Yesterday was something of a whirlwind, with the announcement of the official Competition slate at the Cannes Film Festival getting swept up in the release of a new trailer for some movie about space conflict. Even as we hit replay for the seventh time on the teaser for something called Starred Wars (a sequel to Starred Up, except it’s in space?), plenty of films took the Cannes announcement as an opportunity to debut trailers of their own. Below, we’ve collected all of the extant trailers for films that will play at Cannes this year in one convenient location. Welcome, friends, to the classiest Trailer Park in the land!
Mia Madre
Readers not fluent in Italian will have to rely on context clues to get the full effect of the trailer for Nanni Moretti’s semi-autobiographical Mia Madre. Multilingual John Turturro appears to be incensed while at a buffet lunch. Not much help there. Perhaps there’s an answer hidden in the soundtrack, Jarvis Cocker’s “Baby’s Coming Back To Me.” Oh, we won’t make you guess. Moretti’s newest concerns an aging filmmaker rushing to complete a movie while her mother withers away in the hospital. It does not appear to be a comedy.
Our Little Sister
My Japanese is pretty rusty, but I think I can still parse out what the characters in this trailer are saying. I caught, “We three sisters are in mourning because our father has died,” and then the younger girl says, “I am your estranged teenaged half-sister, let us reconnect!” and then they all say, “We star in Our Little Sister, the new coming-of-age film from Japan’s esteemed auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda.” Still got it.
The Tale Of Tales
Was that just Toby Jones? I didn’t know he could speak Italian. And is that Salma Hayek eating an elephant-sized heart? She can speak Italian, too? And, wait, that can’t be John C. Reilly. There’s no way he also speaks Italian. It turns out that none of them do, at least not in the new fantasy The Tale Of Tales from Matteo Garrone of Gomorrah fame. It’s an English-language feature, but the only existing trailer has been dubbed over in Italian. Lip-readers, please clue us all in as to what is actually being said in this crazytown-looking movie.
Youth
Devoted readers might recognize this trailer for Paolo Sorrentino’s upcoming Youth from Monday, when our own Scott Tobias took a moment to help contextualize the film’s genuflections to the history of Italian cinema. It looks to be another visually sumptuous, unrestrainedly operatic vision of grandeur in the vein of Sorrentino’s excellent The Great Beauty (among my favorite films of 2013). Music is all Michael Caine understands in Youth, another English-language feature from an auteur with a different native tongue.
The High Sun
The language barrier doesn’t give English-speakers any trouble this time, as the trailer for Croatian drama The High Sun includes no dialogue. Even so, it’s hard to make out what exactly is happening here. There’s a lot of pushing, characters appear to be at a rave, some angry trumpet-playing there for a second. Director Dalibor Matanic will have some serious ’splaining to do next month on the Croisette. And then some angry trumpet-playing to do. Angry trumpet-playing for everyone!
Inside Out
We enter more familiar territory in the trailer for Pixar’s latest tear-extraction device, Inside Out. A young girl’s emotions are personified as cutesy avatars working a panel in her brain-chamber. French attendees will assume that this is how brains work in America, tiny little voices bickering and ultimately accomplishing very little due to infighting. They will not be entirely incorrect.
The Little Prince
This trailer for the upcoming animated adaptation of classic French novella The Little Prince includes voiceover narration and intertitles in Japanese, even though the film itself runs in English, which can be slightly confusing. YouTube commenter Dmitry Dronov put it best: “What the actual…? I mean, read this story through and through, one of my favorites, but... I guess I just don't know japan and that's the thing that makes me feel weird.” We don’t know Japan either, Dmitry. That thing also makes us feel weird. The story of a little girl escaping her regimented life into the fantasy of the original text will enchant regardless of how little Japan we know, however.
Mad Max: Fury Road
We’ve written about the much-anticipated fourth installment in George Miller’s seminal Mad Max franchise once or twice. (Or thrice or whatever the word is that’s the four-times version of thrice.) Fury Road makes its world premiere at Cannes on May 14, an entire day before it becomes available to the American viewing public on the 15th. So if you booked a trip to France just to see the new Mad Max before everyone else, I congratulate you, and humbly request you give me some of your money.
Amnesia
In the early ’90s, party monster Jo chases the vital electronic-music underground from Berlin to the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. There, he finds more than cheap ecstasy and glow sticks, however; he meets Martha, a solitary and mature woman. They gradually develop an intimate bond, maybe even love. But will it be torn asunder when the history of the nefarious Nazis rears its unseemly head? We don’t know. We haven’t seen the movie. Nobody has. Because it’s gonna debut at Cannes. Haven’t you been paying attention?
Amy
Amy Winehouse’s untimely death was a musical tragedy cut from a very specific cloth: Preternaturally talented from a young age, tormented by inner demons and struggles with substance abuse, gorgeous, and self-effacing, Winehouse had lived a life worthy of her mournful neo-soul songs by the time she joined the 27 club. The trailer gives viewers a brief impression of the woman behind the beehive, marrying haunting quotes from the singer with home-video footage.