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...manager, Cannes programmer Thierry Fremeaux likes to pack his heavy hitters in the middle of his lineup. So in the fat of the Festival, days five through seven of the 11-day film binge, the Cannes Competition slate has star-laden movies from David Cronenberg, Jim Jarmusch and Lars Von Trier...
...fathered a child who is now trying to find him. In Marsh's The King, a preacher (William Hurt) who a generation earlier fathered and abandoned a child out of wedlock must pay for his age-old sin when the son (Gael Garcia Bernal) shows up. And in Von Trier's Manderlay, set in Alabama in the 1930s, an idealistic young woman (Bruce Dallas Howard) tries to confront and cure the lingering disease of slavery...
...shadows of guilt hanging over Manderlay are longer and darker than in the other films, and speak to a crucial American social crime: the imposition and perpetuation of slavery. The second of a 1930s trilogy that began with Dogville, Von Trier's new work again has the redheaded Grace as its focus. (There she was played by Nicole Kidman, here by Ron Howard's daughter.) She comes to Manderlay, a plantation that has only now, 70 years after the Civil War, with the death of its owner Mam (Lauren Bacall), freed its slaves. But do they want to be free...
...Von Trier always has a few shocks up his sleeve: a banquet in which whites put on blackface; the violent taking of Grace by Timothy (Isaach De Bankole), the most rebellious of the ex-slaves. The director is also fond of parading America's old crimes, most explicitly in a closing montage of lynchings and other rank injustices to African-Americans. But though the film uses Dogville's technique of presenting all the action on a single stage, with no realistic sets and few props, it hasn't the kick or the sweep of the earlier film. Von Trier...
...Golden Palm, Cannes' top prize - may represent the second rank of world directors. The names Michael Haneke and Hiner Saleem, Hou Hsaio-hsien and Wang Xiaoshuai, the Dardenne brothers and the Larrieu brothers, may not light up the marquee in your movie awareness. The prospect a new Lars von Trier (Manderlay, with Bryce Dallas Howard, Willem Dafoe and Danny Glover) may make you squirm...