Cannes 2014 – What We’ve Seen So Far

The 2014 Cannes Film Festival was a festival of few highs and few disastrous lows, which isn’t a bad thing.

Instead, the festival projected a steady diet of good or mediocre movies from the global film community. In fact, at times the press corps and critics seemed to be dying to find a movie to boo at.

After the disappointing screening of Michel Hazanavicius’ “The Search,” there is little doubt it’s been a weak year for Oscar at Cannes, and no one is expecting Ken Loach’s “Jimmy’s Hall,” Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy,” Olivier Assayas’ “Sils Maria” or possible Palme d’Or crasher “Leviathan” to become major awards season players.

That being said, “Foxcatcher,” “Mr. Turner” and “The Homesman” could make a mark later on this year. And, there are numerous foreign language films that could be submitted including the aforementioned “Leviathan” from Russia, Turkey’s “Winter Sleep,” China’s “Coming Home (Gui Lai)” and Argentina’s “Wild Tales (Relatos Salvajes),” among others.

The Cannes programmers seemed to realize they needed a little more pizzas than previous years as they effectively spread the good films out more than usual, brought some star power in for special events and spread out their Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart flicks for maximum effect. Thankfully, there were a few standout films we’ll be discussing throughout the rest of 2014 and, more newsworthy, some fantastic performances.

Julianne Moore probably wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice to win the best actress Palm this year, but many agree she was the best part of David Cronenberg’s “Map to the Stars.” More importantly, this is the first premiere awards win of Moore’s career.

The four-time Academy Award nominee still hasn’t won an Oscar, but now at least she’s won Cannes, Berlin and Venice. Hard to imagine this performance landing her a place in this year’s race, but Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood. “Stars” may be tremendously off base, but maybe Moore will get the end of year recognition she’s due.

Traditionally, Cannes frontloads the festival with its heavy hitters, though this year, the Competition schedule was much more evenly balanced – with heavily anticipated titles from Olivier Assayas, Xavier Dolan and Andrei Zvyagintsev all premiering at the tail-end of the fest.

They delivered to varying degrees, none more so than “Leviathan,” an exquisitely composed, dramatically riveting and politically incendiary allegorical attack on Vladimir Putin’s regime that went down a storm with critics.

Again, many agreed this is the best film in Competition by some distance. Jane Campion’s jury didn’t quite agree, rewarding it modestly with the Best Screenplay prize, but the buzz has already paid off – Sony Pictures Classics will distribute the film in the US. For those of us who stuck through the hectic 12-day festival for its full duration, it was nice to have something this nourishing at the end.