The Directors' Fortnight: Cannes at Cinematek

(Catch Me Daddy)

Rue Baron Hortastraat is not the Croisette. No palm trees or starlets have been spotted there hitherto. Nonetheless, starting 20 June, you can soak up a little of Cannes’s atmosphere there. Cinematek is screening an extensive selection of the 46^th Quinzaine des réalisateurs. The Directors’ Fortnight has been organised parallel to the regular competition at the Cannes Film Festival since 1968, and launched such small fry as Martin Scorsese, Ken Loach, and Sofia Coppola. Five films to look forward to.

CATCH ME DADDY (24 & 25/6)
A person can’t spend their whole life as a director of music videos for The Horrors, Róisín Murphy, and Duffy. Daniel Wolfe couldn’t anyway. The Brit doesn’t pull any punches in his debut. “Gritty social realism meets classic western elements in this poetically bleak chase thriller,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote after the film’s world première at Cannes. The Guardian particularly praised the grim, nihilistic thriller’s phenomenal cinematography. Wolfe unleashed his imagination on the horrifying phenomenon of honour killings. To escape from her family, a young woman of Pakistani heritage and her boyfriend go into hiding in the north of England. When her brother and his henchmen arrive in the town, she has to run for her life.

ALLELUIA (20/6)
The young Martin Scorsese was sacked after one week for being too slow, and was replaced by a screenwriter who was only ever to make one film. That didn’t stop The Honeymoonkillers (1969) from becoming a cult film and François Truffaut’s favourite American film.

The screenplay was based on life stories of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, who were executed in 1951. The couple were popularly known as the Lonely Hearts Killers. She was an obese nurse, he was a conman. Together, they travelled across America robbing and killing lonely women. The idiosyncratic Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz set the story in the Ardennes, and has rediscovered some of the magic of Calvaire. Expect a grotesque tragedy about insane love, with death as the ultimate sign of that love.

LES COMBATTANTS (26/6)

When an international PR agency in Cannes asked me for a quote, I described Les combattants as: French but fresh and funny.

Thomas Cailley’s directorial debut is both very funny and French, but I prefer not to call it a French comedy because dozens of French (romantic) comedies are released week after week and the vast majority are painfully bad. This film couldn’t be more different. The tried and tested story of a boy meeting a girl is given an original twist. Arnaud is just an average guy, but Madeleine is an adventure all to herself. She is convinced that the end of the world is nigh and wants to be as well prepared as possible. A summer course in the army strikes her as a good first step. Rising star Adèle Haenel’s physical, seriocomic performance is only one of the many pleasant surprises.

QUEEN AND COUNTRY (22 & 24/6)

With his rock-hard crime film Point Blank and the terrifying survival drama Deliverance, John Boorman ensured decades ago that he wouldn’t be forgotten quickly. The versatile British director is more than eighty years old already, but he still managed to find the energy and the financing for another new film.

Queen and Country is a sequel to Hope and Glory, the warm, naïve war film that was nominated for five Oscars and narrated Boorman’s boyhood memories of the Second World War. By 1952, his alter ego Bill Rohan has grown into a young man who enjoys spending time on the banks of the river. The Korean War, national service, and the hard realities of a military training camp dash the young man’s dreams. An honourable and sincere sequel from a born storyteller.

WHIPLASH (21 & 25/6)

The rumour spread like wildfire among journalists at Cannes: Whiplash was the most notable film of the whole Quinzaine.

An independent Belgian distributor who agrees would love to release the American film by Damien Chazelle, which won an award at Sundance. Unfortunately, a major American player holds the rights, and they have no plans for the film. So you’ll either have to wait for the DVD or head to Cinematek and treat yourself to a study of musical obsession and deviant student-teacher relationships. J.K. Simmons, a favourite of the Coen brothers, plays the role of his life as the jazz bandleader who trains a talented and ambitious 19-year-old with an iron fist. Be warned, it is not pretty.

THE DIRECTOR’S FORTNIGHT • 20 > 20/6, CINEMATEK, rue Baron Hortastraat 9, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-551.19.19, www.cinematek.be