Pretentious, self-serving vehicle glorifying Marling. If you can’t get hired, write yourself a role where you are worshipped. Make sure you are the only good looking woman in the film with plenty of golden light close-ups.

Uninteresting filmmaking couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) have stumbled on an enigma. There is someone who is claiming to be from the future –  2054. They decide to expose this person as a fraud using a hidden camera. The hilarity begins with the enforcement of S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like rituals before coming into the presence of Maggie (Brit Marling).

I was hoping for David Bowie.

After making contact with the Maggie-underground, hopeful devotees must be vetted, blindfolded, washed, placed in hospital gowns and perform a wacky secret hand dance. Only then can you join the group waiting for the woman from the future to arrive in the basement room.

How do we know she is from the future? Because she says so! Isn’t that enough for you? Maggie, long flowing blond hair carefully styled, water-clear blue eyes, and an ethereal aura dripping from her fingertips, says really stupid hackneyed aphorisms.

Who wrote this crap? (I just breezed through the terribly-written FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. Every time Anastasia says or thinks anything, it begins with the words “oh crap”.  Someone should count how many times the word “crap” is used. And Christian Grey, a breathtakingly beautiful billionaire, keeps begging and pleading with her to be his submissive!)

Brit Marling co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij. Marling also co-wrote and starred in ANOTHER EARTH. Marling and Batmanglij nehave joined forces for THE EAST opening this year.

No one asks Maggie if FACEBOOK is around in 2054. Are we all Muslims in 2054? Why is Maggie here? To tell 6 people at a time that the world is going to end? Why not tell the world?

Marling has said: “I always started writing in order to act. Where’s the film with the women who are complicated and strong and beautiful and sexy and interesting and of all body types? You don’t get to see enough of them. So there’s something important in attempting to write them for myself and for the insanely talented women out there.”

Maggie may not be a profound cult leader with important information to disseminate, but she is “complicated and strong and beautiful and sexy and interesting” and model thin. Maggie is the only good-looking person in the cast.

When an actor or actress (a) writes their own starring role and/or (b) directs themselves, objectivity is lost. SOUND OF MY VOICE serves no one but Marling. Marling envisions herself as a double-threat talent, but she needs to be mentored by triple-threat Lena Dunham. We want to see real women, not an angelic caricature donning a halo.

Maggie is smug without portfolio. If Maggie has really come back to warn mankind, has she forgotten there are 7.014 billion of us? Maggie is going to need a much bigger basement for recruits. If I had met her, I would have advised her: Get a job and meet a nice guy.

Victoria Alexander is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association: www.bfca.org/ and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society: www.lvfcs.org/. Victoria’s weekly column, “The Devil’s Hammer,” is posted every Monday. http://www.fromthebalcony.com/editorials.php.

If you would like to be included on Victoria’s private distribution list for a weekly preview, just email her at masauu@aol.com. Victoria lives in Las Vegas, Nevada and answers every email. You can contact Victoria directly at masauu@aol.com.

Jean-Louis Trintingnant and Emanuelle Riva in AMOUR

While not every film that premieres at Cannes goes on to a stellar career, it is the go-to place to test the pulse of the industry. Cannes 2012 is still on a high after premiering THE ARTIST last year, a silent French film that went all the way to the Oscars. Of course, many Cannes films crashed and burned during the year as well, but somehow the successes seem all the more influential and that makes the event an indispensable one for buyers and sellers in the marketplace. Aside from the glitter of the Festival fare, there is a parallel film market where less stellar fare is hawked and sold, adding to the event’s must-attend status.

Pilgrims to the semi-religious event are already talking up some of the high profile premieres from the likes of filmmakers Lee Daniels, Carlos Reygadas, Andrew Dominik, Abbas Kiarostami, Wes Anderson, Hong Sang-soo, and Ken Loach in the main competition lineup. Bernardo Bertolucci’s new film ME AND YOU, a dark tale about a young man helping his half-sister to beat heroin addiction,  is screening out of competition. Two highly anticipated films will screen as midnight events: Japanese cult director Takashi Miike’s THE LEGEND OF LOVE AND SINCERITY and Italian horror master Dario Argento’s version of DRACULA. The Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Palme d’Or winner for his ghost parable UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, has a special screening for his new project, MEKONG HOTEL. Also returning to the main competition is Austrian director Michael Haneke’s latest AMOUR, with Festival favorite Isabelle Huppert playing a woman who has a volatile relationship with her elderly parents, played by screen veterans Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva. An oddball film that just might be one of the highlights this year is RUST AND BONE, a French/Quebec co-production adapted from the 2005 short story collection by the Canadian author Craig Davidson. The film stars Oscar winner Marion Cotillard in a tale about a bareknuckle fighter and someone who has lost their limbs to a whale being trained in a marine show park.

David Cronenberg has long been a favorite of Cannes, and his new film, an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 novella COSMOPOLIS follows a billionaire Wall Street trader on his strange journey through Manhattan in a stretch limo. The film stars TWILIGHT sensation Robert Pattinson, who apparently brings a vaguely vampiric aura to the leading role.  Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, a Palme d’Or winner for his 1997 film TASTE OF CHERRY, returns with an intriguing-looking film set in Japan, his second fiction feature to be shot outside Iran. It’s the story of a young woman working as a prostitute and her relationship with a client. The sole British entry this year is by Ken Loach, who has been to Cannes with many of his films. He is back with THE ANGELS’ SHARE, a Scottish comedy written by longtime collaborator Paul Laverty. It’s about some guys in trouble with the law who find themselves involved in the whisky business. Also expect high buzz for Argentine director Walter Salles’ adaptation of the classic beat novel ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac. Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund play platonic buddies Sal and It, with Kristen Stewart on hand as the female “third wheel” in this intensely male odyssey.

THE HUNT

Other films generating early buzz are THE HUNT, the latest from Danish dogma director Thomas Vinterberg, which stars Mads Mikkelsen as a divorced man in a small country town who is accused of abusing a child; DL, the newest film bonbon from French director Leos Carax; and PARADIES, a sure-to-be-controversial dramatic diptych about the strange journeys of a mother and daughter by Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl. A new film from 89-year-old French film master Alain Resnais is an extraordinary achievement in and of itself. Screening in the competition section, YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ANYTHING YET, a loose reworking of French playwright Jean Anouilh’s tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, features a group of actors gathered in the house of a dead dramatist, awaiting the reading of his will. The movie features a blue-chip French cast, including Michel Piccoli, Mathieu Amalric, Anne Consigny and Lambert Wilson. The continued agility and wit of Resnais’s creativity is a marvel…..his presence at Cannes is always a treat. For more information on these and other films premiering, visit the website: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/festival.html

Wes Anderson emerged in the late 1990s with a highly regarded low budget indie film, which led to a series of critical and box office hits of projects that were decidedly quirky and also featured “all star” casts of acting veterans and dynamic newcomers. He is a filmmaker who is comfortable in both the indie film and mainstream Hollywood worlds. He is one of a rare breed of filmmakers who can make their Hollywood films be infused with an independent sensibility. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Anderson was interested in filmmaking and performance from a young age, shooting crude Super-8 movies and staging elaborate school plays. As a philosophy student at the University of Texas at Austin, Anderson found a kindred spirit in classmate Owen Wilson, who shared the director’s passion for playwriting and watching classic films of the ’70s. The two became roommates as Anderson honed his skills at a local public access television station and Wilson performed in local stage productions. The duo then set out to shoot a full-length script they wrote, titled BOTTLE ROCKET (1996), recruiting two of Wilson’s brothers, Luke Wilson and Andrew Wilson, to perform. The film was a sensation at that year’s  Sundance Film Festival, and eventually got picked up by studio biggie Columbia Pictures. It became an international cult hit.

His next film was at a bigger budget and even boasted a star (Bill Murray) but the script was quite quirky, with many autobiographical flourishes. RUSHMORE, completed in 1998, became one of the critical darlings of late 90’s film. Premiere Magazine named RUSHMORE as best film of the year, and Bill Murray was named Best Supporting Actor by both the New York and Los Angeles Critics societies. It also introduced, with considerable charm, a young actor named Jason Schwartzman, who headlines as a fastidious student wise beyond his year who has an epic struggle with a monied benefactor whose power is clearly slipping to the titans of a new generation. The next film was THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001), a J.D. Salinger-inspired tale about a super intellectual Manhattan family, with one of the most distinctive casts ever, including Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gywneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Danny Glover and Owen Wilson. It is one of the great New York films of the past 20 years.  He stumbled with the 2004 seafaring opus THE LIFE ACQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, which again featured muse Bill Murray. Co-written with Noah Baumbach, this was an absurdist adventure film that never really was grasped by the public. It is perhaps one of those films that will be better treated and understood a generation from now.  He turned back to a sprawling visual style with THE DARJEELING LIMITED (2007), an existential road movie that just happens to be based in India. Collaborating with RUSHMORE star Schwartzman and friend Roman Coppola, the director also recruited an interesting cast by linking Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody as three fractious brothers on a life-changing journey through the subcontinent. The film received mixed reviews and critics began to wag about whether Anderson’s world view and popularity was now waning.

The director was back four years later, in a big way, in a genre direction that no one expected him to take with a stop-motion animation adaptation of Roald Dahl’s THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX, featuring the voice of, among others, George Clooney. The film earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Film and was a considerable international hit. It also pointed to the filmmaker’s international appeal. In other part of the world, he is regarded as a kind of art film director. This may be his strongest creative impulse and it should serve him well with MOONRISE KINGDOM, which seems a return to form. Wes Anderson is not a filmmaker who will break box office records, but his is a uniquely American vision that is embraced in the United States and debated in the rest of the world. Welcome back, Wes…….