Deal-making begins at the Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival has just begun, and there are already a couple of notable pickups.

Sony Pictures Classics acquired Love is All You Need, a romantic comedy set in Italy. Pierce Brosnan leads the cast in the movie, which Deadline Hollywood describes as centered on "a group of people all seeking love, about passion and happiness, about jealousy and loneliness. First and foremost, it’s a story about having the courage to change your life – even when you think it’s too late." Director Susanne Bier has received plenty of acclaim for her films (including Things We Lost in the Fire and recently Oscar winner In a Better World), but this one sounds considerably more lighthearted. Given the success of older-skewing indies like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, this could resonate well with audiences seeking specialty titles.

Samuel Goldwyn Films showed it could move quickly with its pickup of Grassroots. It's dated the film for a release just six weeks from now. The politically themed feature, based on real events, centers on an unknown man who runs against the incumbent Seattle City Councilman with the help of the former writer of an alternative weekly. Goldwyn will open the film on June 22, shortly after it makes its premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 10. The project sounds fun: Jason Biggs plays the writer, the lanky Joel David Moore (who played a researcher who goes Navi in Avatar) the challenger, and Cedric the Entertainer the politician. According to THR, the project is moving fast partly because of current events: this year's election and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Also hot on the Cannes news feed? The premiere of Moonrise Kingdom, the latest Wes Anderson film. Eric Kohn of IndieWire captures what most people are saying with this comment: "Those open to Anderson quirks will find a rewarding experience littered with warmth and playful humor." If people haven't been won over by Anderson already, this picture won't change their minds.

'Please Give' reflects its New York City audience

By Sarah Sluis

Please Give, the latest film by Nicole Holofcener, follows a Manhattan woman (Catherine Keener) who feels incredibly guilty about those less fortunate than her. She runs a business selling vintage furniture, and is

remorseful about buying items from mourning children. Her family has also pre-bought the apartment of the aging lady next door, which they will renovate after her death. Then there's the twenty dollar bills she dispenses to the various homeless people hanging out around 5th Avenue.

As I settled into my seat for the movie, a selection at the Tribeca Film Festival, I overheard the conversation of the two ladies next to me. First, they discussed feeling guilty while on a cruise, because they are staffed with people from third-world countries away from home for nine months of the year. Then, they had a worried discussion about how much to tip delivery men (it was decided that a $5 tip on a $25 purchase was sufficient). They could have been characters right from Holofcener's

movie.

Which is what is so great about Holofcener, who wrote and directed the film. She's spot-on in her characterization and dialogue. The movie is very New York-specific (but that never hurt Woody Allen or "Seinfeld") and captures a specific group of people in New York without becoming too in-jokey. It's the kind of movie that finds humor in truth. A fake tan greeted with an eyebrow raise is much more effective than oompa-loompa jokes about the orange hue. I've seen Holofcener's previous movie, Friends with Money, and was pleasantly surprised. Please Give was so much better, perhaps because each character can be both sympathetic and repulsive.

One of the most telling moments for Keener's character is when she starts crying while a group of young people with Down's Syndrome play basketball. She's so guilty over feeling better off than people, she fails to see that people that are "less fortunate" than her have happy and fulfilling lives in their own way. All she can do is feel bad for people, she can't empathize or see how their lives

have good and bad times just like hers. In between moments like these, there's more superficial concerns, like her daughter's desire for $200 jeans and clear skin. The daughter of the aging woman next door, played by Rebecca Hall, has a sad moroseness around her that channels Noah Baumbach. In a final touch of reality, how the characters act in a group is much different than how they are in twos. Keener's daughter and Hall relate to each other honestly and as friends as they walk dogs together, and the other daughter of the aging woman (Amanda Peet) has an affair with Keener's husband (Oliver Platt). All this, despite the fact that the two families are ostensibly awkward enemies because of the apartment sale. That's why I'll put Holofcener's film among the best that I have seen this year.

Check out FJI's interview with director Nicole Holofcener and our review.

Animated Waltz with Bashir' defies expectations

By Sarah Sluis

This is the age of "reality" television, where everything from "Man vs. Wild" to "The Hills" claims they depict the truth, only to be besieged by scandals when, for example, the public finds out a survivalist stages his "life or death" situations and goes home to a hotel every night.  In this context, seeing a documentary that makes a point to include its subjectivity is incredibly refreshing.

Waltz with Bashir, screening Oct. 1 and 2 at the New York Film Festival, exists on another plane from how mainstream culture represents reality.  An animated documentary, the film uses a combination of flash, classic, and 3D animation to explore director/writer/producer Ari Folman's quest to find out what really happened during the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war, which he had completely blocked from his memory (watch the trailer to get a sense of the graphic novel-esque visuals).  The film goes back and forth between his interviews with people who were there, often with him, and the recreation of events based on these memories.

Waltz with Bashir deviates from genre and tone expectations of a "war" film.  In moments where you
are trained to expect bravery and heroics, there is fear and disorganization.  In one scene, the commander of a tank is shot.  The soldiers seem puzzled by why he has stopped moving.  Then, their whole tank comes under fire, and they flee without weapons, all dying save one soldier hiding behind a rock, who watches the supporting tank roll away in the distance, abandoning him.

So Waltz is not a "war" film, but it's also not an "anti-war" film.  Folman most wants to recover his memory of the Massacres of Sabra and Shatila, and when that memory finally comes to light�the moment where the Israelis found themselves playing the role of the Nazi�he leaves the emotions of guilt and complicity unaccented.  Nodding to the bureaucratic stagnation that perpetrated the action, he shows the numbness and matter-of-fact attitude of a soldier carrying out orders.  Whether his reaction or atonement is enough, right, appropriate?  Beside the point.  By defying our expectations of a war or anti-war film, or that of a hero searching for redemption, Waltz with Bashir develops more emotional nuance.  The climax includes a break with animation to include archival video footage, a final jolt that places the film within the evening news and expands its scope and reach.

The film has already swept the Israeli Oscars, the Oshir awards, and will likely be in the Oscar running for Best Foreign Film�and possibly Best Animated Feature, so make a point to see this unique documentary when Sony Pictures Classics opens it in late December. It deserves the buzz.