Day 7 - September 7
Of Mice and Memento

Mickey Rooney, who is in town in conjunction with last night's tribute to Hollywood Musicals, says he made an episode of the TV series "Rawhide" with Clint Eastwood back in the 1950s. "I told him, 'You've got what it takes, kid. You're gonna be a big star some day.' And he shook his head and said, 'I don't think I'm gonna make it in this business.'" Rooney's anecdote was prompted by fellow honoree Leslie Caron's admission that while she was delighted to see Bob Altman, she would've loved to be here when Clint was still in Deauville.

Rooney's eye for success-in-the-rough was honed at a very early age. "When I was 7 years old, my mother gave me ten cents in a handkerchief to go buy a sandwich," the diminuitive song and dance man explained. "I was on my way and I stuck my head in an open door. A man said 'What's your name?' and I said 'Mickey. What's yours?' and he said 'Walt Disney.' I said I had to be on my way but he invited me in and said 'Would you like to see a mouse?' So I sat on his knee and he showed me an animated mouse. I wanted to know what the mouse's name was. He said 'I'm going to call him Mortimer, Mickey --." And then he stopped talking and a look came over his face and he said, 'No, I'm going to call him Mickey. Mickey Mouse. How does that sound?'"

Uh, that sounds like we're all fortunate that young Mickey Rooney's parents didn't name him Mandrake or Mesembryanthemum (which, per my Oxford dictionary is "a low-growing plant with daisy-like flowers") because it's hard to imagine children of all ages the world over wearing Mesembryanthemum Mouse t-shirts or watching Mesembryanthemum Mouse cartoons.

Australian actor Guy Pearce, taking a few days off from shooting Kevin Reynolds' version of The Count of Monte Cristo in Ireland, is in Deauville to promote today's competition title Memento. (He also has a role in this evening's Gallic premiere, The Rules of Engagement.) Memento is the story of Leonard Shelby (Pearce), a bottle blond who suffers from short term memory loss and relies on Polaroid photos and notes to himself to make his way in the world. He's bent on revenge for a violent incident in his past which robbed him of the ability to form new memories. Memento makes for a demanding but extremely rewarding viewing experience as writer-director Christopher Nolan has opted for a fragmented narrative that moves back and forth, ahead and sideways like a crab in an editing room.

The other film in competition today, Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, was introduced by its director Rob Schmidt as follows: "When I was 17, I was a drug addict. I wanted to make this film to give hope to teenagers in a world where it doesn't always seem like there is any."

Veteran screenwriter Larry Gross has grafted the bare bones of the great Russian novel onto an antiseptic community in the American desert where the weather is so predictable the lockers at the local high school are OUTSIDE. Some kids mope, some adults stray, and a knife ends up in somebody's chest. When the wrong person is arrested, the culprits have to decide whether to live with the guilt or seek redemption through confession and penance.

One of the recurring themes in the films on display at Deauville this year is that money can't buy happiness. (I'm not so sure about that - I saw some deleriously happy people at the Deauville casino the other night...).

The last two titles in competition, the already-in-release Chuck and Buck and the spanking new Panic, are in store tomorrow. But the thing that's making pulses quicken is the arrival of Harrison Ford (for What Lies Beneath) and Asian superstar Chow Yun-Fat for Ang Lee's rollicking martial arts adventure Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Wilma Radar