Hot, sunny, scorching, sizzling… These are just some of the words we won’t be using to describe Cannes today. Not the weather, at least. It’s bloody raining. That fine rain, too.
Happily, the festival has been anything but soggy.
A visual and aural fizzer, director Fernando Meirelles’ eyes-wide-shut drama Blindness nonetheless failed to match technical dazzle with a smart story. Pitching the tale of the world hit by a mysterious sight-stealing epidemic, Meirelles Cannes 2008 curtain-raiser missed the subtle, emotional kick of City Of God and The Constant Gardener.
But then came Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen’s gripping debut Hunger: the fest’s most gruelling movie so far.
A punishing look at the terrible events that unfolded in a Northern Ireland prison in 1981, McQueen’s film sees IRA man Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) on a hunger strike… for real.
Emaciating his own body to a skeletal horror show that makes Christian Bale in The Machinist look like Dawn French, Fassbender goes for broke with an intense, jutting performance. Bold, stark and deeply impressive.
LWLies topped off the night by rubbing shoulders with Harvey Weinstein, Simon Pegg, Gillian Anderson and Mischa Barton at the How To Lose Friends And Alienate People party. Till 4am. It hurts so much.
Today? Michel Gondry and The Host’s Bong Joon-ho double-up for a film about Toyko, Woody Allen takes a bow, and James Toback documents the extraordinary life-story of Iron Mike Tyson.
Head back here tomorrow for the skinny…
