Cannes Podcast: Karina & Kohn Talk About the Fest

What's the buzz in Cannes? Just ask Karina Longworth from LA Weekly and Eric Kohn from indieWIRE. Which is what I did tonight.

Sitting in the lobby of the Splendid Hotel, Karina and Kohn compared notes on their favorites from this year's fest.

Today, everyone is talking about Lars von Trier and his new film, Melancholia. It was Karina's favorite of the fest. Calling it “absolutely stunning, visually, emotionally – its ideas are incredible to me,” she called the movie a companion piece to The Tree of Life.

“Lars' film is as personal as Terrence Malick's is,” Karina Longworth said, “It's so much more narcissistic and so much more down in a way that feels more real.”

Kohn agreed, adding, “It's incredible how well he uses his impressionistic style to do something so dreary and also so life-affirming. This is a movie about accepting the fact that everybody dies and that all things come to an end.”

The other topic was Von Trier's outburst at this morning's press conference. What do Karina Longworth and Eric Kohn think of today's development?

“I don't think Lars von Trier does anything unintentionally,” Karina Longworth offered, “He very clearly knows what he's doing.”

It has been an interesting couple of days in Cannes with the attention paid to both von Trier and Malick.

“Malick defied another aspect of Cannes,” Kohn chimed in, fascinated with, “The very idea that he can evade this attention the way that von Trier can court the attention.”

Continuing, the two talked about a couple of their other discoveries of from this year's Cannes fest.