Miramax
Mark Ruffalo, Julianne Moore and other cast members in a scene from "Blindness."
Carrie Bradshaw may have passed through Paris on her way toward reuniting with Mr. Big in the final episodes of "Sex and the City," but she won't be hitting the Riviera beaches this spring. After long deliberation, Cannes Film Festival artistic director Thierry Frémaux and his programmers have passed over Michael Patrick King's quasi-awaited chick-flick magnum opus, "Sex and the City: The Movie," for the festival's prized opening-night slot. As announced on Tuesday afternoon in Paris, their choice is Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' "Blindness," an adapation of Nobel laureate José Saramago's novel starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Gael García Bernal. The film will also be included in the Palme d'Or competition.
"Blindness" is certainly a classier, more obviously Cannes-worthy choice. But only time will tell whether the film gods are playing one of their sardonic jokes. Saramago's novel, a symbolic and apocalyptic fable about a world where almost everyone has gone blind, is a masterful work but one that would seem devilishly difficult to render as convincing drama. Has Meirelles (the director of "City of God") risen to the challenge, or constructed one of those mid-level, literary-dreary films that British critics call "Europuddings"? On one hand, I'm personally grateful not to have to sit through the SATC film at Cannes; on the other, the red-carpet festivities and nasty reviews would have been fun.