Report from Cannes
by: Meenakshi Shedde
- filmfare.com
Cannes: The sun is playing hookey on the Croisette beach of the Cannes film festival that opens today, May 12. Stars from around the world, including Aishwarya Rai, are preening in their beach-front hotels, and the world's directors, media and assorted smoothies have washed up. Pedro Almodovar's film La Mala Educacion (Bad Education) opened the festival. It is about Ignacio and Enrique, an actor and director, who recall how first love affair in school was ruined when a teacher-cum-priest, Father Manolo, sexually abuses Ignacio. Ignacio later blackmails his teacher. But then the film gets very melodramatic and confusing, as Ignacio's younger brother Juan has an affair with the teacher, has Ignacio bumped off, then impersonates Ignacio, has an affair with director Enrique and acts in a film based on their real-life affair! Phew! Almodovar makes all your saas-bahu TV serial machinations look like a soothing cup of Horlicks.
The film has many of the Almodovar touches we have grown to love - the sexual brio, madly attractive drag queens, sharp dagger thrusts at the Church and rich cinematography. But frankly, its melodramatic twists, saturated colours and passion for kitsch seem rather Bollywood. Undoubtedly, its high point is the utterly delicious Gael Garcia Bernal who plays Ignacio. He has a double bill at Cannes with Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, on Che Guevara's early years.
Unfortunately, India has no film in Cannes this year. Only Danav by Makrand Deshpande, which was selected in January by the Cannes' Directors' Fortnight section, was later dropped on `technical grounds' (print quality-it was a 16mm film blown up to 35mm). The only consolation is that Mehboob Khan's 1957 classic Mother India starring Nargis is being shown as part of the Cannes Classics section. Nonetheless, a sizeable Indian presence is expected here.
Aishwarya Rai is already in Cannes. Her Devdas was shown in Cannes in 2002 and she was on the international jury of the Cannes festival last year. But this time she's flitting by the festival for just a day. She is here as ambassadress of L'Oreal, the cosmetics company, and will participate in the opening ceremony. "My Cannes diary is completely chock-a-block," she says. "It starts at 8 am, then there's something at 10, at 10.15, at 10.30.it goes on like this till midnight. The last time I could not give L'Oreal enough time, so this time I promised them I would. Apart from the opening ceremony, I will visit the India pavilion, and then I'll be gone. My time is really not my own - L'Oreal has fixed everything, there is nothing I can do about it."
Under the circumstances, "flitting by" may be an understatement. "I've just flown into Cannes from Houston and I'm really tired," says Rai. "After tomorrow, I fly for performances in New York and then Toronto." Poised to make it into Hollywood and world cinema, Ms. Rai is currently on a hectic world tour. Her assignments include Chaos, Coline Serreau's remake of her own film of 2001, of a housewife rescuing a prostitute, slated to be played by Meryl Streep and Aishwarya Rai respectively.
