Wednesday in the Cannes Film Festival, "Melancholia" writer-director Lars von Trier muttered some wisecracks about Jews and Nazis and rather suddenly a post-screening press conference morphed into a tweet-propelled monster, a master class in how not to complete inflammatory sit-down standup inside the south of France.
Outrage! Few cared if von Trier was becoming facetious, or simply gleefully self-destructive. As the seconds, then minutes went up in media flames, perfect there inside the press conference room, von Trier's fate was sealed.
Now, if "Melancholia" wins a prize Sunday, from the Cannes 2011 jury headed by Robert De Niro, von Trier is officially barred from accepting it in individual in the closing ceremony.
Thursday's statement from the Cannes festival's board of directors:
"The Festival de Cannes supplies artists from about the planet with an exceptional forum to present their functions and defend freedom of expression and creation. The Festival's Board of Directors, which held an extraordinary meeting this Thursday 19 May well 2011, profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary for the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the incredibly existence from the Festival.
"The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata in the Festival de Cannes, with impact immediately."
Festival representatives mentioned Thursday that von Trier's eligibility for inclusion in future Cannes festivals remains undetermined.
It is hazardous to believe out loud on this matter, when other deadlines are pressing and a critic - this 1, at least-cannot enable but feel conflicted, even angered, by so significantly focus getting paid to von Trier's public relations derailment. Films? What films? It's the Danish auteur's newest adolescent thought bubbles, spoken aloud, that count.
Von Trier had a rough go of it two years ago in Cannes (and similarly tense confrontations with all the international press corps in earlier years). Two years ago, his "Antichrist" brought instantaneous, yelping indictments of von Trier's misogyny and malicious cinematic intent from several of the assembled reporters.
This year von Trier's competition title, "Melancholia," could concern the destruction of planet Earth. But even though its early critical reception runs all over the place (I found very much of it gripping), there's nothing primarily controversial about its content material. What von Trier stated in the press conference had practically nothing to complete with « Melancholia. » It had to do with von Trier badly misjudging his tone, his predictable, perpetual effrontery, his audience.
Worse for him, he seemed blissfully ignorant from the effects of giving the Cannes press one thing so risible and simply misinterpreted and stupid to tweet about.
Thursday, much more program matters.
The eight:30 a.m. press screening at the Palais: Pedro Almodovar's Gothic thriller "The Skin I Reside In," adapted from the novel "Tarantula" by Thierry Jonquet. In his 1st film for Almodovar because "Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" two decades ago, Antonio Banderas stars as a brilliant Madrid plastic surgeon interested-too interested-in radical skin-graft approaches. The woman (Elena Anaya) who seems to be held prisoner in his impeccably sleek mansion is undergoing surgery and therapy of a sort that would not pass muster with most bioethics panels.
Almodovar's image, set to a wonderful score (the film's most effective element) by his favored genre-masher Alberto Iglesias, owes a huge debt to "Eyes Without a Face," as much as it owes Jonquet's novel. But the director seems flummoxed by the creepiness known as for by the story. Envision Vincente Minnelli trying his hand at this material, and you have just about got it. The craft is meticulous, as often. The outcomes wobble uncertainly among melodrama, camp and a thing new to Almodovar: artifice that truly does feel artificial, as opposed to stylistically expressive.
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