“Paterson”
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Synopsis: A bus driver who shares his name with his own New Jersey town is encouraged to write poetry by his wife Laura. Paterson supports Laura’s dreams and passion projects in turn, while pursuing an apparently humdrum existence.
What You Need To Know: The lush, louche vibe of Jarmusch’s last Cannes title, vampire romance “Only Lovers Left Alive” (which we greatly enjoyed), did feel like a departure for the director (who is regular at the festival), and with “Paterson,” it seems like he’s likely back to the kind of laconic offbeat intimacy that made him into such an enduring indie icon. Even Cannes director Thierry Fremaux referred to “Paterson” as the result of Jarmusch making a very “Jarmuschian” film. But the prospect of brilliant-in-everything Adam Driver in a rare starring role, alongside wonderful Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (Kara Hayward from “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Manchester by the Sea” also features) already had us itching to see this subdued, small-scale romance, even before we checked out the gentle-toned warmth of the trailers. And if it is truly about finding beauty in the everyday, we can’t think of anyone better suited to such a pursuit than Jarmusch, and won’t be surprised if this film turns out to be one of the high points of the lineup, albeit in a lower key than many.
“Personal Shopper”
Director: Olivier Assayas
Synopsis: A lonely young fashion assistant works for a superficial wealthy older woman as her personal shopper while also nursing an obsessive desire to make contact with her deceased twin brother.
What You Need To Know: You don’t have to have been in raptures over Assayas’ last Cannes competition title “Clouds of Sils Maria,” (and we weren’t) to be excited for his next one, especially as the Paris-set ghost story features the strongest element of ‘Sils Maria’ in a returning Kristen Stewart. If there’s cause for concern at all here, it’s that this will only be his second film in English, and the dialogue in ‘Sils Maria’ felt jarringly stilted at times. But then again, this is set in a less overtly theatrical tone, and the idea of Assayas, who is a master of a certain kind of dreamy, soft-edged, evocative tone even in his lesser films, tackling a ghost story overtly is definitely appealing, while the first images look promising. And Cannes is probably his natural home, not just because he’s previously been in competition four times since 2000, but as a French filmmaker who, in the tradition of Truffaut and Godard before him, wrote as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema before becoming a filmmaker, his is a very French brand of critical intelligence and cinephilia that makes itself felt across all his diverse output.
“Risk”
Director: Laura Poitras
Synopsis: A documentary investigating Julian Assange around the time of the Wikileaks controversy.
What You Need To Know: Probably the only director in Cannes competition to herself be a character in another forthcoming film (Melissa Leo plays her in Oliver Stone’s “Snowden”), it’s mostly as the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind “Citizenfour” that Poitras’ name is best known. But that exposé, which was the third in a trilogy about post 9/11 politics, was her second Best Documentary Oscar nomination (the first was for 2007’s “My Country, My Country“), and she has emerged over the last decade as one of the most visible and respected advocates for freedom of the press and one of the most active critics of governmental overreach and breaches of privacy. This is ironic, given the very quiet, subtle intelligence that characterizes her filmmaking style, and is one of the things that makes her documentary on Assange, who appeared briefly in “Citizenfour” and seems far more of a showman than Snowden ever was, such an enticing prospect. Indeed, her clear-sighted, sober, calm approach is more valuable than ever when taking on as thorny and ambivalent a public persona as Assange’s.
“The Salesman”
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Synopsis: A couple’s relationship starts to go south during a run of Arthur Miler’s “Death of a Salesman” that they are performing.
What You Need To Know: A late but much-hoped-for addition to the competition lineup, the latest film from great Iranian filmmaker Farhadi went straight from being an apparent no-show to being a sight-unseen early contender for the Palme d’Or. His last Cannes film “The Past,” with Berenice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, was received somewhat more coolly than his previous masterpiece “A Separation” (which we ranked as the single best film of the decade so far). But with his 2009 Berlin-winning drama “About Elly” finally getting its U.S. release last year and proving to be arguably as great as “A Separation,” Farhadi is top of our minds right now. It’s good to note that with “The Salesman,” he seems to be abandoning the thrillerish tendencies of the “The Past,” which didn’t quite work for us, and is returning to the relationship drama genre for which he has such alchemical talent. How he manages to forge such transcendently humanist, life-filled melodramas out of material that in any other hands would make so much soap is one of the great mysteries of modern cinema, and we’re excited to ponder it all over again.
“Sieranevada”
Director: Cristi Puiu
Synopsis: A successful neurologist attends a family reunion to commemorate the death of his father, but delays, revelations and unexpected guests cause political and personal rifts to open up between the family members, who soon divide into opposing factions.
What You Need To Know: Puiu’s importance to the thriving Romanian New Wave, especially linked to his bleak 2005 satire “The Death of Mr Lazarescu,” which is more or less a foundational document in the movement, is such that it’s mildly surprising that 2016 will mark his first time in the Cannes main competition: ‘Lazarescu’ and his follow-up, “Aurora” both played in Un Certain Regard. As of now, it’s unclear if “Sieranevada” marks the third installment in his planned six-film suite loosely dubbed “Six Stories From the Outskirts of Bucharest,” of which ‘Lazarescu’ and “Aurora” are the first two. But whatever the case, it stars Mimi Branescu and Bogdan Dimitrache, both of whom appeared in 2013 arthouse favorite “Child’s Pose,” and the film is in the director’s own words about “a commemoration that never gets to take place.” We’re hopeful that its chatty and busy-sounding premise marks it closer in tone to ‘Lăzărescu’ than to ‘Aurora’, which while provocative, ultimately yielded as much frustration as insight with its linear, glacially paced recreation of a man’s descent into murderous violence.
