After taking home the Best Actress statue for her turn in Lars Von Trier’s audience dividing “Antichrist,” Charlotte Gainsbourg is set to the return to the Croisette starring in the Cannes Film Festival closing film “The Tree.”
Directed by Julie Bertucelli, the film is a “drama about a family mourning the death of their father” and is based on the book “Our Father Who Art in the Tree” by Judy Pascoe. Here’s the book synopsis from Publisher’s Weekly:
A 10-year-old girl in suburban Australia finds a unique way of coping with her father’s death in this brief, fairy tale-like coming-of-age story. When Simone’s father finally succumbs to a lifelong heart condition, her mother is consumed by grief, and her brothers, two older and one younger, are either too preoccupied with their studies or too young to be of any comfort to their sister. Desperately seeking solace, she climbs into the huge poinciana tree looming over their house, and suddenly her long-held suspicions (“If you climbed high enough in the tree in our backyard you came to another world”) are confirmed when she hears her father’s voice in the highest branches. Hoping it will alleviate her grief, Simone tells her mother of this discovery and persuades her to climb the tree, where she can soon be heard talking and laughing and then shouting and crying. The presence in the tree is a mixed blessing: it makes the loss less complete, but also prevents the family from moving on. Pascoe tells the story from Simone’s baffled perspective, but fails to develop the other characters enough to fill in the picture. The strongest presence in the book is that of the tree itself, whose roots and branches wreak such havoc on the house that it becomes clear the family will have to choose between the two. The choice is made for them when a furious typhoon ends the summer-long drought, felling the mighty tree. The family emerges battered but intact, later in life pausing occasionally to remember the strange time when their father’s spirit lingered in their troublesome tree.
Also announced is the festival’s Cannes Classics slate of films. Launched in 2004, this program screens restored or previously lost film as part of their re-release back into theaters or DVD. This year’s slate includes “Psycho,” “The African Queen,” a director’s cut of “The Tin Drum” and a new version of Jean Renoir’s “Boudu Saved From Drowning” featuring never-before-seen deleted scenes. Check out the full slate of films below:
LA BATAILLE DU RAIL (The Battle of the Rails) (France, 1946, 82’) by René Clément.
BOUDU SAUVE DES EAUX (Boudu Saved from Drowning) by Jean Renoir (France, 85’, 1932).
TRISTANA (Spain/France/Italy, 99’ 1970) by Luis Buñuel. The film will be presented by Pedro Almodovar.
IL GATTOPARDO (The Leopard) (Italy, 185’, 1963) by Luchino Visconti.
DIE BLECHTROMEL (The Tin Drum) (Germany, 164’) by Volker Schlöndorff, presented by the director in a ‘Director’s cut’, remastered by Kinowelt.
KHANDAHAR (The Ruins) (India, 102’) directed in 1983 by Mrinal Sen.
LA CAMPAGNE DE CICERON (France, 111’, 1989) by Jacques Davila.
LA 317e SECTION (France, 94’) presented by director Pierre Schoendoerffer and the President of the Cinémathèque Costa-Gavras.
LE GRAND AMOUR (The Great Love) (France, 87’) directed and presented by Pierre Etaix.
AFRICAN QUEEN (United States / United Kingdom, 105’, 1951) by John Huston.
AU PETIT BONHEUR (Happy Go Lucky) by Marcel L’Herbier (France, 102’, 1946).
PSYCHO (United States, 109’, 1960) by Alfred Hitchcock.
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (United States / Brazil, 120’) by Hector Babenco.
Finally, the World Cinema Foundation, established in Cannes by Martin Scorsese in 2007, presents:
MEST (The Red Flute) by Ermek Shinarbaev, (Kazakhstan, 96’, 1989).
KÉT LÁNY AZ UTCÁN (Two Girls in the Street) by André de Toth (Hungary, 85’, 1939).
TITASH EKTI NADIR NAAM (A River Called Titas) by Ritwik Ghatak (India, 158’, 1973).
The Cinematheque of Bologna will also be presenting two short films:
IL RUSCELLO DI RIPASOTTILE (Italy, 1941, 12’) by Roberto Rossellini.
THE ELOQUENT PEASANT by Chadi Abdel Salam (Egypt, 1970, 20’).
Documentaries
HOLLYWOOD DON’T SURF (United States, 2010, 85’) by Greg MacGillivray.
CAMERAMAN: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JACK CARDIFF (United Kingdom, 2010, 90’) by Craig McCall.
MEN FILMEN ÄR MIN ÄLSKARINNA (…but Film is My Mistress) (Sweden, 2010, 66’) by Stig Bjorkman.
TOSCAN by Isabelle Partiot-Pieri (France, 2010, 90’).
–Written by Kevin Jagernauth