment.”
Smith and Foundas surveyed a number of Cannes 2011 films during today's discussion in France, even weighing in on a pronounced trend among the films of the first half.
“The theme of parents and children has been as pronounced as anything I've ever seen in Cannes,” Foundas elaborated, citing a number of Cannes entries that look at kids in jeopardy, as well as their mothers and fathers.
“You could even say Nanni Moretti's film is a film about the Holy Father,” he quipped.
The Cannes Film Festival continues through Sunday in France with new films from Pedro Almodovar, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Terrence Malick, Nicolas Winding Refn, Takashi Miike, Paolo Sorrentino and more still to screen this week at the Festival.
More in the latest FilmLinc Podcast from the Cannes Film Festival:
FilmLinc: Gavin Smith and Scott Foundas on the Best Film at Cannes (So Far) by FilmLinc
Eugene Hernandez is the Director of Digital Strategy at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and a founder of indieWIRE. Follow him on Twitter from Cannes (@eug) and follow the rest of FIlmLinc.com's Cannes coverage in our special section.
