Day 6: Wes' Circus; JLaw Pic's $24M Mubi Sale; Skarsgard's BDSM
Plus: Dakota Johnson, at her first Cannes, wants Hollywood to take more risks
If there’s one director capable of bringing a film to the Cannes Film Festival with a guarantee of populating the red carpet with boldface names, it’s the idiosyncratic Wes Anderson, whose latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme, had its world premiere Sunday night at the festival’s Grand Theatre Lumière.
As his cast assembled — they arrived at the foot of the carpet all together in a specially-engaged shuttle bus — there were Benicio del Toro, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Rupert Friend and Richard Ayoade, all members of Anderson’s informal repertory company, having appeared in his previous films. Also on hand and new to the Anderson crew were Michael Cera and Mia Threapleton, the 24-year-old daughter of Kate Winslet. And even that didn’t account for the movie’s full cast, since others like Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston and Scarlett Johansson didn’t make the schlep to Cannes — although Johansson, busy hosting Saturday Night Live this past weekend, is set to arrive on the scene shortly for the premiere of her own directorial debut, Eleanor the Great.
Just to boost the glamour quotient even higher, also hitting the red carpet to take in Anderson’s newest film — his fourth to play in a Cannes competition slot — were Julianne Moore and Edward Norton as well as jury members Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong.
The Phoenician Scheme, which Focus Features will be releasing in the U.S. on May 30, stars del Toro as a ruthless international magnate, Zsa-zsa Korda, who survives multiple assassination attempts as he travels the world in an effort to renegotiate various financial deals while also confronting fantasies of his own mortality and trying to reconcile with his daughter, a nun-in-training, played by Threapleton, who was reduced to tears as the actors all took their bows when the film’s final credits rolled at the Lumière. But, of course, if that all sounds too straightforward for an Anderson film, think again — because it all takes place in one of the director’s patently fanciful worlds, designed to the nth degree by Adam Stockhausen, an Oscar winner for Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Working with such an established troupe of actors has enabled Anderson to move fluidly from one film to the next, for as the director explained while meeting with the Cannes press, the seed for The Phoenician Scheme was planted four years ago when his movie The French Dispatch played here. He remembered looking at del Toro, who was also in that film, and telling him, “Something’s going to be coming your way,” Anderson said, adding, “The beginning of the movie was just him, just an image of him as this character. I didn’t know what happened or was going to happen to this character. He’s moving relentlessly through this story and you can’t kill him. That’s really all there was.”
Anderson eventually found further inspiration in the life of his late father-in-law, Fuad Malouf, a Lebanese engineer with projects around the world. “He was an unforgettable, special, great person,” the director testified. But as he developed the story for the film with Roman Coppola, Anderson recalled, “We were writing something that we intended to be very dark, a character who is not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world are affecting populations, work forces and landscapes — the darkness of a certain kind of capitalist. But it took us somewhere else.”
For his part, del Toro said of playing Zsa-zsa, “It’s an honor, really, the fact that I was called back with such a character, the intensity of the character, the arc of the character, and you’re surrounded by an incredible cast.”
And so as he shepherded his sprawling ensemble through the Cannes obstacle course, let’s hope that Anderson was also getting a good group rate.
Claire’s Croisette: Who Wears the Pants
A sleek Dakota Johnson, dressed for business in a white short-sleeved blouse and black pants, arrived at her first Cannes Film Festival this week to endless attention from the paparazzi at the Majestic. Johnson, in town for a screening of Splitsville, described as a dark comedy, spoke at a Kering Women in Motion event on Monday and joked that her production company TeaTime Pictures has just hired its first man. The star gave a no-holds barred interview with her business partner, Ro Donnelly, putting Hollywood on blast for its lack of risk-taking. She joked that Tea Time was careful about who they hired because of a “no-asshole policy.”
Johnson said she started her own production company to have more control over the creative and development process. “Showing up to the premiere of a movie to see for the first time, and being like, whoa, that's not what I thought we were making. That's such a weird thing to do,” she said of her previous experience as an actress. Now, as a producer, she added, “Of course, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not, but I love it. I love making movies. I love every aspect of it.” The company is also invested in developing book projects, and Johnson hosts a book club.
Team building is important, Johnson said, since, “working in movies, the hours are long, it’s grueling. Sometimes it’s freezing cold or boiling hot, you know, it's not comfortable, it’s not nice. And when you feel like you’re genuinely invested in something, people are happier, and they work better, and they feel a part of something.” Johnson also shared that she was working with a young female musician with autism on a project that explored the topic. “I feel very protective of her and her story and her mind.”
– Kinky Boots
BDSM isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, so it’s all the more unusual that the backers of Pillion, which stars Alexander Skarsgård as a gay biker dom, joined up for a shared celebration with another coming of age movie, My Father’s Shadow, about two brothers who grow up with an absent father against the backdrop of civil breakdown in Nigeria. Their joint backer was BBC Film, among other partners. One source wondered what the Nigerian culture minister, who was said to be at the festival, might make of the controversial concept of Pillion, which follows a timid gay youngster who ends up licking the boots of Skarsgård’s character. Skarsgård brought his character to the carpet, wearing leather pants for his film’s photocall, thigh-high leather boots for the Phoenician Scheme premiere and sequin slacks for his own film’s bow. He even did a little turn at the photo call to twitch his behind at assembled phtogrphaers. The film’s young submissive is played by Harry Melling, who in plumper days played Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise. My Father’s Shadow is Nigeria’s first movie at Cannes.
– Kpop Stars + Chinese Billions
“Le selfie” is prohibited on the Cannes red carpet since 2018, but the fest still makes a major social impact. Video rights owners France TV and short form video company Brut recorded 37 million views and worldwide impressions hit 25 billion after last year’s event. It’s a huge driver of global interest and, thanks to the gowns and baubles adorning red carpet stars, Cannes is also big luxury business. The shutterbugs are largely trained on English-speaking stars at the Palais — those are the pictures that sell — but it’s Asian talent that’s driving the clicks in ways that sometimes eclipse even a huge Hollywood star, one PR executive told me. Kpop star Mina, who walked the Phoenician Scheme carpet on Sunday night, is an ambassador for French jewelry brand Boucheron. Kering (the parent of Gucci, Boucheron, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta and several other luxury brands that don’t start with B) also hosted Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, maker of the movie Renoir, at one of its Women in Motion talks.
Asian money is also behind the fest’s first major sale — Mubi, which ponied up $24 million for North American and other rights to Jennifer Lawrence’s Die, My Love, took on investment in December from Closer Media, a New York production company founded by Chinese real estate billionaire Zhang Xin, who’s in Cannes with her own company’s two films, Raoul Peck’s documentary Orwell: 2+2+5 and competition title The History of Sound.
News
Next Stop, The Lido!
A look at films that could be in the running for the Venice Film Festival. → Click here to keep reading
Deals
Mubi Takes Jennifer Lawrence Starrer Die, My Love
The $24 million acquisition is the first deal for a competition film. → Click here to keep reading
Cinephobia Releasing Picks Up A Few Feet Away
The Argentinian film is directed by Tadeo Pestaña Caro. → Click here to keep reading
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to Star in Men with Problems
Director Ole Christian Madsen’s comedy looks at seven depressed. → Click here to keep reading
Warner Bros. Pictures Hires Sirena Liu
She’ll serve as the studio’s general manager, theatrical for China. → Click here to keep reading
Reviews
Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme Talks Off
But critic Tim Grierson says it doesn’t “really soar.” → Click here to keep reading
Magellan Is A “Handsome” Biopic
Gael Garcia Bernal plays the Portuguese explorer. → Click here to keep reading
The Secret Agent Is A Brazilian Thriller
Director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film called “a riot of a movie.” → Click here to keep reading
A Magnificent Life Focuses on Filmmaker Marcel Pagnol
Sylvain Chomet captures the French director’s life in an animated biopic. → Click here to keep reading
Features
The Palm Dog Ready to Take a Bow
The canine competition is celebrating its 25th anniversary. → Click here to keep reading
Today’s Screen Jury at Cannes
The long-running Screen International Jury Grid is a critical ranking of competition films in Cannes, according to an assembled jury of 12 international film critics, including Screen’s reviewers (four stars is the top rating). Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme received middling scores, but Kleber Mendonça Filho’s thriller, The Secret Agent, impressed with a 2.8 score. → Click here for the full grid.
The Ankler x Screen International's Cannes Daily
Day 1: ‘Art Is a Threat’ as Oscar Race, the Resistance, Begin
Day 2: ‘Prices are Crazy’; Cruise ❤️
Day 3: KStew Debut; IMAX CEO on Nolan; Screen Jury Grid Starts!
Day 4: Eddington Divide; Fashion’s Film Dollars; $6K Tix Black Market
Day 5: RFK Jr. & the Dr.: Doc Seeks Buyer; Linklater’s Godard Pic Charms
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