DIARY
Today Edited by Sarah Cooper
sarah.cooper@
screendaily.com The art of shooting gangsters
BY JEREMY KAY The irony of Lawless, the engross- ing rural gangster saga set in the US during Prohibition, is that it took an Australian fi lm-maker to capture a specifi c US milieu with such panache. “Distance and a fresh eye can help,” Hillcoat says, though he freely admits he devoured 1970s US cinema during his formative years in Canada. “I had been searching for a
gangster fi lm for a long time and my thing about genre films is to try to fi nd an angle that was fresh,” the fi lm-maker says. “That was the challenge with gangster films because they’re so familiar.”
Pretty in Pink
Team Screen is always delighted to receive a party invite, especially one that feels a bit naughty. So we were thrilled to be sent the unique invitation for Ealing Metro’s Goddess party on Monday night, in the form of a bright pink rubber glove. The Australian musical romantic comedy, about a housewife who becomes an internet singing
Free agent
BY JEREMY KAY Cassian Elwes’ frequent contribu- tions on Twitter read like those inserts in Chinese fortune cookies, exhorting people to follow their hearts and such like. And now the former head of indie fi lm fi nancing at WMA is doing it in person. “You have to trust your own
taste and be passionate and not be concerned about money,” says Elwes, who packaged two movies in Competition — John Hillcoat’s Western Lawless and Lee Daniels’ steamy noir The Paperboy. “I believe if you do good work, money will come to you.” Elwes didn’t talk like this in his
agency days, where he worked on a high volume of product, much of which he claims was unsatisfying. “I ended up working on a lot of films where I was trying to save clients or find clients’ films… I knew going into them that they weren’t going to make money.”
Cassian Elwes He left the fold in spring 2009
after the merger between WMA and Endeavor and these days exudes the air of a freed prisoner. His fi rst project as a lone operator was to assemble JC Chandor’s acclaimed Margin Call and he declares himself equally proud of his current Cannes crop. He calls Hillcoat “a genius” and
gushes over Nicole Kidman’s work in The Paperboy. “If she’s not nom- inated for awards for this,” he says, “there’s no justice.” Elwes recently formed the
indie fi lm-making boutique Evo- lution Independent with Evolu- tion Entertainment principal Mark Burg and so far they have Ain’t Them Bodies Saints on the books, starring Rooney Mara.
■ 12 Screen International at Cannes May 19, 2012
fi nancier Michael Benaroya came on board, followed by Annapur- na’s Megan Ellison. They shot in the state of Geor-
Lawless Hillcoat read Matt Bondurant’s
novel The Wettest County In The World as he was finishing The Road and promptly set regular col- laborator Nick Cave to write the script. Sony bought the project only to dump it when the 2008 fi nancial crisis set in. Fortunately
sensation, stars Ronan Keating in his feature debut, alongside Laura Michelle Kelly (who will both be in Cannes). Ahead of the market premiere on Monday, there
gia in spring 2011. Hillcoat is full of praise for his cast, calling Shia LaBeouf “a serious actor”, while Tom Hardy as the head of the Bondurant gang is “audacious in a brilliant way”. Jessica Chastain, meanwhile, “was the revelation”. He reserves special admiration
for his investors. “It was a big fi lm for [Benaroya and Ellison] and they were young and took a risk. I hope it all comes off because we need people like that.” The Wein- stein Company holds US rights.
A happy Ending for Karen Gillan
will also be a ‘yummy mummy’ parade down the Croisette. Bring on the rubbery fun.
Wendy Mitchell
BY SARAH COOPER It’s been a big week for Scottish actress Karen Gillan. On Saturday she filmed her final Doctor Who episode for the BBC and now she’s in Cannes for the fi rst time to talk about her lead feature project, Not Another Happy Ending, directed by John McKay and produced by Claire Mundell of Synchronicity Films, in which she stars as a writer who can only write when she is unhappy. “Saturday was such a strange
day, we did the fi nal shot and then went into the Tardis and we all just hugged each other,” says Gillan, of her fi nal Doctor Who scenes. She describes the new Glasgow-
based project, which starts shoot- ing in July, as “an indie, quirky, artsy fi lm”. Given her favourite fi lm is Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, she is excited to hear his latest fi lm is here in Cannes. “Oh my God, I so have to stalk him. And he won’t think it’s weird because all his fi lms are weird!”
Sunshine and showers High 19°c (60°f)
Tomorrow
Partly sunny with showers High 18°c (64°f)
Meet the debutants DAVID LAMBERT, BEYOND THE WALLS
life. It’s very personal. Yes, the film is about two guys, but I didn’t want to make a gay movie or gender movie. It could be a guy and a girl. Love is universal.
Belgian director David Lambert’s first feature Beyond The Walls (Hors Les Murs) screens in Critics’ Week (Sunday). The intimate love story between two musicians is being sold by Films Boutique.
How did you feel when your film was selected for Cannes? I had a little vertigo. The movie wasn’t finished, so we had a lot of work to do. Now it is finished, it’s very exciting.
Where did the idea for the film come from? It was the first screenplay I ever wrote; I was 22. It was really bad then! But it is a movie that I kept in my office and my life for 15 years. I was originally planning to be a screenwriter, I was not planning to direct. I sent the draft to lots of directors and they came back and said it was too intimate for them to direct. So I had to do it myself.
Does the film contain any autobiographical elements? I can’t direct emotions and things that I don’t know closely. I have to understand what’s going on with the characters. It is a story about love and about losing love suddenly and abruptly. And that is something that happened in my
How did you go about casting your two leads? I wanted to cast them together. I wanted to be sure they worked as a couple. It was very exciting. The first time I met them it was the same afternoon. And I had an instinct. They were so different and at the same time so compatible.
Did you take any influence from any other films? The only really clear influence in the narrative structure is The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg by Jacques Demy. It’s about naive and young love, a separation and then the guy comes back and tries to find love again, but so much time has come between them that they can’t make it again.
Would you make films outside your native Belgium? I would love to shoot films in other countries, though they would have to be coherent with what I have to say, and what I want to do. Just not in the countryside. It has to be in the city. I spent 18 years of my life in the countryside and nothing happened. I live in downtown Brussels now.
What’s next? I’m writing a film called I Am Y
ours.
It’s an intimate drama. The characters come from different worlds and try to be together. I like to explore the duality and the impossibility of being together. That is something I am obsessed with. Sarah Cooper
Beyond The Walls Mundell, Gillan, McKay
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