Elizabeth Olsen (of the FBI) and Jeremy Renner in Wind River
WIND RIVER. Superb! ( Best direction, Un Certain Regard)
"She ran six miles barefoot in the snow and died of burst frozen lungs ..."
Rape and murder on the reservation with Jeremy Renner really coming into his own as a not particularly handsome leading man. Very strong as the predator hunter with high powered rifle on high speed snowmobile --At the end of this snowy subzero nail biter Renner subjects the bloodied fleeing super-evil central rapist to a most satisfying form of vigilante justice -- making him crawl wounded and barefoot in the snow to a slow hideous death -- the same kind of death the multiple rape victim at the beginning had to endure. A fetching female FBI agent called in on the case (Elizabeth Olsen) provides a slightly romantic angle to an otherwise edgy all male Indian reservation thriller. Beautiful snowy mountain photography throughout is more than noteworthy. Overall one of the best films of the Cannes week.
Kudos to director Taylor Sheridan and all others involved in this remarkable outdoor production. This Weinstein brothers prod was filmed in Utah altho the setting is supposedly Wyoming.
The Wind River Indian Reservation is an Indian reservation for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes of Native Americans in the central western portion of the U.S. state of Wyoming. The entrance to the small town of Lander, Wyo. which is next to the Wind River Reservation is seen in one scene but the magnificent mountain snowscapes are in Utah.
Film 2: L'Amant Double (the double lover) by François Ozon, a director noted for quirky well made highly convoluted films.
This Was the last French competition entry of the week. Handsomely mounted bullshit story of twin psychiatrists (double take for diabolic sandy-haired actor Jerémie Rennier) and their strikingly beautiful victim (Marine Vacth) caught in a crossfire of psychotic psychiatry, with Jacqueline Bisset (70) at the end as the mother of main slender brunette heroine who was herself carrying a "cannibal foetus" in her lissome belly.
Definition: 'Twins in the uterus but One absorbs the other before birth' -- medical pseudo-science in action.
The while film has a very pseudo feel to it and might be described as a pseudo-psychiatric thriller. The opening scenes where the psychiatrist says almost nothing as the patient appeals desperately for some constructive therapy reads like a satire of the profession. The near unpronounceability of the name of the heroine, Vacth, could be taken as a metaphor for the entire opaqueness of the story.
Typical highly over-intellectualized and intricately over-twisted French narrative makes this picture a hard job to absorb. The festival audience responded with polite applause or, as Nice-Matin put it the following morning, "Un acceuil mitigé" ~ a mitigated reception. (i.e., Not overly enthusiastic)
Felt like walking out of the press screening but stuck it out to the end just to see where it would go, which was basically nowheres. Definitely not dull but in the end an ordeal. Saving grace, some very deftly erotic copulation scenes bordering on hard core with taste.
Ps: interesting similarity of leading actor names: American Jeremy Renner vs French Jerémie Rennier. In this brace of films the American, however, was far more appealing.
Additional comment,
by indian actress/director Bijaya Jena.
<<I did not like the soft porn film of Ozon. Many things are not explained. Too many scenes of delusion overlap the real and confuse the audience. There was no necessary of getting Chloe to make anal sex with Paul. Did not understand the point.>>
Jeremie Rennier and Marine Vacth in L'amant Double