Out of Competition - Special Screening: "Boxes" by Jane Birkin

Jane Birkin comes to the Cannes Festival this year to present Boxes, the first film she has ever directed. As an actress, she has been a regular in the past, appearing to promote such Competition selections as The Pirate (1984), Daddy Nostalgia (1990) and La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker, 1991). As her first directorial effort, Boxes is in the running for a Golden Camera award. It is a bittersweet chronicle of a woman in the midst of crisis. Birkin plays Anna, who has just moved into a new house, full of packing cartons, each of which is a Pandora's box of memories. At a stage in her life when time is rushing forward at a dizzying pace, Anna tries to get some traction, to confront the past and visualize herself in the future… And perhaps believe in love one more time?

Birkin recalls: "About ten years ago, I began writing about a woman of 45-50 years old…the panic, the mystery, the fears of a specific age… Of what use will she be? She who from the age of 19 was able to give children to the men she loved. What gift can she give now? That age is frightening to Anna as the suspense of puberty… Who will love you with all this baggage, this past history? Or were you just loved for that? It was my question. (…) The film was written at the precise moment when a man, a new man, came into my life, causing havoc to the last teenager still at home. And when the elder children had formulated, not cruelly, but with pain the inevitable reproaches of their young lives, the unexplained or too-specific separations from their fathers… Everyone seemed angry, or hurt."

Photo copyright AFP