lifestyle THURSDAY, MAY 22, 2014 MUSIC & MOVIES China’s Wang Chao guns for second award at Cannes ight years after winning the new talent prize turns to prostitution to help her father, while their making, joining the illustrious club of the so-called at Cannes, Chinese director Wang Chao is mother sells blood to earn some extra cash. “Sixth Generation” directors in China who focus Ehoping to renew the feat with his new film As for the boy himself, he starts skipping class mainly on social issues, and include this year’s festi- about a family that falls apart over the father’s can- after being bullied at school and escapes into his val jury member Jia Zhangke. cer. Set in the heaving, foggy metropolis of own fantasy world. The film is set against the back- He said in production notes that he had written Chongqing, “Fantasia” delves deep into the ills of drop of Chongqing-an industrial city like no other the script for “Fantasia” in 2003, several years after modern society in the world’s most populous in China where forests of skyscrapers look over the shooting his first feature movie “The Orphan of country-a lack of universal healthcare, prostitution mighty Yangtze River, the bright lights of the city Anyang.” “Ten years later, there has been no funda- and a fading sense of community as money con- centre shining onto decrepit shacks. Long, linger- mental change in the real difficulties that the quers all. ing shots of the murky river, horns blasting as Chinese working class faces, and so I still wanted to The film is competing in the Un Certain Regard barges sail through, soak in the unique atmos- shoot it,” he said. section of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a catego- phere of this pulsating city. One of the main themes of the film is access to ry that seeks out new talent and encourages dar- medical care in China, which has become a huge ing work that Wang already won in 2006 with ‘Sixth Generation’ director problem since universal healthcare collapsed in “Luxury Car.” “Fantasia” revolves around Xiao Lin, a From a working-class family himself, Wang the early 1980s along with the country’s modern- boy whose father is diagnosed with terminal labored for several years at a steel mill before ization drive. leukaemia, turning the family’s life upside down. enrolling in the famed Beijing Film Academy when While the government has been working to The factory his father works for initially takes he was laid off and becoming a movie critic. His provide affordable basic care for all, many families care of hospital fees but eventually tells his wife critical prose caught the eye of veteran director cannot meet soaring medical costs when someone that they can only pay half of future medical bills. Chen Kaige who took Wang on as an assistant, and falls ill and end up spending all their savings until She goes around asking for money from friends, both worked on what has become one of the most they have nothing left. Wang said that apart from Chinese actress Renzi Jian and Chinese director one of whom is wealthy but refuses to lend her famous Chinese films abroad-”Farewell My these domestic issues, facing death was “a kind of Wang Chao pose during a photocall for the film any-as does her own father, who needs to keep the Concubine.” Wang eventually branched out on his universal human suffering” which would have reso- ‘Fantasia’ at the 67th edition of the Cannes Film cash in case he too falls ill. Xiao Lin’s elder sister own into the difficult world of independent film- nance with all. — AFP Festival in Cannes, southern France yesterday. — AFP ‘The Artist’ follow-up falls flat at Cannes (From left) Actress Julianne Moore, director David Cronenberg, actor Evan Bird, actress Mia Wasikowska, actor John Cusack, unidentified person, actor Rob Pattinson, and actress Sarah Gadon and an unidentified person pose for photographers as they arrive for the screening of Maps to the Stars. —AP (From left) Producer Thomas Langmann, actor Maxim Emelianov, actor Abdul Khalim As a shallow actress, Mamatsueiv, director Michel Hazanavicius, actress Berenice Bejo, and actress Zukhra Duishvili pose for photographers during a photo call for ’The Search’. —AP he Artist” director Michel tionately high civilian casualties, Western Hazanavicius followed up his apathy and often skewed media coverage. Moore a hit in Cannes “TOscar winner with a Chechen war drama, again starring his wife Berenice Bejo, ‘Well-meaning and misguided’ which disappointed Cannes critics yester- Despite repeated questions on the current day. “The Search”, a remake of a post-World context of the Ukraine crisis, Hazanavicius ne of the great pleasures of this year’s Hollywood premiered earlier in the week. Written (Co-star Robert Pattinson, amazed by the per- War II classic by Fred Zinnemann, features declined to comment on it, with his producer Cannes Film Festival has been a momen- by Bruce Wagner and starring Mia Wasikowska, formance, concurs: “I think she’ll get nominated.”) Bejo as Carole, a human rights official for the noting that film project began long before Otary close-up on Julianne Moore’s face in John Cusack and Robert Pattinson, “Maps to the “That line is so funny and you do feel like European Union during the second Chechen the current tensions erupted. “I’ve tried not to David Cronenberg’s “Maps to the Stars.” It comes Stars” features cutthroat movie business insiders you’ve heard that a few times,” Moore says, laugh- conflict in 1999. She grows increasingly make a film with a political focus but to look when her character, a desperate and superficial and celebrity-obsessed aspirants in Los Angeles ing. The irony is also that Moore could hardly be exasperated by the indifference of her boss- at the human impact of war,” Hazanavicius actress, learns that the role she covets has who are, as Cronenberg said, “desperate to exist.” more different than her character. For decades es in Brussels, spurred on by an American said. Bejo, 37, said she appreciated the pic- opened up because her rival’s young son has “She’s very touching to me,” Moore said in an now, the 53-year-old actress has been an ever- charity worker (Annette Bening), who tells ture’s focus on the local victims instead of for- died. A flicker of utter glee flits over Moore’s face interview of her character. “She’s such a lost soul, shifting, scarlet-haired force of naturalism. her her reports are useless if they don’t lead eign do-gooders. “In films on war, it’s usually Though her range across films like “Short to Western intervention. the Westerners who save everybody else or Cuts,” “Vanya on 42nd Street,” “The Big Lebowski,” When Carole meets a nine-year-old there’s a love story,” she said. “What I loved in “Boogie Nights” and “The Kids Are All Right” Chechen boy struck silent when his parents the screenplay was that it focused on the oth- varies widely, Moore has always been an actress are gunned down by Russian soldiers er people: the civilian population who suf- whose art is her apparent effortlessness. Plus, she before his eyes, she sees a chance to at least fers.” The two-and-a-half-hour-long picture has one of the best laughs in show business: a make a difference on a smaller scale and met with boos and a smattering of polite head-thrown-back, squinty-eyed, totally infec- takes him in. A parallel storyline follows a applause at an early press preview and drew tious cackle. Does she grant that she’s more level- sensitive young Russian man, arrested for mainly scathing reviews on social media. headed than her character? “I think so. I hope so,” smoking pot, who joins the army to escape London-based film magazine Little says Moore. “You have to have a fairly realistic a jail term and is turned into a killing White Lies said the director’s latest film assessment of who you are, what your abilities machine by his sadistic senior officers. “swaps silent charm for bombastic are and where you are in your career and your Hazanavicius’ “The Artist”, an ironic, affec- schmaltz” while US movie website said age. Hopefully I’ve never been that extreme.” tionate take on Hollywood’s silent age, was “Hazanavicius’ first conventional dramatic a box office smash and won five Oscars in effort is a dispiritingly bland attempt at ‘Having a connection’ 2012 including best picture, best director wartime perseverance”. Moore lives in New York with her husband and and best actor for Jean Dujardin. He said Time Out London called it “the sort of two children, but she doesn’t dislike Los Angeles, that level of success had given him nearly film for which the terms well-meaning and where she once lived: “It’s fine, there’s just a lot of boundless freedom to pick his next project. misguided were invented”. “You might also business there,” she says. “I love the movie busi- The 47-year-old director, a descendant of wish that ‘The Search’ was as silent as ‘The ness because it gives us the chance to explore all Lithuanian Jews, said he decided to update Artist’ because some of Berenice Bejo’s these kind of basic human condition,” she says, the 1948 Zinnemann picture about a young scenes as an idealistic, frustrated human- despite the pitch black parody of “Maps.” “What is survivor of Auschwitz because cinema had rights worker - the wet, wailing core of this the real part? What is the fake part? To have an yet to tackle the horrors of the war in leaden movie - are seriously clunky,” its opportunity in your job to do that kind of stuff is Chechnya.