It was just announced via Twitter that the late Claude Miller‘s Therese D starring Audrey Tautou will serve as the closing night film at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in honor of the director’s April 4 passing. The announcement came saying, “Tribute to Claude Miller: Therese D. will be the film of the 65th Festival de Cannes closing Ceremony.”
The above photo accompanied the announcement and here is the film’s official synopsis:
France, late 1920’s. Lovely and free-spirited, Therese marries her neighbor Bernard Desqueyroux, thus joining their respective properties in one vast estate. Bernard tolerates his brilliant, passionate young wife’s strong character and opinions, but she soon finds herself suffocated by the boredom of her provincial life and her husband’s intellectual mediocrity. She dreams of Paris, longs for stimulation and culture and, despite herself, starts to seek a way out. Until the day Bernard gets intoxicated with deadly arsenic… What starts as a mistake turns into an attempt to poison him. Therese is found out and, in addition to being disgraced in both her own and her husband’s families, she must face justice for her attempted murder.
Personally I am unfamiliar with the work of Miller, but he is said to have been a close friend to his mentor Francois Truffaut, to whom his films are often compared. You can read the Guardian‘s April 6 obituary here and for a second look at the film click here.
The full 2012 Cannes Film Festival line-up will be announced tomorrow morning around 2 AM PST, for my list of films predicted to be among those selected you can click here.
