When filmmakers get invited to bring their high-profile films to Cannes, they accept. Even if it means scrambling to finish the movie. Even if it means bringing the half-finished movie to the festival and getting booed out of the festival. It happened to Richard Kelly with Southland Tales, it happened to Wong Kar-Wai with 2046, and now it may have happened again with Steven Soderbergh and his two-part epic about Che Guevara, Che.
Well, it might not be quite as bad as what happened to Southland Tales-- which took a year and a half to get released after everyone at Cannes hated it-- but the reactions are pretty mixed. Anne Thompson, a blogger and critic for Variety, quotes anonymous fellow critics calling it “ 'A folly.' 'A mess.' 'Great.' " She herself deemed it a “Noble failure,” but also says it's “well made and watchable.” Variety's official review, from Todd McCarthy, said of the two-part film, “Neither half feels remotely like a satisfying stand-alone film, while the whole offers far too many aggravations for its paltry rewards.”
On the other hand, prolific blogger Jeffrey Wells at ”It's what I'd hoped for all along and more.” And Cinematical's James Rocchi says, “What a rare pleasure it is to have a film (or films) that, in our box-office obsessed, event-movie, Oscar-craving age, is actually worth talking about on so many levels.”
So, yeah, mixed opinions indeed. The pros seem to be convinced that we probably won't see The Argentine or Guerilla in the form in which the Cannes audience saw them. Thompson writes, “There is plenty of fine material here to be edited into one releasable long dramatic feature and hopefully [the producers] will give the filmmaker the time he needs to find this promising film's final form.” McCarthy says simply, “No doubt it will be back to the drawing board for Che.”
This all must be disappointing for Soderbergh, who rose to prominence when sex, lies and videotape won the Palme d'Or in 1989. Wells still thinks Cannes jury could give Che a prize, with jury member Sean Penn apparently angling to give Soderbergh the Palme d'Or once again. The award could be a big boost to the film, and that clout combined with Soderbergh's existing power in Hollywood could mean Che won't get quite the bad treatment that Southland Tales did. But for those of us who thought Che might be a huge tour de force, the mixed reactions are disappointing to say the least. It seems much more like a meditative, Assassination of Jesse James-type character study rather than a polemic like Soderbergh's own Traffic. Not to say it won't be worthy, but not what Soderbergh needs to get everyone talking about him again.
