Tales of Sigur Ros

Only faux pas here, I kicked off the festival with the screening of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly’s notorious sci-fi political epic, which has been missing in action since it’s panned representation at the Cannes film festival two years ago.

The director who was present with his troops – from The Rock to Kevin Smith with whom I shared an elevator ride – announced before the film that he was finally done with post-production. While I haven’t seen the earlier cut of the film, this final version proved to be a bloated and confused piece of work, which is all over the map and takes itself too seriously despite its satirical format. If that was up to me I would classify Southland Tales as Torture Porn, for how painful this 140mn film was to me – fortunately I was able to sleep through parts of that mess, courtesy of the Absolut bar on the rooftop. I’m not sure how Kelly went from the subtle Donny Darko to that failed attempt at being Alex Cox but he certainly lost a lot of credibility in the process.

The second half of the evening offered an unexpected treat, an intimate show from Iceland fave Sigur Ros, which preceded the screening of their live show documentary with an acoustic set of new material. If you’re a fan of the band, you will certainly enjoy that documentary but one can regret the filmmaker went for clichéd shots of Iceland instead of going for an artistic approach that would have matched the visual identity of the band. The band came back for a Q&A afterwards, those 4 nerdy guys offering welcome sarcastic answers to some of the lame questions coming from the audience.