SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Ooh, la, la, the red carpet is out, so are the stars. Time for the Cannes Film Festival. The annual celebration of world cinema is underway, and it includes new films by Americans - Spike Lee, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater. Alison Willmore is there in Cannes - critic for New York Magazine. She joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
ALISON WILLMORE: Oh, it's my pleasure. I would try to speak some French to you, but no one needs to be inflicted with my terrible accent.
SIMON: Oh, I - mine is worse, I'm sure.
WILLMORE: (Laughter).
SIMON: Listen, even before the jury took their seats, some fashion news. Tell us about that.
WILLMORE: Yes, the Cannes red carpet has always been famously extremely photographed - very famous but also strict with rules. And this year, they made it clear, there's no nudity on the red carpet and no voluminous dresses (laughter).
SIMON: Right, like long trains, maybe.
WILLMORE: Long trains. You know, this has already caused a bit of flurry with Halle Berry, who's on the jury, claiming that she had to change her opening night dress because it was too voluminous. Of course, she was soon afterward seen in a very voluminous gown on the red carpet. So I think, as is often the case, the red carpet rules are not really for the A-listers. They're applied to the rest of us who happened to have gotten a ticket to a fancy event. No giant trains for us.
SIMON: On to the movies. I understand you're a big fan of the German film "Sound Of Falling."
WILLMORE: I am. It was the first film in competition, and it was not a film that was on my radar at all. The director - it's only her second film. Her first one was essentially a student film, and it just really blew me away. It's just this kind of mysterious and really wide-reaching film about four generations of families as seen through young women in each one, living in the same farmhouse in the German countryside over a century. And it's just, like, this incredibly rich, cinematic, dark sometimes, gorgeously directed film about these echoes that happen over time in terms of the experiences of these young women. I think it's pretty incredible. I know a lot of critics liked it, maybe more than the public did, but we'll see. I think it could be in contention to win a prize.
SIMON: Other big movies you're looking forward to seeing?
WILLMORE: Well, in a few hours, I'm going to see "Eddington," which is the new film from Ari Aster, who, you know, did "Midsommar" and "Hereditary." It's not a horror film. It's, I guess, about, like, during the pandemic, tension arising in a small town.
I'm very curious about Kristen Stewart's directorial debut, "The Chronology Of Water." You know, she's had a really interesting career post being a teen star and working with a lot of beloved art house directors and international directors. So I'm really wondering what it's like when she steps behind the camera herself.
I'm looking forward to this movie called "The Mastermind" from Kelly Reichardt, who is one of my favorite filmmakers. This one is described as a kind of art heist film, though, if you've ever seen her movies, they tend to really operate at their own very idiosyncratic pace and direction, so I wonder what her take on an art heist movie is. But that stars Josh O'Connor, who I like a lot and who is in another film here called "The History Of Sound," which is a kind of romance with Paul Mescal. They're two of our current rising, hot, young leading men in a romance together. So yeah, those are some of the ones that I'm really looking forward to.
SIMON: Of course, President Trump announced tariff on movie imports last week. What have you heard at Cannes?
WILLMORE: Well, as is often the case with a lot of these social media orders or some executive orders, it's really unclear how they are supposed to be put into action, what that would mean. There's a lot of sweeping language and unclear aims. And I think a lot of people have been just carrying on as usual, in part because it seems very unenforceable. At least, whatever the original language about tariffs was just would require so much parsing about how movies are made and what it means for a film to be not made in America.
But I don't sense a lot of concern here yet, at least with the people on the industry side that I've spoken to, though, obviously, it's a festival that reflects a lot of the international tensions that have been going on in the world. And Robert De Niro has been here, who is ardent about speaking out against Trump. You can kind of feel that. You can feel discussions about the war in Gaza are all both, like, kind of hanging over the festival but also, in some cases, informing the actual films that are there.
SIMON: Alison Willmore, a critic at New York Magazine, who's at the Cannes Film Festival. Tough work, but someone has to do it. Alison, thanks so much.
WILLMORE: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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