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Paris Does Cannes

By Leah Rozen

Originally posted Monday May 16, 2005 12:00 PM EDT

Sharon Stone Photo by: Lionel Cironneau / AP

The reason things are looking up is the official premiere Monday of A History of Violence, a crime thriller by director David Cronenberg (1996's Crash) that had viewers at the press screening cheering enthusiastically. The movie stars Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello as a happily married couple in a small Indiana town whose lives are turned upside down after he shoots a couple of nasty criminals when they try to rob a diner Mortensen runs. It soon turns out Mortensen may have a more interesting background than his wife, or anyone else in town, knew. The movie, based on a graphic novel, is hard-boiled, often funny, extremely violent, sexy and always compelling. A History of Violence will open in U.S. theaters on Sept. 30. Watch for it.

A trio of smaller films with American settings are also getting talked about. They are:
• Factotum, a comedic drama based on writer Charles Bukowski and the dozens of dead-end jobs (janitor, pickle factory assembly line worker, ice deliveryman) he held to support his writing, gambling and womanizing. Matt Dillon gives a swell performance in the leading role.

• Down in the Valley, an ambitious drama about a troubled, self-styled contemporary cowpoke (a sensational Edward Norton) who rides horses alongside the freeways of the Valley in L.A. His romance with a teenage girl (Evan Rachel Wood) leads to tragedy. There's much to chew on here.

• The King, a dark, not always successful drama about a possibly pathological fellow named Elvis (Gaél Garcia Bernal) who insinuates himself into the family of his long-lost father (William Hurt), now a born-again pastor in Texas.

These, of course, are the prestige entries at Cannes. The mainstays here are the films being sold to distributors in the marketplace, which include hundreds of martial-arts epics, horror movies and silly sex comedies that'll never make it stateside. Typical title: A Fistful of Zombies.

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