Quinzaine des realisateurs 2005

Daughters are missing and dads are freaking out at the Director's Fortnight 2005. I'm very disappointed to see Lodge Kerrigan's film KEANE announced as part of this year's Director's Fortnight. I saw the film in Telluride, and thought it was one of the worst of the year, and here it is, almost a year later, playing at another of the most respected film festivals in the World. Perhaps it's there as a companion to the film ALICE from first-time director Marco Martins. The description of Alice reads:

"Alice, a child of two, mysteriously vanished from nursery school. Mario sets out on a single-minded search for his daughter. His method is very painstaking: so as not to miss any chance of picking up the child’s trace, he systematically screens and studies the video tapes recorded by the surveillance cameras situated around the city. Thousands of children’s faces are filmed, then photographed, blown up and pinned to Mario’s wall, in the hope that Alice’s face might appear."

KEANE also contains a story of a father searching for his missing daughter, which seems invented from the very first WAY over-the-top scene. The lead in the film gives one of the most cliched "crazy" performances I've ever seen, pulling out all the stops with no character consistency. He doesn't appear to have any known disease, just the affliction of "crazy." KEANE is all about an actory trying really hard to give an amazing performance, and it fails miserably. I hope ALICE fares better.