Turkish Delight | Three Monkeys is Jeffrey Wells’ pick for the best film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Andrew O’Hehir, Salon | “The characters in Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale address the camera directly, or narrate their letters before a photographer’s backdrop. There’s a puppet show, a children’s play, bits of romantic fantasy and mock-noir montage, as well as quotations from Emerson, Nietzsche and Shakespeare and snippets from Funny Face, The Ten Commandments and other films I didn’t catch.... I found A Christmas Tale a marvelously rich visual, intellectual and emotional experience, one that I expect will grow deeper with repeat viewings. This won’t be an easy sell even to European audiences, and it’s not likely to win the Palme d’Or. But if I see another film all year long that prickles me, disturbs me or moves me half as much, I’ll be surprised.”
Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere | “I was hooked by Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys from the get-go—gripped, fascinated. I was in a fairly excited state because I knew—I absolutely knew—I was seeing the first major film of the festival. It’s a very dark and austere film that unfolds at a purposeful but meditative pace, taking its time and saying to the audience, ‘Don’t worry, this is going somewhere... We’re not jerking around, so pay attention to the steps.’ Great arthouse movies take you out of yourself and into a realm that adds to your empathy and understanding of life’s infinite sadness. They turn you on with their mesmerizing style and condensed capturings of instantly recognizable human folly. When films of this sort really deliver, they satisfy in ways that stay with you for decades. They add meat to your bones.”
Ty Burr, Boston Globe | “The British filmmaker Terence Davies doesn’t come out with new work very often, so Of Time and the City is something of an event. And even though it runs a brief 72 minutes, this documentary memory play about Davies’ hometown of Liverpool is so rich with emotion, nostalgia, clarity, and love that it feels epic. Davies himself narrates over the inspired onrush of historical and archival footage, and his hoarse, whispered cadences have the urgency of the confessional and the scornful humor of the outsider. Hear him sneer delightedly at the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II, aka The Betty Windsor Show, or mock ‘the British genius for creating the dismal’ over images of postwar housing projects and their awful decay. No idea if the film will get picked up for U.S. release, but it’s easily the most haunting work I’ve seen at Cannes.”
