I was skimming through the evening’s tweets when I came across this one:

Couldn’t help a couple guffaws–or three. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Paz De La Huerta (The limits of control, Enter the void) not naked on screen. Some actresses just pick and choose roles like that. But I digress. I just read that The Artist, by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, took home the Audience Awards at the 59th San Sebastian Festival (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter), an important festival (and one of the oldest ones) on the secondary film festival circuit. This made me happy because it’s a great movie and a massive production, starring Jean Dujardin (from the OSS movies, which spoofed the James Bond films). This year I spent just 48 hours in Cannes and fortunately, The Artist was one of the films I was able to catch.

In it, a silent-era movie star (played of course by Dujardin) falls out of favor as talkies become the norm. In fact, he falls out of favor with everyone (including his love interest, played by Bérénice Béjo and who happens to be Hazanavicius’s real-life wife). What follows is of course his struggle to gain his footing back and ascend once again in the pantheon of the day’s great film stars. Dujardin is absolutely perfect in the role, not overdoing it, playing just right into the character’s many endearing flaws.

The Artist will be released in the U.S. on November 23 by the Weinstein Company.

[jwplayer config=”Default-Post-Player” mediaid=”6772″]