Jane Campion's Gorgeous Cannes Jury
Monday, April 28, 2014 at 3:32PM Cannes is but 17 days away and we'll have a TFE team member there this year! Alas it's not me so I'll have to be envious of Diana as she jets off to France in two weeks. We already knew that the brilliant auteur Jane Campion, who regained some cultural caché recently with Top of the Lake (she never lost it with us: Bright Star, hello!) would preside over the jury but this morning the full nine member panel was announced.
Joining Campion this year is a great mix of onscreen talent that happens to include a few people The Film Experience is generally just gaga for from left to right: TFE's favorite Mexican actor ever since Amores Perros, Gael García Bernal; the future reinterpreter of The Little Mermaid, one of our favorite ladies Sofia Coppola (USA); former Bond Girl Carole Bouquet will represent the hometeam of France; A Touch of Sin/Platform director Jia Zhangke (China) who I was literally just talking about at brunch yesterday; TFE's favorite Korean actress Jeon Do-Yeon (Secret Sunshine, The Housemaid); the other Mad Dane Drive's Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark); Hollywood star, experimental indie fixture, and Wes Anderson repertory company player Willem Dafoe (USA); and Leila Hatami, the beautiful Iranian star of A Separation.
I am in a puddle for this jury. LOVE.
Reader Comments (7)
This is an AMAZING jury. I'm in love with all of them. And the women outnumber the men! Can't wait to see what they pick... but frankly I'd much rather be a fly on the wall of any conversation between Sofia and Jane!
Fantastic jury.
I hope we get a lot of gossip about everyone in the jury hooking up with each other.
Conrado: I was thinking the same thing. How will they keep their hands off each other!?
Plus, I trust this group to award well.
Nat: The reason Campion lost the cultural cache she had right after The Piano (I wasn't that into it, thought it was an absolutely gorgeous movie hampered by the badly structured romance and the murky and questionable moral angle the movie expects us to have at the end of it) was due to Holy Smoke! and In the Cut's receptions. As for why Bright Star didn't do so well? Well, I'd place that down to three things:
1. Keats. Though none of the romantic era poets would have automatically stoked fiery public interest, of the big three Byron or Shelley probably would have been able to draw larger audiences.
2. Fanny Brawne. Yeah, she's characterized as fierce, fiery and a "flirt", but she didn't MAKE anything, which is why I suggested the Shelleys as probably significantly more palatable for a modern audience, even if that also sacrifices how "decent" artistic licence would be.
3. Abbie Cornish. And now we get to the big problem. In the 5 years before this movie, Whishaw had made appearances in Enduring Love, Layer Cake and, especially, I'm Not There, as one of the Dylan's. With another actress who hadn't just embarrassed herself by having A Good Year, Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Stop Loss as her public foot forward, maybe this could have been Whishaw's breakthrough with the public and Campion's resurrection in spite of those other two elephants in the room.
As is, though, either the whole subject or the actress would have needed to change to facilitate the possibility of the good things that could have resulted from it.
viva Leila hatami
If only these filmmakers had new films playing at the festival! They do make for an extraordinarily cool jury, though.