The 2015 Cannes Film Festival opened in France today, kicking off with the French film La Tete haute instead of a big, glitzy Hollywood movie. Starring Catherine Deneuve, the film is earning some mixed reviews so far.
But before the focus could turn to the actual films at hand, Deneuve was asked about a new Charlie Hebdo cover, which poked fun at her. The cover shows her looking like a square, under the headline “suspicious package on the Croisette.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Deneuve said she hadn’t seen the cover, but said that she couldn’t expect Charlie Hebdo to have a cover “like a fashion magazine.”
“I hope it’s funny, even it if is nasty,” she added.
Deneuve stars in La Tete haute (Standing Tall), which was directed by Emmanuelle Bercot and the first film directed by a woman to open the festival since 1987. She has a supporting part in the film, as it is really about Malony, a delinquent bpoy layed by Rod Paradot. Deneuve plays a sympathetic judge.
So far, the film has garnered some mixed reviews, but at least it sounds better than last year’s Grace of Monaco (which won’t even be released to theaters in the U.S.).
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave the film a 3/5, writing, “Standing Tall (perhaps another translation would be “chin up”) is a film about hope and it unfashionably insists that authority figures can be the good guys.”
Indiewire’s Oliver Lyttelton gave it a C, noting that the film’s ending isn’t as strong as it should be. “Least satisfyingly of all is the very ending,” he wrote. “Had Bercot been able to stick the landing, this likely would have been bumped up a grade, but instead, we get a scene where Malony's given a lotion that he's told will improve his self-esteem, and just like that, he seems to be a changed man.”
image courtesy of INFphoto.com