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Matt Arnoldi remembers the highlights of the Deauville Festival of American Film 2001 This year's Deauville Film Festival (Aug 31 - Sept 9 2001) was completed just before the atrocities took place at the World Trade Centre in New York. This in a way was fortunate, given the American flavour that takes over this star-studded affair close to the beaches in Normandy, France. The Toronto Film Festival, which began just a few days after Deauville, came to a virtual stand still when news of the terrorist attacks came through. The emphasis in Deauville this year was on humour - that wasn't to say that every film shown was a comedy, but many of the leading titles were, such as the mother-and-daughter comedy Heartbreakers, the Coen Brothers The Man Who Wasn't There, the juvenile comedy sequel American Pie 2, Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World. There were tributes (and occasionally lengthy ones at that) to Joel Silver, Julianne Moore and Burt Reynolds (all of whom were able to be there), and Christopher Walken arrived on the last day to receive a special award marking his long acting and at times memorable acting career. Stars Stars at this year's festival included the whole of the cast of American Pie 2, the likes of Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Rob Cohen and Paul Walker in support of The Fast and the Furious, Haley Joel Osment for Ai, Hugh Jackman, Joel Silver and Halle Berry adding weight to the screening of Swordfish and Liz Hurley, Denis Leary and Tom DiCillo in support of the opening film Double Whammy, which is a fairly lively offbeat Tom DiCillo comedy that certainly went down well with the largely French audience that attended the Gala Screening. Awards Hedwig and the Angry Inch won the International Critics' Prize (which is open only to the dozen or so Independent films showing at the festival) and the Jury this year which included the likes of Jean Jacques Annaud and Sandrine Bonnaire, awarded this year's Jury Prize to Terry Zwigoff's clever comedy Ghost World, starring Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi. Particular films that picked up good word of mouth and went down well with festival audiences, included Randy Redroad's The Doe Boy, the popular jousting drama A Knight's Tale (which afterwards led to a French troupe doing some traditional jousting on the Deauville beach) and Scott McGhee and David Siegel's intelligent thriller The Deep End, about a mother covering her son's tracks in a murder investigation. The Deep End is being muted in some circles as a possible Oscar contender particularly in relation to the superb performance from its lead, Tilda Swinton. It opens in the UK in November. There was not a seat left in the house for the Special effects driven-thriller Swordfish starring Halle Berry, John Travolta, and Hugh Jackman. Swordfish has already been released in the UK and was due for a wider release across Europe soon after the Deauville Festival was over. In the wake of the US atrocities however, its release has sensitively been put back. Audiences if anything were up on last year's attendances, there were also many more Press representatives at the festival this year and United International Pictures hosted a particularly good joint party attended by Cast members, Deauville execs, and Press winos on the Saturday night in the Casino, to toast the releases of American Pie 2 and The Fast and the Furious. It can be a tough job covering these festivals but naturally someone's got to do it ! More on Deauville Festival of American Film
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