It looks like the “April Fool’s” lineup for Cannes that a French blog “leaked” a few weeks ago had some truth to it.
Matteo Garrone’s Big House has been renamed Reality and will be screened in competition at Cannes this year. It was inspired by Italy’s obsession with the reality TV show Grande Fratello, the Italian version of Big Brother. Based on the original Dutch version, housemates are locked up together in a house and viewers can watch them 24 hours a day, voting the ones they don’t like off the show as the season progresses; it began in 2000 and has completed 11 seasons In Garrone’s story, a fish merchant from Naples who is infatuated with the show starts living his life as if he were on it. It stars Claudia Gerini, Ciro Petrone and Arturo Gambardella.
Premiering out of competition: Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film in ten years, Io e Te (me and you), the story of Lorenzo, a 14-year-old boy who tells his parents that he went on a ski trip, only to hide out in the basement to try to help his much older half-sister, Olivia, shake off her addiction to heroin (based on a book by Niccolò Ammaniti). At first, this movie was going to be released in 3D, but Bertolucci changed his mind and called 3D “vulgarly commercial”.
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