Tepid Indie Market Persists At Cannes

The Cannes film market--as distinct from the glamorous goings-on at the Palais Des Festivals and the tony hotels along the Croisette--is a mostly straightforward movie bazaar featuring everything from offbeat offerings made by the likes of  indie auteur Olivier Assayas to the kind of flicks where a scantily-clad dame is fighting off a phallic python. Whatever their stripes, these films don't get the free flood of ink that surrounds other pictures in search of distribution and screening in competition or in one of he other festival categories.

Examples of those would include What Just Happened, which bit the dirt while hoping to get a deal at Sundance, and James Gray's Two Lovers, which aims to get the kind of attention that brought Gray's We Own the Night quickly into the marketplace after a Cannes unveiling last year.

Though boasting Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix in its cast, the cop drama's performance did little to inspire this year's buyers as,  according to estimates in the trade papers, it barely matched production and distribution costs with a $28.6 million domestic gross.

The way the fest is shaping up, the dame with the snake--though a stroll through the market halls shows a surprisingly sparse crowd inspecting the offerings that are also previewed in classier surroundings in fancy suites at the big hotels--has a lot better shot at finding buyers than the classier films.  (There as some action in European rights,  even as the U.S. disributors generally played it cagey.) 

However, today brought some good news in the form of a deal in which relative newcomer Liberation Entertainment acquired the North American rights to Tokyo!, a cinematic  triptych from the elite indie triumvirate of directors Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Joon-ho Bong.

The three short pieces, in the fashion of the recent Paris, Je Taime! and the upcoming New York, I Love You! compose a quirky portrait of the city.  Liberation, which earlier this year at Sundance picked up the soccer docu Kickin'  It in a deal with ESPN and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment, made the acquisition for an undisclosed amount with plas to release it later this year. Liberation, which picked up the soccer docu "Kickin It" in a deal with ESPN and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment, made the acquisition for an undisclosed amount with plans to release it later this year.

Certain films that have partial deals in place, like festval favorite A Christmas Story (Un Conte De Noel), which was acquired by IFC before the festival, are in search of various remaining territories.

It's not like the festival is lacking a high degree of critical enthusiasm--many offerings have impressed reviewers, (though Tokyo! had its world premiere in the Un Certain Regard section, and sooner aroused admiration than ecstasy. )

Variety correspondent Todd McCarthy's take on the "miserable miserablism" of ths year's entrants, noting that in  the 10 competition titles unveiled as of yesterday, reminds us,

Every film thus far has a contemporary setting (although the very well-received Waltz With Bashir from Israel, flashes back two decades), and common images from numerous films are of urban squalor, prisons, hospitals, unwanted pregnancies and violence.

Among the 15 films that his Variety colleague listed in a pick of the likeliest acquisitions were: Steven Soderbergh's two-part biopic on Che Guevara (The Argentine and Guerilla,) Waltz with Bashir, and in-production sci-fi film, Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

With publications like the New York Times proffering  a gloomy analysis  of the indie sales situation in a glutted marketplace, the festival has through Sunday the 25th to show its commercial  mettle. That Sunday also marks the  festivall-closing screening of What Just Happened? If  busines doesn't pick up, that question will reverberate through the strike-threatened film industry well beyond the coming week.

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