Cannes competition
Aaron Gerow
gerowaaron at sbcglobal.net
Tue Apr 19 08:42:25 EDT 2005
The Cannes selection committee announced the twenty films that will vie
for the Palme d'Or in the Competition and only one Japanese film made
it, Kobayashi Masahiro's Basing. I heard that films by much more famous
contemporary Japanese directors were turned down. Asia as a whole did
not do great in this year's selection.
I haven't seen Basing yet, but find the selection curious. Kobayashi is
someone who has shown consistently at Cannes for many years (out of
competition), but has made barely a blip on the screen in Japan (many
of his films have a hard time even getting released). Reviews are
pretty bad and I, for one, found the two films I have seen (both of
which showed at Cannes) to be some of the worst films I've seen in
recent years (I found them to be not only poorly made, but
pretentiously emulative of French cinema). Most of my colleagues in
Japan voice only dislike for his cinema and I've always heard rumors
that the only reason he gets into Cannes is because of back room
connections.
Again, I have not seen Basing--maybe he finally has made a good
film--but perhaps this again should make us think about how these major
festivals operate, especially how they try to decide which Japanese
cinema gets shown abroad.
Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
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