In May, the director of the cult sensation Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly, premiered his latest, Southland Tales, at the Cannes Film Festival. Recently, Entertainment Weekly reported in its online Pop Watch that the screening "went over badly."The dispatch went over to say that people in the audience hated the film, and that with few exceptions, the reviews were "eviscerating, with what seems like an emphasis on the word ‘incomprehensible.’" Didn’t critics say the same about Donnie Darko?
And yet, I can’t wait to see Southland Tales. (The film doesn’t have a domestic distributor yet, and, given its reception, it seems unlikely it will be shown in America as it was in Cannes.)
I sure hope it does get picked up, if anything because Kelly fans will want to see just what he has done with his ensemble cast, which includes The Rock, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, former SNL MVP Cheri Oteri, Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, and Miranda Richardson, among others.
The story, written by Kelly, sounds like a humdinger. Set in L.A. in 2008 during a three-day heat wave just before a huge 4th of July celebration, an amnesia-stricken action star meets up with an adult film star developing her own reality television project and a police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy.
Incomprehensible or not, Southland Tales sounds rather original. For an industry that likes to ascribe filmmakers words like "auteur" and "visionary," Hollywood would prove itself terrible shortsighted if it didn’t let Kelly show his audience the film he wanted to make.
Photo: Impawards.net.
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