The two films that did not disappoint me in any way were the new Jim Jarmusch film, Broken Flowers, which stars Bill Murray and is set to open in St. Louis in August, and Carlos Reygadas’ Battle in Heaven, which was picked up by Tartan for distribution in the States, but God knows when you’ll actually get to see it. Of the two, Battle in Heaven has a very slight edge as my favorite film in the festival. The majority of critics here hated Reygadas’ (Japón) film, on account of the fact that it is borderline nonsensical and has potentially offensive imagery. And while I am not surprised by this reaction, it is certainly the most cinematic thing I’ve seen here, and, by extension, the most entertaining. Reygadas has an incredible eye for shot composition, location, unknown actors, and classical music, so no matter if the film follows its plot or not, it is completely riveting. When it is following the plot, it involves a man named Marcos who kidnaps a baby for the purposes of ransoming it back to its parents, only to have it die, and then be racked with guilt. Plus, he is not-so-secretly obsessed with his boss’s pretty daughter, Ana. Marcos Hernández, who plays Marcos, has a great, completely expressionless face, and his performance (specifically, his touching relationship with Ana) carries the film. Besides, I’m a sucker for things that offend people.

Much more accessible than Heaven is Broken Flowers, which many have called Jarmusch’s most commercial work to date. While this may be true, it might be misleading to his longtime fans, because he does not in any way compromise his singular style as a means to reach a larger crowd. Bill Murray plays Don Johnston, a cad who finds out he may have impregnated a woman 20 years ago, and goes on a search to find out if this is true. Murray again does a version of the kind of work he’s made a comeback with since Rushmore, but it still works, successfully continuing his hot streak for seven years running, while Jarmusch has made his best film since 1986’s Down by Law.

Also good, but not quite as good, are these: the new Cronenberg, A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortensen as a small-town diner owner who gets roped into defending his family after he kills two men trying to rob his establishment; Haneke’s Hidden, which concerns a man (Daniel Auteuil) who keeps finding Lost Highway–style tapes of his house on his doorstep and tries to find out who is doing it; the Dardenne brothers’ The Child, which is a typically Dardennian story of two teenagers who have a kid of their own—that is, until the father decides to sell it on the black market behind his mother’s back; and the Hsiao-Hsien, Three Times, which tells three similar stories of love, but sets them in different historical situations (1911, 1966, and 2005, to be exact). Also, Sin City is in competition, but you already know how good that is.

There were also highlights outside of the festival’s main competition, including the new Woody Allen film Match Point, which everyone but the British (interesting, since it is set in London) seem to agree is Allen’s best film in 20 years. Oddly enough, it has yet to find a distributor in the States, despite Wood’s name (and Scarlett Johansson’s) being on the film. Regardless, you’ll see it soon, I’m sure, and I’m also betting right now that Johansson gets an Oscar nod for her performance. Additionally, my favorite film from Sundance, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, played here in the International Critic’s Week sidebar, and if I had seen it for the first time here, I’d be saying right now that it is my favorite film of the festival (it opens in America in June). Seijun Suzuki, the director of such classic ’60s-era Japanese B-movies as Branded to Kill and Youth of the Beast, has a new film starring Zhang Ziyi called Princess Raccoon, and it might just be his best work to date (and yes, I realize that that is a bold statement). And finally, in the Un Certain Regard program, I saw a Hungarian opera called Johanna; it concerns a nurse who has sex with her patients and thereby miraculously heals them, and is loosely based on The Passion of Joan of Arc.

---