Cannes 2009: Day 3 on La Croisette

Friday morning on La Croistte was greeted with torrential rain. Journalists huddled under their umbrellas before running up the sodden red carpeted steps into the magnificent Grand Theatre, the main screen at the festival. Luckily the film was well worth the wet dash, it was the sumptuous Bright Star by Australian director Jane Campion. Partly British funded it’s one of three films representing the UK at this year’s festival (the other two are Fish Tank and Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric). It tells the tale of 19th Century Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his affair with his neighbour Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Aesthetically the film is simply breathtaking with beautifully sensuous images capturing the English countryside which serves as its backdrop. Refreshingly there is also no cliché or false sentimentality, Bright Star is just a touching story elegantly told and one of the most promising in competition

Also competing for the coveted Palme D’Or is one of the few Hollywood films at the festival – Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock. Following Lust, Caution and Brokeback Mountain Lee has turned his hand to more light-hearted fare, a comedy about the first ever Woodstock festival in 1969. Perhaps unexpectedly the music takes a back seat in favour of a story centred on Elliot, a 20-something who lives with his parents in a motel which soon becomes the base for the running of the festival. There are several amusing parts which makes the film easy watching but unfortunately it’s little more than that and the film feels like it’s teetering on counter-culture cliché in parts (especially with the psychedelic ‘trip’ sequence towards the end).

Running out of competition is Michel Gondry’s latest offering and a completely new departure for him. The Thorn in the Heart is a highly personal documentary about the director’s Aunt Suzette, a former teacher who worked in several rural primary schools in France. The film is simple, crude even, mainly consisting of hand-held camera footage with the crew often making it into the frame along with the subject. It adds to the charm however and I found it to be an unexpected delight. The Thorn in the Heart gives a revealing insight into family relationships with colourful characters (including Gondry himself) and imaginative moments of gentle surrealism that we’ve come to suspect from the director.