Brie Larson Did Watch ‘Jeanne du Barry’ at Cannes
As the president of this year’s competition jury at the Cannes Film Festival, the director Ruben Ostlund had one key piece of wisdom to impart to his fellow jurors.
“Don’t be afraid to say something stupid,” he told them at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Ostlund, who skewered groupthink and pseudo-intellectual posturing in his films “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” meant that the jurors should trust their first instincts instead of endeavoring to impress. “When you have a jury atmosphere where everybody is trying to top each other and be smarter than each other, then you’re missing out on something,” he said.
But his statement earned more than a few chuckles from the assembled journalists because the fear of saying something stupid is an ever-present danger at Cannes, where filmmakers, actors and festival organizers gather in a glamorous setting to tout their work and often stir up plenty of controversies along the way.
This year’s Cannes feels particularly front-loaded with scandal given the opening-night selection of “Jeanne du Barry,” a costume drama that stars Johnny Depp as the French king Louis XV. It’s Depp’s first high-profile role since he sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation after she accused the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor of sexually and physically assaulting her during their marriage. He denied the allegations and said she was the attacker, an argument the jury largely agreed with. Though he was once one of Hollywood’s most bankable actors, the 59-year-old Depp has not starred in a major studio movie since the 2018 “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.”
Source: The New York Times
