So, anyway, perhaps you’ve heard that there’s this little film festival going on in France right about now. I’m not there, but that will (hopefully) not keep me from commenting on some of the goings on, especially since most of my favorite filmmakers currently working appear to be in the spotlight. Malick, Von Trier, Sorrentino, Winding Refn, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Bertolucci…Seriously, a well-placed bomb on the Croisette could basically destroy all my cinematic hope for the next decade or so.
As anybody who’s read more than one thing I’ve written can tell, I’m particularly happy that one Bernardo Bertolucci is getting an honorary Palme this year (he's never gotten an actual Palme), in the wake of an international touring retrospective of his work and winning the prestigious BBC Four World Cinema Achievement Award last year. And, oh yeah, the Blu-ray release of Last Tango in Paris a couple of months ago. All this activity around Bertolucci is probably why I found myself in a debate the other day about the relative merits of one Bertolucci film that likely did not factor into the honorary Palme decision, which also ironically happens to be the last film he actually had in Competition: Stealing Beauty, one of those movies people like to trot out whenever they want to argue that Bertolucci has lost a step, or two, since his '70s heyday. On one level it’s hard to argue that Stealing Beauty is in any way the equivalent of masterpieces like The Conformist or 1900, so it’d be foolish to try. Nevertheless, I love it dearly, madly, tragically, and perhaps I should say something here.
