By Dave McCoy
MSN Movies

The overbearing heat continues here at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, and it's affecting everything. People aren't moving down the Croisette with the usual brisk pace; instead they look like a bunch of shuffling zombies, seeking not human brains but air-conditioned theaters or at least some shade. The only happy people are street vendors who have hiked prices of water and Perrier to ridiculous levels.

The funny thing, however, is that the heat hasn't just slowed down the patrons; it's seemingly slowing down the films. Rarely can I remember seeing a group of such deliberately paced movies all within 24 hours at a film festival. Don't get me wrong: I love what people like to call "slow movies." I find them a welcome change to the amount of fast-tempo, choppy Hollywood fare that we get force fed in the course of a year. Where Hollywood is consumed by mostly plot, this other approach is concerned with atmosphere and tone and character. If done correctly, the good films teach you how to watch them and, if you're willing, you can learn how to crawl along with them and experience something otherworldly.

That said -- four slow movies in a row have been awfully challenging, and I must admit I'm ready for a good old-fashioned popcorn movie such as "Ocean's Thirteen," which makes its premiere Thursday. Until then, I get to reflect on reflecting for long, long stretches ...

"Paranoid Park"

Gus Van Sant's latest was called his "most experimental work" by the daily trade here in town. It's not. That'd be either his last one, "Last Days" or "Gerry," a film in which two guys get lost in the desert -- the end. "Gerry" marked Van Sant's return to his indie roots after Hollywood success with "Good Will Hunting" and "Finding Forrester," and "Paranoid Park" continues in that experimental, short-on-plot-big-on-atmosphere vein. It's also his first time back to Cannes since winning the 2003 Palme d'Or for "Elephant," the Columbine-inspired look at a day in the life of a high school. In many ways, "Park" (also screening in competition) feels like a sequel to "Elephant." It also concerns high school teens and that time in your life where you seem to float around, ungrounded, and where time and events don't follow a rational order. Like "Elephant," "Park" is a simple story told in a nonlinear fashion and stars only nonactors (Van Sant cast the film through his MySpace Web page). The "plot" is bare-bones: A teen skaterboarder from a soon-to-be broken home, Alex (shaggy haired, golden find Gabe Nevins) spends his days at Paranoid Park, a skate park located in a downtrodden section of gloriously gray Portland, Ore. One night, he runs off with a stranger and accidentally kills a security guard. And he says nothing to anyone about it. Instead, it eats at his insides and affects his life, presumably forever. The end. Along the way, however, Van Sant focuses his Super-8 camera on kids skating (a great visceral experience) and his 35-mm camera on teenage life in 2007. This includes several lilting, melancholy sequences of teens walking while full Elliott Smith tunes play over the soundtrack ("The White Lady Loves You More" and "Angeles"). First-time sexual experiences, the monotony of high school, trips to the coffee shop, talk of the Iraq war ... it's painful and it's gorgeous and it captures a teen's world better than any film since his own "Elephant." And it takes you away ... if you let it.

"Mister Lonely"

Damn! Someone had the balls to give Harmony Korine ("Gummo") money to make another film after the Dogme 95 disaster that was (and unfortunately for all of us, still is) "Julien Donkey-Boy" (1999). Wonders never cease. Anyway, his new one is no less weird and challenging than his first two experiments, but it has more of a narrative hook. As it opens, we see this strange figure riding a mini-moped. He's got a face mask, a red jacket, short black pants and shiny shoes. Behind him floats a monkey (the stuffed-animal variety) with wings. Meet your protagonist, folks: A Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) living in Paris and making pennies dancing in old folks' homes (where he offers up inspirational advice such as, "Don't die!"). One day, he meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton), who tells him of a commune where she and other impersonators live (including her husband, Charlie Chaplin, and their daughter, Shirley Temple). She invites Michael to join them in this utopia — "a place where everyone is famous and no one ages" — and he agrees. There, he'll meet Abe Lincoln and James Dean and the Pope and even a little kid with a kick-ass Afro, Buckwheat. But paradise isn't what it seems, and "Mister Lonely" basically says that no place in the world can make you feel secure if you're not secure with yourself ... and that's a tough order when you're not even comfortable with your own identity. Oh, and along the way, Werner Herzog shows up as a priest, giving speeches about sin. It doesn't connect to anything else in the film, but it's pretty damn funny. In fact, nothing really connects to anything in "Mister Lonely" ... some parts work, in an oddball, humorous way; many don't and make you as uncomfortable as someone who thinks they are stuck in the wrong body. And maybe that's the point. And it takes you away ... if you let it.

"Import/Export"

Imagine if Jim Jarmusch mated with Ingmar Bergman and made films in Eastern Europe and you'd get an idea of what "Import/Export" is like. People either appreciate Ulrich Seidl's film or downright loathe it. It's a very, very tough, excruciating sit at times, but I also found it quite funny in a twisted way (of course, I was one of the few laughing in the theater, so ...). It tells parallel stories of two young people who will never meet. Olga, a nurse in the Ukraine, leaves her baby behind and heads to Austria to find a better life. But while working in a various string of jobs, she experiences humiliation and prejudice. Paul is Austrian and can't keep a job. He tries being a security guard but is gang-beaten, humiliated and then fired (Seidl is big on humiliation, because to him, it summarizes how we treat each other every day). In debt big-time to his stepdad, he agrees to join him on a trip to the Ukraine to deliver video-game machines to the suffering masses. Seidl captures all of these picaresque tales with a still camera that just sits there and captures hell on earth. When, at the end, he closes on a bedridden elderly woman who repeats the word "death" for several minutes, you have the urge to slit your wrists. Still, I found something genuinely touching in these flawed humans trying to find their place in the world and their struggles for some type of inner harmony. And it takes you away ... if you let it.

"The Man From London"

"The Man From London" (Wind Fish Motion Pictures Ltd.)

The three films mentioned above move like "Bad Boys II" compared to Béla Tarr's latest. This is the man whose last film was seven hours long. This one clocks in at a brisk two hours, 12 minutes ... but man, you feel every single minute of it -- if you make it through the whole thing. The Hungarian film is shot in stunning black and white, and the first shot (the camera tilting up the bow of a boat) lasts about five minutes. There are a total of four shots in the first reel. At one point, a guy heads home after work. The camera lingers on him in a room, where a bird in a cage sits at the right side of the screen. He meticulously takes off each article of clothing. Then, he stands, heads over to the bird cage and turns it ever so slightly to the left. End of the scene. I laughed my butt off. People gave me strange looks. Hey, any shot where the only action is a guy turning a bird cage ... sorry, but that is funny. Not much else about the film is, however. It's a simple tale of a guy who witnesses a murder at the docks and finds 60,000 euros. The money could change his life, give it some meaning ... give him freedom from his brutal surroundings. The film is a battle of wills, and I don't mean the characters. I mean between Tarr and his audience. It's an endurance test. And it really took me away -- literally ... after about an hour, I couldn't hack it. I left. You win this round, Béla! But thanks for letting me sit in the air-conditioning ...

A demain ...

Thursday: Asian cinema with "Pleasure Factory" and "Secret Sunshine." And I make a vain attempt to pick Sunday's Cannes award winners.

Dave McCoy is lead editor for MSN Movies. He'll file daily dispatches from Cannes through May 28.

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