BBC Film director Eva Yates had the right idea about the after-party for Joachim Trier’s exquisitely realised film Sentimental Value: Do not dilly-dally. Get in there, play the room, then scoot.
“We’re off to sit at the kitchen table and talk about films,” Yates declares as she and two colleagues greet me whilst I’m still in line waiting to get into the soiree, or whatever it was, at the casino nightclub Silencio conveniently located next door to the Palais des Festivals.
Yates was one of several executive producers attached to Sentimental Value, which Neon has in the U.S. and Mubi in the U.K.,Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India. The BBC Film topper has had a good festival with Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow, Harry Lighton’s Pillion and Harris Dickinson’s Urchin also included in this year’s official selection.
She was off and away, and I was still in the queue. I’d been in the Grand Lumière through three back-to-back movies, so no bellyaching from me about standing on line. I was happy to be in the open air, plus I adored Trier’s movie starring Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Ingo Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning.
Deadline’s story about a gobsmacking 19-minute ovation was already up and it amused me no end to eavesdrop on people discussing it in between bitching and moaning about the slow progress into Silencio.
Covering the theatre, I have known, and do know, many actresses like Nora, the fragile thespian Reinsve plays in Sentimental Value. They’re often uncertain of their artistry; their confidence is shot but they have to get on that bloody stage no matter what’s going on in their lives. Vanessa Redgrave went on as Arkadina in The Seagull the night her father, Michael Redgrave, died. That performance is now regarded as one of her greatest.
There’s something profoundly moving too in Skarsgård’s film director trying to put one last picture together. In 40-plus years of covering the Cannes Film Festival, I have witnessed many a once-great filmmaker try their luck after, if we’re honest, the luck had dissipated long ago. Yet, Skarsgård captures a Lear-like madness and nobility as he sweeps in and out of the lives of his daughters played by Reinsve and Lilleaas.
Of late, Fanning’s been doing her best work. Her portrait of Bob Dylan’s girlfriend Suze Rotolo, although she was named Sylvia Russo in A Complete Unknown, was underrated by critics, and I found rare honesty in the tremulous magnanimity she brings to her role as a Hollywood actress.
But back to the party chain. After 43 minutes – yeah, the stopwatch on my cell is useful in Cannes – I have a pale blue band slipped onto my wrist and I’m hurled into an elevator with Oliver Hermanus, director of The History of Sound, starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, which I saw and liked earlier in the night.
Hermanus has ditched his black-tie kit and is casual in a baggy T-shirt, and the aforementioned Harry Lighton, who tells me that he used to work for Hermanus, is with us as we travel up to the top floor.
We’re ushered into some neon-lit, well, hell-hole’s the only word for it. Kinda reminded me of a basement club I was taken to in Berlin in the mid 1980s and there were all these people doing… oh, never mind. In Berlin I recall doing an Eva Yates and hastily exiting.
Nonetheless, I venture forth into Silencio and to put it mildly, it’s a clusterf**k. Skarsgård is somehow holding court in a corner. I see Katie Doyle and Albert Tello from Netflix. I chat briefly with UTA’s Jeremy Barber and Elinor Burns from Casarotto Ramsay & Associates, who represent Trier in their respective territories. We chat briefly about how Jenni Casarotto would’ve loved the Palais screening. I feel a lump in my throat and move on.
The place is cheek by jowl and it’s no wonder that two revellers simultaneously spill their liquor all over my clothes. Whatever it was they were drinking drenches my jacket, trousers and my extra fine cotton shirt from Budd. Yes, it’s a super fine dress shirt and I bring six to Cannes. I don’t react outwardly to being soaked. Inside I’m pissed off but it’s not really their fault. There’s just too many of us.
I often ponder on why we cram ourselves into these kind of places. There’s a psychological desire to socialize and be with others in celebration. To bear witness, perhaps? To say we were there when a possible Palme d’Or winner had its gala opening. I mean, we could’ve all just gone straight home after the screening.
But this is Cannes. This is what the Cannes tribe does. I wouldn’t dream of entering such a flea pit in London, but in Cannes it’s what we do.
We want to mingle and try and touch greatness, that is, if we can spot Joachim Trier in the darkness of Silencio.
The post Breaking Baz @ Cannes: Stellan Skarsgård Finds A Sweet Party Spot After The Triumph Of Joachim Trier’s Cannes Sensation ‘Sentimental Value’ appeared first on Deadline.
