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- The Guardian, Wednesday May 19 2004
'Get yer fingers out ma man's nose'
One of the most perplexing mysteries of Cannes was provided by the Coen brothers' new movie The Ladykillers, playing in competition, a deep south remake of the old British classic. For those of us who admire the Ealing comedies and the Coen movies as pungently individual types of cinema, it is baffling to see one appropriate the other, as if it were a kind of neutral source material. This new Ladykillers isn't bad, but it is baffling. The Coens intended originally to write the script for someone else, and wound up directing. It was, however, undoubtedly their idea. Did they plan a critique of the original? An update? Or what?
The Alec Guinness role of the eccentric criminal mastermind is taken by Tom Hanks; he plays Professor GH Dorr, a suth'n gentleman with snaggle teeth who rents a room from an African-American widow, Mrs Munson (Irma P Hall) claiming he needs a basement to rehearse his Renaissance music. Really, he and his gang are going to tunnel into the count room of a local casino while a tape of their fancy classical music is playing.
There are some laughs here, and some nicely composed scenes, and Hall is excellent. But it's best when it reminds you of the original, and not so good when it departs from it; nor can it match the first film's elegance and playful tension. In the cinema of genteel 1950s Britain, planning to kill an old lady was shocking; in modern America, not so much - the Ealing picture was genuinely transgressive. The Coens' version is well acted and directed, but it's not as funny and, paradoxically, not as modern either.
The Thai film Sud Pralad, or Tropical Malady, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is a remarkable experiment in vision and narrative. It begins innocuously enough in the familiar affectless manner of modern Asian cinema. Keng (Banlop Lomnoi) and Tong (Sakda Kaewbuadee) are, respectively, a farmer and an army reservist, who begin an intense friendship that deepens into love. Then the movie flips on to a higher level as one gets lost in the jungle and is pursued by a ghost before finally confronting a spirit in the form of a tiger. The final sequence, semi-dark and all but silent, recalls Apocalypse Now, but with a dark and hallucinatory twist. A beautiful and strange film.
France has another excellent film in the festival: Benoît Jacquot's A Tout de Suite (Right Now), a monochrome thriller set in 1975 Paris, playing in Un Certain Regard. Isild Le Besco is the gawky, sexy young woman who lives at home with her divorced father and falls for a mysterious north African guy (Ouassini Embarek) who seems to be very rich. Then he calls her: he has just robbed a bank, he says, taken hostages and expects to be killed at any moment by police. It's a gripping tale, based on a true story. Bonnie and Clyde with the messiness of real life.
