New York Film Festival Preview

Police, Adjective (top), Antichrist (middle),
Wild Grass (bottom)

The lineup for this year's 47th New York Film Festival has just been posted (http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/nyff.html) and it looks to be one of the strongest in years. Considering the rather disappointing selections from Cannes this year, at least from major directors in the competition, the NYFF's selection committee has done a mostly outstanding job this year. My biggest regret is the absence of Hong Sang-Soo's Like You Know It All. Last year the NY Times's Manohla Dargis trashed Hong's wonderful Night and Day, criticizing alleged "programmer loyalty", which may have played a part in Hong's exclusion this year. Night and Day sadly remains without American distribution. I would also have liked to see Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Jane Campion's Bright Star, and Lou Ye's Spring Fever in the festival, but there are still plenty of films to look forward to. [UPDATE 11/3: Night and Day has been distributed by IFC Films and recently played at Anthology Film Archives; Bright Star opened theatrically in September.]

Most eagerly anticipated for me is the Opening Night selection, Alain Resnais's Les herbes folles (Wild Grass). Resnais is probably my favorite still-active director from the era of the Nouvelle Vague, although technically not part of the Cahiers du Cinema group that included Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette, et al. If I treasure Resnais above even Godard today, it's because of his unequaled mastery of a beautiful and highly formalist mise-en-scene coupled with a profound sympathy for his characters. This carries through from his 60s masterpieces Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel and the underrated Je t'aime, je t'aime, all of which played with the nature of time in thrilling ways, through Providence and Stavisky in the 70s, to a highly theatrical masterpiece like Mélo in the 80s and up to the recent Coeurs. Since the 80s Resnais has worked repeatedly with the great Sabine Azéma and André Dussollier (pictured above), who star in Wild Grass along with Arnaud Desplechin regulars Mathieu Amalric and Emanuelle Devos. I've always avoided the overhyped opening and closing night films at the NYFF but I'll make an exception this year.

Second on my list is Claire Denis's White Material. The festival failed to include Denis's previous film, the great 35 Rhums (opening this fall at Film Forum), so I give them credit for snagging this one before it has even premiered at Venice. Denis returns to some of the themes of her debut film Chocolat as, in the words of the festival blurb, "A handful of Europeans try to make sense of--and survive--the chaos happening all around them in an African country torn apart by civil war." Isabelle Huppert and Denis icon Isaach de Bankolé star.

My third choice would be the highly acclaimed film Police, Adjective (top left) by Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, director of the beautifully observed comedy 12:08 East of Bucharest.

Cahiers veteran Jacques Rivette also has a film in the festival, 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup. Other notable auteurs represented are Lars von Trier with Antichrist (above right), the scandal of Cannes, which is probably worth seeing if for no other reason than the prizewinning performance of Charlotte Gainsbourg; Catherine Breillat's Bluebeard; Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or winner The White Ribbon; Marco Bellocchio's Mussolini biopic Vincere; and 100-year-old Manoel de Oliveira's Eccentricities of a Blonde.

More to come in a second post.