Brie Larson Did Watch ‘Jeanne du Barry’ at Cannes

As the president of this yr’s competitors jury on the Cannes Film Festival, the director Ruben Ostlund had one key piece of knowledge to impart to his fellow jurors.

“Don’t be afraid to say something stupid,” he instructed them at a news convention Tuesday afternoon.

Ostlund, who skewered groupthink and pseudo-intellectual posturing in his movies “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” meant that the jurors ought to belief their first instincts as a substitute of endeavoring to impress. “When you have a jury atmosphere where everybody is trying to top each other and be smarter than each other, then you’re missing out on something,” he mentioned.

But his assertion earned various chuckles from the assembled journalists as a result of the concern of claiming one thing silly is an ever-present hazard at Cannes, the place filmmakers, actors and pageant organizers collect in a glamorous setting to tout their work and infrequently fire up loads of controversies alongside the best way.

This yr’s Cannes feels notably front-loaded with scandal given the opening-night collection of “Jeanne du Barry,” a fancy dress drama that stars Johnny Depp because the French king Louis XV. It’s Depp’s first high-profile position since he sued his ex-wife Amber Heard for defamation after she accused the “Pirates of the Caribbean” actor of sexually and bodily assaulting her throughout their marriage. He denied the allegations and mentioned she was the attacker, an argument the jury largely agreed with. Though he was as soon as one in all Hollywood’s most bankable actors, the 59-year-old Depp has not starred in a serious studio film for the reason that 2018 “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.”

Asked concerning the determination to open Cannes with a movie starring him, the pageant director Thierry Fremaux was dismissive. “I don’t know about the image of Johnny Depp in the U.S.,” he mentioned at a news convention on Monday. “To tell you the truth, in my life, I only have one rule — it’s the freedom of thinking.”

It’s unlikely that “Jeanne du Barry” will make an enormous splash stateside, since Depp’s efficiency is terribly muted and the French-language costume drama remains to be looking for American distribution. But its presence at Cannes nonetheless created a dilemma for the jury member Brie Larson, singled out when a Variety reporter requested if she could be prepared to observe a movie starring Depp, provided that she was once a member of the advisory board of Time’s Up, a gaggle shaped in response to the #MeToo motion.

“You’re asking me that?” Larson replied. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the correlation, or why me specifically.” Pressed once more, she mentioned tersely, “You’ll see, I guess, if I see it. And I don’t know how I’ll feel about it if I do.”

Later, at a glamorous dinner held on the Carlton Hotel, I chatted with Larson’s fellow juror Paul Dano, who confirmed that the panel did certainly watch “Jeanne du Barry” after collaborating within the pageant’s opening ceremony. “It’s opening night, it’s the respectful thing to do,” Dano mentioned.

“Jeanne du Barry” screened out of competitors for the Palme d’Or and subsequently isn’t a part of the jury’s purview, however Dano nonetheless plans to say little when requested his opinion of the movies at Cannes. “We don’t decide any prizes for two weeks, but we can’t talk to anybody else about the movies,” he mentioned. “We all get to share a secret for two weeks.”

In the meantime, Dano was desperate to bond with different jurors and see Cannes from a distinct perspective: After displaying his directorial debut, “Wildlife,” on the pageant in 2018, he was desperate to return as a juror and felt significantly much less strain.

“Normally, if I’m getting ready for a premiere, I’m nervous or I don’t feel like I’m in my own skin,” he mentioned. “But being here not with a film that you’re in or you directed is so much more fun.”