Earlier yesterday, I was trying to get from the press mailbox area to the American Pavillion, and the easiest way to do that was to go out the side exit on that upper floor, across the top of the Palais, by the Salle Soixsianteme -- the theater "temporarily" added to the top of the Palais 5 years ago -- but I couldn't do that, the brown-suited Cannes ushers explained, as that area of egress was cut off. In 10 minutes the cast of "Lawless" -- Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, et al -- were going to be coming in for their press conference; right now, though, they were just to the right of where I wanted to go, being photographed. Which is when I noted, via the miracle bon mot machine of twitter (@jamesrocchi, if you like cooking and movies) that "Nothing ruins a film festival like famous people."

(Also, please note: I'm not in any way groaning or complaining about being here, I assure you; it's just that, hey, if I'm talking about being at Cannes and what that's like besides the movies, then, yes, like any diary, it'll be a chronicle of the occasional victory and a thousand small defeats, a mix of frustration and elation. It's amazing being here, of course, but suggesting it's all sunshine, lollipops and les arcs du ciel is as wrong as saying it's the Bataan Death March with subtitles.)
 

 

Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo has won fans over the past few years with two clever independent sci-fi features ("Timecrimes" and "Extraterrestrial"),​ his winning personality, and his interest in interacting (in person) with fans and other film geeks. He's the sort of modern filmmaker that everyone should be paying lots of attention to.  

Francophiles, rejoice! It’s turning out to be a banner year for excellent French films that are hitting our shores (if you’re lucky enough to be in a city that appreciates foreign films). The newest import from la belle France is a taut psychological drama called “Polisse” (meant to be a child’s spelling of “Police”) about a group of hardscrabble police officers working in a Child Protection Unit in Paris. In the course of their work, the officers must deal with everything from underaged Gypsy pickpockets to the most heinous child molesters, pedophiles, and abusive parents you can imagine. The professionals in this close-knit group have learned to balance the grisly aspects of their work with a kind of gallows humor but some are unable to keep the stresses of the workplace out of their personal lives. A young photographer (played by Maïwenn herself) enters this intense world to document the activities of the group. Will she remain objective as she follows the officers in their work or will her presence be a breaking point in the already taut environment?

 

“Polisse,” Maïwenn’s third film as a director, was nominated for 13 César Awards and won the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film features a phenomenal ensemble cast including co-writer Emmanuelle Bercot, Karin Viard, Marina Foïs, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Frédéric Pierrot, and French rapper Joeystarr. I spoke with the director in Los Angeles.

 

MSN Movies: I know that you spent a lot of time with an actual Child Protection Unit in France. Did you feel a bit like Melissa, your character in the film, when you were shadowing their activities? Did any of the officers resent you for being there or were they mostly supportive of your efforts to make a film about this difficult line of work?

 

Maïwenn: To be honest, they weren’t very supportive at all, most of them were kind of rude to me when I started my internship. I think they were suspicious of me as a woman director who wanted to make a movie about cops.  

 

It seems like this particular field in law enforcement has more female officers than other divisions, no?

 

Yes, but because these women have to constantly prove their worth in this male-dominated world I’m afraid many of them are very competitive and not exactly welcoming to other women, including me!  

 

Some of the things these officers see on a daily basis are beyond upsetting. When you were researching this material, were you surprised at what you found? Was it worse than you thought it would be?

 

You know, I was shocked almost every day. I had a feeling before I started the internship that it was going to change my life. I think the day I freaked out the most was when I spent time with the Internet group because then I saw the actual images that were out there. Horrifying stuff.

 

There are scenes in the film in which we see the humor that the officers use to get through the day, some of it wildly inappropriate. Did that reflect what you saw among the real cops?

 

Rating: 2.5/5

Here at Cannes, where photographers will gladly and literally run over you to photograph red carpet luminaries pausing only to ask, as one did to me one year, "Whozzat bird, then?", you get to see celebrity worship at its worst. But in the directorial debut of Brandon Cronenberg -- yes, David Cronenberg's son -- celebrity worship in a 20-minutes-from-now future goes beyond even that. The result is a story that may be a little over-long -- the film could do with a few cuts off-screen to go with the many slashings and stabbings on -- but it's also one that demonstrates Cronenberg is a talent to watch, especially if he can find his own voice and not echo (albeit echo superbly) his father in later films.

Syd (Caleb Landry Jones, of "X-Men: First Class" and "Contraband") works at the sterile, high-end Lucas Clinic medical clinic -- which is ironic, as he looks like death warmed over, sniffling, sneezing, trembling with fever. The Lucas Clinic  offers a unique service to wealthy clients -- infecting them with the same viruses that the celebrities the clinic has exclusive contracts with, re-spun through high-tech wizardry and made both non-contagious and copy-proof. A pallid and shaken young man comes in, plunks down his ATM Card … and gets injected with a strain of herpes simplex "A" taken from mega-star Hannah Geist (Sarah Gadon). "Biological communion," as Syd notes … for a price.

Syd, though, has been breaking one simple rule: He's been taking his work home with him … literally, injecting himself with the clinic's newest additions to their germ and virus library from their superstar specimens and  making black-market deals with Arvid (Joe Pingue, scruffy and strong in a bit part) for money on the side. It's pretty stupid for Syd to be doing this, but I bought it -- it felt like the William Gibson version of "getting high on your own supply." And when Syd tries a little something something after picking up a vial of blood to make sure the latest malady suffered by the Clinic's biggest name is on the Clinic's menu fast, he falls asleep in a fever … to wake two days later with every news source blaring that the Clinic's biggest-name germ-and-virus provider is dead. 

 

The film also stars Matthew McConaughey, Cody Horn, Olivia Munn, Matt Bomer, Riley Keough, Joe Mangianello, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodriguez, and Gabriel Iglesias.

 

How timely: in the wake of the DVD and Blu-ray release of the documentary "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" a couple of months back and a long overdue Oscar, a veritable festival of films directed by Roger Corman have been made available this month on Netflix, bumping their library up to a dozen or so of his best films.

 

His cycle of Edgar Allan Poe films were the first to really be taken seriously: stories of madness and melancholia set in gloomy, crumbling mansions and shot in rich, bleeding color and CinemaScope, most of them starring Vincent Price, whose theatrical flourish gives his brooding heroes a sense of tragedy. The success of "The House of Usher" (1960), the first of the cycle, paved the way for the more ambitious "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), highlighted by Barbara Steele’s savage eyes and feral smile, Price’s cackling transformation into a sadistic ghost, and the grandiose bladed pendulum set piece. Ray Milland takes over for Price in "Premature Burial" (1962) as the doomed, brooding aristocrat gripped by a paralyzing fear of being buried alive, and Price is back for "The Raven" (1963), a comic take on Poe co-starring Peter Lorre and Jack Nicholson, and "The Tomb of Ligeia" (1964).

 

Corman's crowning achievement in the cycle is "The Masque of the Red  Death" (1964), a deliriously colorful gothic horror (vividly shot by future director Nicolas Roeg) of a demented, debauched Prince whose castle is the sole sanctuary during the plague, but the price to enter is to become a plaything of the sadistic tormentor. Vincent Price is no longer the haunted gothic hero but the sadistic Prince Prospero, a sadist who wields the power of life and death with no pity: his subjects are toys and he revels in their humiliation and torture. This is Corman’s most daring character study and most stylistically impressive film.

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For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for May 15