CHACUN SON CINEMA (TO EACH HIS OWN CINEMA)
Rating: ** ½ (out of ****)
Cast: Takeshi Kitano, Jeanne Moreau, David Cronenberg, Lars von Trier, Josh Brolin, Arsinee Khanjian
Directors: Theo Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Bille August, Jane Campion, Youssef Chahine, Chen Kaige, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, David Cronenberg, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Manoel de Oliveira, Raymon Depardon, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai, Alejandro Gondalez Inarritu, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Aki Kaurismaki, Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano, Andrei Konchalovsky, Claude Lelouch, Ken Loach, David Lynch, Nanni Moretti, Roman Polanski, Raoul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Elia Suleiman, Tsai Ming-liang, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Wim Wenders, Wong Kar-wai, Zhang Yimou

Screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2007 at the Visa Screening Room (Elgin).

The directors of “Chacun son Cinema” at Cannes.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, the festival’s president, Gilles Jacob, commissioned a project that would be any film snob’s dream: he hired 36 of the world’s best directors to direct 34 three-minute films about moviegoing to be collected in an omnibus film called Chacun son Cinema (English title: To Each his Own Cinema).

Screening now as part of the Toronto festival, one more segment has been added, this one by David Lynch, who did not complete it in time for Cannes. At the screening I attended, it was tacked on at the beginning. It had no title or end credits, but…well, it was David Lynch, all right.

Chacun son Cinema will inevitably be compared to this year’s Paris je t’aime, which also had short contributions from a roster of international directors. It suffers in comparison, perhaps because Paris je t’aime was about love and Chacun son Cinema is about film, and, well, love trumps film every time. The hit-to-miss ratio is disappointing: there are some wonderful segments, a few disasters (I’m looking at you, Theo Angelopoulos, Youssef Chahine and Jane Campion), and a lot of underdeveloped stuff in between. 34 films are also just too much, and I can’t say I was saddened to see the film end.

Perhaps it would have been more satisfying if Gilles Jacob cut down the list of filmmakers to about twenty, and gave them more room to breath. I suspect that with a few extra minutes, many of these directors would have been able to develop their ideas more successfully. I also wish Jacob hadn’t been so strict on the rule of setting the films in and around movie theatres, and more about film in general. After 34 segments, you get tired of looking at those damn seats and projectors.

Is Chacun son Cinema successful? Not really, but is it worth seeing? Considering the talent involved, certainly, and there are plenty of scenes that are good enough in their own right to justify the experiment. A few favourites: the Coen brothers’ World Cinema, with Josh Brolin as a cowboy-type who “enjoyed the hell out of Climates”; Takeshi Kitano’s hilarious One Fine Day, about a farmer’s ill-fated trip to a run-down theatre; Occupations, by an unusually funny (and violent!) Lars von Trier; Roman Polanski’s Cinema Erotique, about an unfortunate misunderstanding at a porn film; Hou Hsiao-hsien’s simple, evocative The Electric Princess House; David Cronenberg’s self-explanatory The Suicide of the Last Jew in the World at the Last Cinema in the World; and Raymon Depardon’s Open-Air Cinema, the segment that perhaps best captures the appeal of filmgoing.

Unlike Paris je t’aime, I can’t see Chacun son Cinema having much appeal to anyone who isn’t fanatical about film, but if its line-up of directors makes you drool, you’ll probably find it a worthwhile if slightly disappointing diversion. Ironically, for a film that exalts the joy of going out to a theatre, this is a film that will greatly benefit from the chapter-skip function of DVD.

COMING TOMORROW: Film festival review of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead