Now that we're done salivating over the unveiling of the Gala and Special Presentation screenings for 2011 Toronto Int. Film Festival, we now put our attention on the official selection of the Venice Film Festival sidebar know as Venice Days. Director Giorgio Gosetti has mounted an edition that includes some gem auteurs and newbie filmmakers we've been keeping tabs on for the better half of 2010/2011.
I'm already salivating at the prospects for the upcoming Cannes edition (here are some predictions) and this includes one title in particular from a 6th Generation auteur that I'm not necessarily a fan of but it helps that one part of the two actor combo toplining the film is Tahar Rahim - who'll be making his big return to the place where he was christened as the next best thing from Jacques Audiard's A Prophet.
If we thought that Tahar Rahim was the big talk of 2009's Cannes with A Prophet, wait till you see what is in store with this rough and tough portrait. I'll admit to not caring much about Lou Ye's recent string of films which I felt were made with the intent of provocation without really making any deep resounding statement, this perhaps is due to the fact that I'm not part of the audience he he is personally addressing. Since its workshop days in Cannes, a.k.a "Bitch", this could contain some filth and nastier components and I think this seventh picture might become a reference point of sorts, a seminal piece of work in Ye's filmography.
Among the films pegged for next year's Cannes is the already completed Love and Bruises. We collected some stills of Lou Ye's film which began filming three weeks after winning Best Actor and Best New Actor at the French Oscars for his role in A Prophet and ended in May.
In many ways, Cannes is like Disneyland. It's a lieu where dreams come true, where an actor can be plucked from obscurity, as was the case for Tahar Rahim - whose mind-numbing, break-out performance in A Prophet has landed him a wealth of future acting parts, and it's a place that helps sustain a career in filmmaking when you're banned from pursuing the profession in your own country, as was the case for provocateur Lou Ye.