“Adoration”

Films screening today are: Adoration, La Frontiere de L’aube, Lecon de Cinema, Ocean Flame and Wendy and Lucy. The first, and the last, are what I am looking forward to the most.

In Competition:

“Adoration” by Atom Egoyan

Justin Chang, “Folding all sorts of post-9/11 questions – about the ethics of terrorism, the deceptiveness of outward appearances, the ways technology can enable dialogue yet hinder the truth – into a very Egoyanesque miasma of elegantly fractured chronology and provocative ideas, this ambitious think-piece ultimately smothers its good intentions in didactic revelations, earnest pleading and incessant violin music.”

Ray Bennett, “Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it’s an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people’s imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over,”

Howard Feinstein, “The camera glides at a near-perfect leisurely pace. He blends a rich soundtrack (an excellent, mournful score by Mychael Danna) with elegant sound bridges and sharp, clipped dialogue. And he once again moves gracefully between assorted plotlines. Unfortunately, the stories here are thin, unnecessarily complicated and glibly cryptic; some sections are difficult to follow, even annoying in their self-consciousness.”

“La Frontiere de L’aube” by Philippe Garrel

Karina Longworth, “a story of amour gone so fou that the natural world becomes subject to the supernatural. Hands down the most accessible Garrel film I’ve seen, it’s still a strange, swoony, genre-bending challenge,”

Fabien Lemercier, “Lauded on several occasions at the Venice Film Festival, the 60-year-old filmmaker is in official competition at Cannes for the first time, with a work characteristic of an oeuvre that could be described as timeless and anachronistic, or even suggestive and ephemeral, depending on one’s point of view.”

Lisa Nesselson, “Earnest, inherently divisive effort, lusciously photographed in black and white, is one of the weaker recent entries in Philippe Garrel’s four decade career of bravely iconoclastic art films,”

Leslie Felperin, “A risible slice of pretentious hokum, this love triangle plot with a supernatural angle peddles that covertly misogynist and sadistic old chestnut, that the hottest, most desirable women are self-harming loonies.”

Un Certain Regard:

“Wendy and Lucy” by Kelly Reichardt

Mike Goodridge, “Reichardt is no pessimist and her compassion for Wendy and belief in the kindness of strangers make for an optimistic film which should serve to build her already strong US reputation on an international scale,”

Karina Longworth, “I do hope this unlikely attention helps Wendy and Lucy get seen, but coming in with high expectations ([Kelly Reichardt's] Old Joy was one of my favorite films of its year), I was a bit underwhelmed…. Wendy and Lucy has the bleak, but it never explores the light. It hits its single tone perfectly, but it’s still a single tone.”