by Helen Barlow
Most prominently, Juliette Binoche received the festival’s Golden Icon Award, while Maiwenn was honoured for career achievement. Both were also promoting their recent films.
Binoche stars in Martin Provost’s farcical comedy How To Be A Good Wife, which has just been dated for Boxing Day in Australia. It was a huge hit in France. Binoche plays a woman who, following the death of her husband, has to take over running his school for good housekeeping. Binoche admits that she greatly enjoyed exercising her funny bone for a change.
Maiwenn [above] has DNA at the Festival. She directs and stars as Fanny Ardant’s daughter in the family drama, which explores her Algerian heritage. It has been picked up by Netflix and soon comes up for release in France.
So does another Cannes label film The Big Hit (Un Triomphe), Emmanuel Courcol’s comedy starring the gifted and lovable Kad Merad as an actor past his prime who gives drama lessons to prisoners. It went down exceptionally well with Zurich audiences.
JOHNNY DEPP AND CROCK OF GOLD
Johnny Depp was in town to promote Julien Temple’s Shane MacGowan biopic Crock of Gold, as producer of the film, together with The Pogues frontman’s wife and co-producer Victoria Mary Clarke [see above]. Depp appears in conversation with MacGowan spliced throughout the film discussing topics including wine and Pirates of the Caribbean and then playing guitar in a concert for MacGowan’s 60th birthday with Nick Cave and Bono providing vocals in honour of the much-loved poet-musician. During the film, I was reminded that MacGowan’s version of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is one of the best, even though it’s impossible not to feel sorry that he is such a physical mess after a lifetime of self-abuse. One colleague said that afterwards he had to go and have a couple of gin and tonics to get over it.
