Latest news with #CannesCritics'Week
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
One To Watch: Why Davika Hoorne Left Her 'Comfort Zone' To Play A Haunted Hoover In ‘A Useful Ghost'
'I've never been a vacuum cleaner before… it's very out of my comfort zone,' says Thai model and actress Davika Hoorne on her role in Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's Cannes Critics' Week title A Useful Ghost. She plays a woman who dies of dust pollution and then returns as a ghost in the form of a vacuum cleaner, determined to save her family from a similar fate. 'I had to get to know the vacuum cleaner, my partner,' says Hoorne, adding she put herself in the hands of the director to pull off the performance. 'His picture was very clear. There was a bit of improv but mostly it was what he wanted.' More from Deadline Scarlett Johansson On Why The Script For Her Directorial Debut 'Eleanor The Great' Made Her Cry: 'It's About Forgiveness' – Cannes Cover Story 'Bono: Stories Of Surrender': On Irish Fathers & Sons, Processing Family Tragedy & How A Need To Be Heard Propelled A Dublin Kid To Become One Of The World's Biggest Rock Stars Kering & Cannes Film Festival To Honor Brazilian Filmmaker Marianna Brennand With Prestigious Women In Motion Prize Alongside Nicole Kidman At Glitzy Sunday Night Soiree RELATED: It is not the first time Hoorne—who is one of Thailand's best-known actresses and influencers with strong followings on Instagram and TikTok—has played a ghost. Having forged a successful career as a model, she broke through as an actress in 2013 Thai folklore-inspired horror comedy Pee Mak, playing a woman called Nak, who dies while her husband is away at war but remains in their village to welcome him back. Pee Mak remains Thailand's all-time second highest grossing feature. RELATED: Hoorne's performance won her the epithet of 'Thailand's most beautiful ghost' and she has since starred in a string of mainstream shows and movies, including My Ambulance, Heart Attack, Astrophile and The Empress of Ayodhaya. Lead produced by Cattleya Paosrijareon and Soros Sukhum at Bangkok-based 185 Films, the credits of which also include Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria and Kristen Tan's Pop Aye, A Useful Ghost marks quite a departure for Hoorne. 'I'm incredibly thankful for this opportunity, but I admit it's crazy that I accepted it. It's not something you usually see in Thailand,' she says. 'I normally do stories that are predictable, that make money, but this one is fulfilling my actress energy. The team working on it is incredible and so many people were rooting for it to get made. The first time I read the script, I said yes right away. I felt the movie had the potential to go far, and even if it doesn't, I'm still very proud of this project.' As well as introducing Hoorne to audiences outside of Asia, traveling to Cannes with A Useful Ghost also fulfils a long-held ambition for the actress, who says she has turned down offers to walk the festival's red carpet as a model in the past. 'A lot of people go there for the fame, for the fashion, but I told myself that I'm not going to walk the red carpet without a movie. I've been waiting for 10 years, and now this is like a dream come true.' Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out? Everything We Know About Ari Aster's 'Eddington' So Far
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Critics' Week Winners: Thai Film ‘A Useful Ghost' & ‘Imago' Take Top Prizes
Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's zany romantic drama A Useful Ghost has won the top prize at Cannes Critics' Week. The feature, which is the first Thai film to play in the parallel section for a number of years, won the inaugural AMI Paris Grand Prize. More from Deadline 'A Useful Ghost' Teaser: Thai Star Davika Hoorne Makes Cannes Debut As Deceased Wife Who Returns As Vacuum Cleaner One To Watch: Why Davika Hoorne Left Her 'Comfort Zone' To Play A Haunted Hoover In 'A Useful Ghost' Carla Simón's 'Romería' Gets 11-Minute Ovation In Cannes Debut This year's jury was presided over by Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts, Riot Police, The New Years), who was joined by Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah UK actor Daniel Kaluuya, Moroccan journalist Jihane Bougrine, French-Canadian cinematographer Josée Deshaies and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara. A Useful Ghost co-stars top Thai actress, model and influencer Davika Hoorne as Nat, a woman who dies of dust pollution and then returns as a ghost in the form of a vacuum cleaner, determined to save her family from a similar fate. The feature, which is the first Thai film to play in the parallel section for a number of years, won the inaugural AMI Paris Grand Prize. The movie co-stars top Thai actress, model and influencer Davika Hoorne as Nat, a woman who dies of dust pollution and then returns as a ghost in the form of a vacuum cleaner, determined to save her family from a similar fate. Witsarut Himmarat plays her husband March, whose wealthy manufacturing family reject this unconventional human-ghost relationship. In other prizes, the French Touch Prize of the Jury went to France-based Chechen director Deni Oumar Pitsaev's Imag The autobiographical documentary explores the director's plans to build a futuristically designed house at odds with the landscape and local traditions on a small plot of land in a Georgian valley at the foot of the Caucasus, on the border of Chechnya. Quebecois actor Théodore Pellerin won the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for his performance in Pauline Loquès's Nino, about a young drifter, who spends three days wandering the streets after losing the keys to his apartment. Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for short film was won by Randa Maroufi's L'mina, about an unofficial coal mining town in Morocco. In collateral prizes, Shih-Ching Tsou's Left-Handed Girl won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution, which will support the French release of the film by Le Pacte. The SACD Award for best screenplay went to director Guillermo Galoe and Victor Alonso-Berbel for Sleepless City, on which they took co-writing credits. The Canal+ Award for short film went to Erogenesis de by Xandra Popescu Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘A Useful Ghost' Review: A Haunted Vacuum Cleaner Hoovers Up Attention in Pleasingly Particular Ghost Story
Grief and ghosts aren't new territory for any national cinema — and this is perhaps particularly true of Thailand. But, 'A Useful Ghost' is an entertaining and moving – if also somewhat sprawling – fable of love and loss that isn't quite like anything you've seen before. The action in the Cannes Critics' Week selection starts when a self-declared 'Academic Ladyboy' (Wisarut Homhuan) buys a vacuum cleaner, only to discover that the appliance appears to be possessed. A hot repair guy (Wanlop Rungkumjud) then shows up, but this isn't a porno (though stay tuned, because there's a sex scene between the two whose climax is both sad and funny in equal measure). He's there to introduce the main narrative: the tragic tale of the widower March (Witsarut Himmarat) lost in grief for his wife who has recently died of dust poisoning. It becomes apparent that the spouse is still very much present, albeit reincarnated in the form of a possessed vacuum cleaner. From 'Vertigo' to 'Birth,' the idea of loved ones returning to us in strange circumstances is a powerful cinematic motif. 'A Useful Ghost' marks one of the more esoteric entries in that canon. Part of the fun of the film is in seeing how other people react to the fact that March is keen to rekindle his bond with his wife, regardless of her new status as electrical appliance. Some of the film's best comedy is mined from the fact that it's less that she's a vacuum cleaner and more that she's returned at all that provokes the ire of March's family. Apparently, they never thought much of her when she was alive and her ability to transcend the limits of death and the hereafter hasn't helped endear her to the in-laws one iota. More from Variety Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Make Cannes Sob With Powerful Gay Romance 'The History of Sound', Which Earns 6-Minute Standing Ovation Cannes Critics' Week Awards Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's 'A Useful Ghost' Claes Bang Joins Russell Crowe and Harry Lawtey in Cold War Thriller 'Billion Dollar Spy' Directed by Amma Asante (EXCLUSIVE) Where the film gets a little chewier, moving out of enjoyable novelty into something deeper, is in using this context to explore the dynamics of appeasing an oppressor. Rather than rebel against the family who treat her so poorly, Vacuum Nat attempts to placate them by proving herself 'a useful ghost': she will help them exorcise similarly displaced spirits from their factories, where unsafe working conditions have killed others who have later come back as appliances too. This collaboration with the oppressor, rather than solidarity with the oppressed, makes Nat a complicated heroine. But because she is so low down the pecking order — being both dead and a vacuum cleaner — you have plenty of sympathy for her plight. This all works because there's something oddly refined about the vacuum cleaner's performance, despite the inherently comic premise. You might expect the comedy here to come from a clunky little machine reversing into things and bumping about like a cute robot in an '80s movie. Or perhaps a haunted vacuum cleaner would be a sinister thing, imbued with menace in the style of the Plymouth Fury in John Carpenter's 'Christine' or the innumerable porcelain dolls in Blumhouse horror movies? One could so easily imagine the hose glinting, serpentine, filled with evil intent. Instead, there's something dignified and elegant about the vacuum, as it steadily glides about with a strange vulnerability. It's an unexpected and delicious choice, echoing the elegant physicality of the actor Davika Hoorne, who portrays the haunted hoover's human self. When a bunch of monks show up to call the vacuum cleaner 'a cunt', it's both funny and oddly outrageous, calling on the viewer's protective instinct — an involving approach that would be out of place in the similarly absurdist but more nihilistic work of someone like Quentin Dupieux (a filmmaker who has also discovered the cinematic possibilities of animating the inanimate, albeit to wholly different effect). Boonbunchachoke is more compassionate, and he needs to be for the political project here to ring true: the aim is to draw attention to Thailand's track record when it comes to disposable workers and politically expedient cover ups. A more commercial film could have allowed for a 'haunted vacuum cleaner set to clean up' box office headline. Alas, being honest, 'A Useful Ghost' seems destined for an arthouse audience, though its offbeat charm is winning, as is its successful transition into melancholy mode, shot through with a distinctive sense of the macabre. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Left-Handed Girl' Review: Sean Baker Edits and Co-Writes ‘Tangerine' Producer Shih-Ching Tsou's Kaleidoscopic Solo Directing Debut
Alive and brimming where most neorealist festival movies prefer the detached slow crawl that strains toward a vision of real life, Shih-Ching Tsou's solo directing debut 'Left-Handed Girl' is born from a collaboration with a longtime friend, and a filmmaker familiar to most people reading this. Sean Baker co-writes (with Tsou), produces, and edits the Taiwanese filmmaker's Cannes Critics' Week premiere after Tsou, for decades, produced Baker outings like 'Tangerine,' 'Red Rocket,' and 'The Florida Project.' A kaleidoscopic, if eventually melodramatic, portrait of a Taiwanese family returning to Taipei to set up a night market noodle shop, 'Left-Handed Girl' isn't Tsou's first at-bat as director: She co-helmed Baker's 2004 indie name-maker 'Take Out,' about a Chinese food delivery worker hustling in New York City. More from IndieWire 'Overcompensating' Review: Benito Skinner's Basic College Comedy Works Well Enough Where It Counts Logging Trucks, Swimming Pools, and Bathtubs, Oh My! We Fact-Checked Our Favorite 'Final Destination' Deaths Tsou applies the restless energy of her longtime collaborator's beloved social-realist works — portraits of men and women working against their class station to find a better living — to 'Left-Handed Girl,' which rests on the skillfully directed performance of a five-year-old girl (Nina Ye, a small child who effervescently commands the camera) in the lead. The movie, even when tracking the older daughter I-Ann (Shih-Yuan Ma) and mother Shu-Fen (Janel Tasi) who make up this heartwarming family trio, is always inside the tiny girls' eyes and ears, looking at the world from a place of wonderment and confusion as she tries to make sense of an adult world. The girl's grasp, though, on Mandarin and years spent living with adults and fewer children makes her already almost too mature for her own good. 'Left-Handed Girl' threatens to crash-land with a melodramatic pile-up of unearthed family secrets at a birthday banquet for the girl's grandmother, every generation engaging in histrionics that bring to life past resentments preferred to be left by all outside of Taipei and in the past. Until then, this lively feature, lensed by Ko-Chin Chen and Tzu-Hao Kao with a high-contrast, bright-lights urgency that submerges you in Taipei city life day and night, hits on a more understated, universal nerve of class conflict and the ancient traditions (including, of course, the customary misogyny) becoming less fashionable in our modern, addled times. Lens flares and twinkling glares, rooms and spaces flooded with light and color, make 'Left-Handed Girl' a visually dazzling experience, as we're swept off via moped into the streaking sights and sounds of Taipei. I-Jing (Nina Ye) arrives with her mother and older sister from rural Taiwan, back in the hometown she never knew as an even smaller child, possible economic opportunity awaiting the fractured family in the capital city. They reconnect with Shu-Fen's mother, the grandma of I-ann and I-Jing, who hasn't seen any of them for years. In Taiwanese-traditional matriarchal fashion, the grandmother starts fretting over twenty-something I-Ann's (the filmmakers found Ma on Instagram) looser way of dress. I-Jing and I-Ann's mother Shu-Fen (Tsai) is in Taipei to open up a noodle shop on rented dime — and is almost immediately behind on the payments. I-Ann, who once dreamed of university life but is now shackled to being a surrogate mother to her younger sister, is willful and rebellious. She takes up work at a betel nut stand in the same night market — betel nut being a stimulant, classifiable drug in Taiwan — that stand itself fronting as a tobacco shop, engaging in listless sexual encounters with its frontman. There are, inevitably and perhaps predictably, dire consequences here, as signaled when I-Ann has to run to the street to puke during her shift. Unexpected pregnancy is a classic melodramatic trope in any movie, one that never seems to feel less shoved in, though just hold on, because the 'Left-Handed Girl' script makes I-Ann's curveball an integral part of its story. Meanwhile, I-Jing is left to her own devices, roaming the night market and the city, especially while her mother is busy raising (and barely) the medical and funeral costs for I-Jing's father, suddenly in hospital and unable to speak or move. Again, it's a lot of melodrama thrust in at once, as if this movie couldn't just let their characters move naturally through the story world, instead throwing plot hijinks at them to make their return to Taipei all the more fraught with disaster. As if showing face in a city you used to live in, and having to start up a business there on day one, weren't hard enough. 'Left-Handed Girl' routinely returns to the cultural idea of saving and/or losing face, how so much of the Taiwanese culture here is about putting on a front where our deepest traumas and disasters are buried under the floor ever beneath us. But there's little room for the past to hide, as the apartment I-Jing and her sister and mother move into, as I-Ann observes, is 'smaller than the photo.' No one has any personal space, so how would the ghosts of the past have anywhere else to hide, either? Also making I-Jing's integration into Taipei life a challenge is her left-handedness, amid a cultural bias that prefers the right hand as much as other arbitrary decorum. Her surly grandfather warns that the left hand is 'the devil's hand,' which leads I-Jing to suspect she might be possessed by evil itself when that very left hand leads to a most unfortunate slapstick incident involving her adorable pet meerkat, perhaps her only friend in this lonely world. That very left hand also takes up casual petty shoplifting, and if you were ever a small child who casually purloined a trinket or two from a gift shop, you'll understand the frustrations Tsou and Baker mine from her bemused sudden life of petty crime. If only 'Left-Handed Girl' trusted its small-scale, intrinsic human dramas enough to avoid the film's wildly over-the-top conclusion at a birthday banquet celebrating I-Jing's grandmother. Screeching and yelling, jilted lovers, and generational disappointment flood into a finale as theatrical as a Broadway stage play despite affecting performances, wrapping up too rashly to consider how all of what just went down is about to deeply traumatize the young I-Jing for life. As much as 'Left-Handed Girl' is about the past flashflooding into the present, even while those the past keeps its hook in try to make a new life, the film is less about the future and what's next for I-Jing and her family. Tsou and Baker open a fresh window that's immediate, as cluttered as it is by superimposed panes of the before, onto the now of this core group. But the film does leave them on better ground to stand on than they started, as the most hope-filled of classic melodramas do. What's culturally touched on here will be recognizable to Taiwanese audiences, how the forward motion of daily lives is tamped down by expectations that are ancient in scope. Regardless of some of the screenplay hiccups and deus ex machina plopped from the sky, 'Left-Handed Girl' still announces Tsou as a confident directorial talent with a rare exuberance: It feels more like a third or fourth film, but that's also because it basically is, Tsou having not just shadowed Baker over the years, but having been directly immersed and embedded in the process on his directorial films. The imprimatur of Baker, a lifelong supporter of rising storytellers and people on the margins, will draw audiences to this touching film, but they'll walk away with the lasting impression of Tsou's own singular perspective — one infused with color and furiously energetic detail — instead. 'Left-Handed Girl' premiered in the 2025 Cannes Critics' Week. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Le Pacte is handling sales. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
Arab News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Saudi-supported film ‘Dandelion's Odyssey' heads to Cannes Critics' Week
DUBAI: Cannes Critics' Week has announced the lineup for its 2025 edition, which includes the Red Sea Film Foundation-supported film 'Dandelion's Odyssey' from Momoko Seto. The film — which will close the week — will be the first animated feature to screen in the section since Jeremy Clapin's Grand Prize winner 'I Lost My Body' in 2019. A post shared by Red Sea Film Foundation (@redseafilm) Shot from Japan to Iceland, 'Dandelion's Odyssey' is an adventure set in a dystopian world, with plants and animals as the main characters. The feature features a mix of timelapse photography, as well as live-action shooting and 3D animation. More than 1,000 films were submitted for Cannes Critics' Week 2025, which runs from May 14 to 22.
