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Gus Van Sant’s Restless May End Up At Cannes Thanks To Sony Pictures Classics

While names like Terrence Malick and Wong Kar-Wai may be making the 2011 Cannes Film Festival the home for their latest films (The Tree Of Life and The Grandmaster respectively), Gus Van Sant is looking to toss his name in the upcoming festival’s rather full hat.

Anne Thompson has the scoop, reporting that the filmmaker’s latest film, Restless, ‘will likely wind up at Sony Pictures Classics,’ after the studio’s parent company, Columbia, stripped it of its January 28 release date.   With Columbia fully spent on campaigns for The Social Network, How Do You Know, and The Tourist, the film is apparently looking for a home, and it looks like SPC will be that very home.

The report also posits that, once it does indeed go to SPC, the film will follow in many of Van Sant’s previous films, and make its premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.   Cannes has always been nice to Van Sant, even honoring him with the Palme d’Or for his 2003 masterwork, Elephant.

Restless stars Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hooper, and follows a teen who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and who falls for a boy who likes to go to funerals.   The boy has recently had a death in his family, and also has a ghost friend, a Japanese kamikaze pilot played by Ryo Kase.   The film sounds absolutely fantastic, and based on the film’s first trailer, it looks just the same.   I’m a massive fan of Van Sant, and with a cast this great, I can’t help but think that we are really in for something special.

Expect to hear a lot more about this film in the coming months.

Source: IndieWire

Joshua Brunsting

Josh is a critic, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, a wrestling nerd, a hip-hop head, a father, a cinephile and a man looking to make his stamp on the world, one word at a time.