#fipresci

[mrs-stans]

‪@neonrated: Cristian Mungiu’s FJORD has won the FIPRESCI Prize awarded by the International Federation of Film Critics at #Cannes2026.‬

[laplanetesauvage1]

“Beanpole / Dylda / Дылда” (2019) dir. Kantemir Balagov

[miguelmarias]

Breakfast at Tiffany's

For reasons I cannot guess, some movies are much more successful, and more loved by film fans, in certain other countries than in their own. Such was the case, I think, or seem to remember, of Blake Edwards' Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) in Spain when it was belatedly released (dubbed and with a slight, stupid censor cut) in 1963, the same year we got the two other Edwards films I love best, Experiment in Terror and Days of Wine and Roses (both 1962) as well as the earlier Mister Cory (1956), and only months before the arrival of his first true worldwide success, The Pink Panther (1963). He looked then a very promising young director. Little could we imagine that Breakfast at Tiffany's was really some sort of "swan song" of the romantic comedy-drama, and that the box office success of The Pink Panther would change the course of Edwards' career, turning him into a producer-director, and sometimes, unfortunately, more the former than the latter, as when he overexploited well past any reasonable hope (even after Peter Sellers' death!) the Pink Panther/Inspector Clouseau series.

Many complained that Edwards (and writer George Axelrod) had, "as usual" in Hollywood pictures, unwarrantedly glamorized — and therefore falsified — the characters and plot of Truman Capote's novella, as if the future author of In Cold Blood were a harsh, starkly realist writer. I feel now that a present-day remake (which I hope will never be perpetrated) of this film would deprive it automatically of its more distinctive (albeit perhaps enforced) qualities, which are precisely some kind of innocence and the use of perfectly understandable understatements. We need not be told in so many words that Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) prostitutes herself, we deduce it instantly, the same as we gather (even before any comments are made about it) that would-be writer Paul Varjak (George Peppard) is a sort of plaything for rich, older, patronizing Tooley Falenson (Patricia Neal dressed like Cruella DeVille). Therefore, both would be "soiled" characters who redeem themselves, like in a Borzage silent melodrama, through mutual love and compassion. Which seems to me a more interesting tale than Capote's.

Part of both the greatness and the glamorization of Breakfast at Tiffany's come from something as simple and so much of a "given" as the casting, and if the part of Holly had gone to Marilyn Monroe (to whom, according to rumor, it had been previously offered) it would not have changed much, really. She was certainly older (35) than Hepburn looked at 32, and she might be sexier (or sexy in a more obvious way) than Audrey, but hardly less innocent or less moving or lovable. Another part of the lasting charm of this really enchanting film comes from its amazingly successful blend of whimsical but moderately extravagant comedy and sentimental melodrama, and the very smooth way it manages to pass from one tonality to another, which seems to depend more on the characters' impulses and moods than on the script's cues or the development of the plot. This gives the feeling that the film was somewhat improvised on the set, and not only in the magnificent 12-minute party scene in Holly's overcrowded apartment (a specialty of Edwards that was finally expanded into almost a whole feature in The Party, 1968).

Almost half a century after it was made, Breakfast at Tiffany's remains a very Edwardsian picture, both sad (in particular, everything involving Buddy Ebsen's love for Holly when she was Lula Mae Barnes) and funny, graceful, and light. With two single blemishes: one is the unwarranted comical underlining by brief musical comments, as if someone was trying to pretend it was only a comedy (which is strange in a film with one of the best Henry Mancini scores and the great Mercer-Mancini song, "Moon River"); the other, more serious, is the wholly useless character of Mr. Yunioshi, the neighbor-photographer, outrageously overplayed by Mickey Rooney, which interferes (eight times!) when it should have been mercilessly edited out of the script or at least supressed from the final cut. Two errors small in themselves, but quite shocking in a film otherwise so perfectly written, directed, cast (Buddy Ebsen, Patricia Neal, Martin Balsam,… everybody seems to have been carefully chosen) and timed as this.

The most curious thing about Breakfast at Tiffany's, seen again now, seems to me something not even the most fervent "Hitchcocko-Hawksians" at Cahiers du cinéma realized at the time of its release — the almost perfect blend of the very different styles of filmmaking of those two great American directors. So, in more than one sense, Breakfast at Tiffany's was a sort of farewell to the golden age of the Hollywood film, something I have always suspected that people like Edwards and his pal Richard Quine, who started to make their own films when it was already almost too late (Quine directed his first musical, My Sister Eileen, the same year — 1955 — that Kelly and Donen made their last one together, It's Always Fair Weather), half-consciously felt. The four final shots of Audrey and Peppard and the nameless cat, embracing under the rain, and taken from an ever-increasing distance, strike a melancholy chord on a very provisory-looking happy ending.

Miguel Marías

© FIPRESCI 2011

http://fipresci.hegenauer.co.uk/undercurrent/issue_0711/marias_breakfast.htm

[superangrycollection]

Eureka (2000)

by Shinji Aoyama

Yûrika Drame 217 mn - Japan / France

2000: Cannes: Competition - FIPRESCI Prize / Prize of the Ecumenical Jury

[mrs-stans]

[blogmauricio]

A espera acabou: a pré-venda de 'O Agente Secreto', novo filme de Kleber Mendonça Filho com Wagner Moura, começa nesta quinta, 16 de outubro, às 10h. Representante do Brasil no Oscar 2026 e vencedor em Cannes, o longa terá sessões antecipadas em cinemas selecionados.

Wagner Moura volta em 'O Agente Secreto'

[awardseasonblog]

Annunciate le candidature nelle categorie principali degli European Film Awards (EFA), conosciuti anche come Oscar Europei, che da oltre 34 edizioni celebrano annualmente le migliori pellicole del Vecchio continente. Quest'anno tra i 35 film provenienti da tutta Europa (in rappresentanza dell’Italia ne sono stati selezionati 3 comprese le co-produzioni) la nostra cinematografia può fare affidamento sull'apprezzata prova di #PierfrancescoFavino candidato come miglior attore per il film di Mario Martone #Nostalgia (scelto per rappresentare quest’anno l’Italia agli Oscar per la competizione del Miglior film internazionale) e sulla meravigliosa opera di Laura Samani #PiccoloCorpo candidata al #FIPRESCI. A conquistare il maggior numero di candidature spiccano #Close #HolySpider #TriangleofSadness #Corsage. Best European Film -Alcarràs (Sp-It) -Close (Bel-Fr-Neth) -Corsage (Austria-Lux-Ger-Franc) -Holy Spider (Den-Ger-Swe-Fr) -Triangle Of Sadness (Swe-Ger-Fr-UK) Best European Director -Lukas Dhont for Close -Marie Kreutzer for Corsage -Jerzy Skolimowski for EO -Ali Abbasi for Holy Spider -Alice Diop for Saint Omer -Ruben Östlund for Triangle Of Sadness Best European Actress -Vicky Krieps in Corsage -Zar Amir Ebrahimi in Holy Spider -Léa Seydoux in One Fine Morning -Penélope Cruz in Parallel Mothers -Meltem Kaptan in Rabiye Kurnaz Vs. George W. Bush Best European Actor -Paul Mescal in Aftersun -Eden Dambrine in Close -Elliott Crosset Hove in Godland -Pierfrancesco Favino in Nostalgia -Zlatko Burić in Triangle Of Sadness Best European Screenwriter -Carla Simón & Arnau Vilaró for Alcarràs -Kenneth Branagh for Belfast -Lukas Dhont & Angelo Tijssens for Close -Ali Abbasi & Afshin Kamran Bahrami for Holy Spider -Ruben Östlund for Triangle Of Sadness European Discovery – Prix FIPRESCI -107 Mothers (Slovakia-Czech Rep-Ukr) -Director Peter Kerekes -Love According To Dalva (Bel-Fr) -Other People (Pol-Fr) -Pamfir (Ukr-Fr-Pol-Ger-Chile) -Small Body (It-Slovenia-Fr) -Sonne   #Nominations #EFA #EFA2022 #EuropeanFilmAwards #OscarEuropei #AwardsSeason #AwardsRace #Awards #StagionedeiPremi #Movies https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckse_e5s0ae/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[nandanxox]

Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali declared best Indian film of all time by FIPRESCI

The list of best Indian films also features Ritwik Ghatak's 1960 Bengali drama Meghe Dhaka Tara and Ramesh Sippy’s 1975 blockbuster Sholay