Cannes 2008 in Competition: Waltz with Bashir 

Screening in competition, Waltz with Bashir is the fourth feature from Israeli director Ari Folman. Because it’s animated and it centers on the Middle East, it is drawing comparisons to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, but it sounds like a very different animal. It tells the story of the massacre of Palestinian civilians during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Beirut. Variety’s Leslie Felperin says it’s drawn in a “more minutely detailed, realistic graphic technique…that texturally looks more like the Rotoscoped animation seen in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.” She calls it “something special, strange and peculiarly potent.”

Cinematical’s Kim Voynar seconds that emotion, saying Folman’s film is “a beautiful, disturbing and deeply compelling film that documents the horrors to which he and his friends were witnesses, while offering hope that he and others might, some day, heal from the ravages of war.”

Folman’s next project will be an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 sci-fi story The Futurological Congress.

More reviews after the jump.

Also screening in competion is Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys. Jeff Wells calls it “a quietly devastating Turkish family drama about guilt, adultery and lots of Biblical thunderclaps.” He goes on to say “I was hooked 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.” Alas, he also says “It’s the kind of film that plays like gangbusters inside the Grand Palais but will barely be seen in commercial cinemas, and may even irritate the ADD crowd.” As much as I criticize Wells around these parts, when he’s genuinely amped for something, I’m reminded of what brought me to read him in the first place.

Meanwhile, kicking off the Un Certain Regard category, Hunger is British visual artist turned director Steve McQueen’s telling of the story of Bobby Sands, who starved himself to death in prison in 1981 in an effort to get the British government to recognize members of the IRA as political prisoners.

Leslie Felperin calls it “a powerful, pertinent but not entirely perfect debut” for McQueen saying that “trite symbolism” gets the better of it in the third act. She singles out Michael Fassbender’s performance as Bobby Sands, comparing it favorably to that of Christian Bale in The Machinist. Fassbender was just tagged to play Heathcliff in John Maybury’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

In the same category, Tokyo! is an omnibus of three films from Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), Leos Carax (his first film since 1999’s Pola X) and Bong Joon-ho (The Host) that take on Japan’s capital with a horror/sci-fi bent. Variety’s Justin Chang calls it a “nastier Eastern sibling to Paris, je taime” that is “uneven but enjoyable.” He seems to favor Gondry’s effort Interior Design but also has praise for Carax’s Merde and Bong’s Shaking Tokyo.

Finally, 70-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, whose 1967 anti-Stalinist film Hands Up! was banned and not shown in the West until it played at Cannes in 1981, kicked off the Directors’ Fortnight with Four Nights With Anna, his first film since 1992’s Ferdydurke. It tells the story of a shy man’s romantic obsession with a small town nurse. In a spoiler-laden review, Variety’s Derek Elley calls it “a small but commanding return to roots” for Skolimowski, directed with “absolute assurance from the get-go, but still marbled with moments of black comedy that faintly recall his younger, wilder works.”

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