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CANNES 2007 Competition / France

MK2 gives artist Van Sant carte blanche

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"Nobody is ever ready for Paranoid Park," says one of the characters at the start of the new film of the same name by US filmmaker Gus Van Sant, at this morning’s official competition press screening at the Cannes Film Festival – does not, however, stop 16 year-old teenager Alex from going to the ill-famed skatepark of Portland, where he accidentally gets drawn into a parallel world of crime.

With a masterful and unequalled mise-en-scène by a director at the height of his art who engages in incessant visual and audio experimentation, recycling and renewing the advances of his previous films, Paranoid Park [+see also:
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is a fascinating and mesmerizing journey that has enchanted admirers of the 2003 Palme d’Or winning director but has left audiences insensitive to the director’s "arty" invitation unmoved, who only regard (respectably nevertheless) the film as a succession of beautiful images.

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Adapted from the eponymous Blake Nelson novel, Paranoid Park shows the informal skating community, here symbolised by shy high-school student Alex, whose parents are in the middle of a divorce. A “distant cousin” of the teenagers in Elephant, the young man accidentally causes the horrific death of a security guard.

Threatened by a police investigation and weighed down with the burden of keeping this secret to himself, Alex decides to escape into a parallel universe ("There’s something else besides normal life, there are different levels"), a schizophrenic life that detaches him from everyday life (school, first love and sexuality).

Using metaphor, the film expresses how the naive desire of discovering the wild night life and taking advantage of a marginal society provokes a rupture of conscience, leading the protagonist into a tunnel of guilt whose sole exit is artistic expression, as it is impossible to confide his deepest secrets in fellow humans. With the precious help of well-known DoP Christopher Doyle, Van Sant weaves an exceptionally rich unifying thread.

Also written by the director, the film plays with the mythology of skating and skateboarders with street and skatepark scenes filmed in Super 8, deconstructing temporality with flashbacks contrasting with the present, several slow motion scenes. The soundtrack is given a role of its own with wide-ranging musical genres (jazz, blues, rap, classical) and audio clips by Ethan Rose redefine the story. Another highlight is the director’s framing style, already displayed in his previous films, and the performance of the main character Gabe Nevins, directed by Van Sant like a mirror that reflects an adieu to youth.

Produced by Marin and Nathanaël Karmitz for French outfit MK2, the €3m Paranoid Park received €130,000 CNC in foreign language film support.

The title’s French release is slated for October through MK2, who is handling world sales and has also announced at Cannes that it will start production on Copie conforme, the new film by Abbas Kiarostami, featuring Juliette Binoche.

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(Translated from French)

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