Grass-roots dreams on a Riviera shore

As hundreds of journalists thronged to the early morning press screening of “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith,” less than a mile away Kyle Henry was preparing to screen his first feature film “Room.” All 78 minutes of it.

“Ah, yes,” Henry said from the fifth-floor terrace of the Noga Hilton; in one of several screening rooms set up in the hotel, his movie was playing to an audience of several dozen. “ ‘Room’ versus ‘Star Wars.’ Like a tiny star fighter vs. the Death Star.”

Henry was here to show, and sell, his movie through Directors Fortnight, a program of films that runs concurrent to its more famous counterpart, the International Film Festival. Begun in 1969, Directors Fortnight seeks to promote those films that push the cinematic borders, many of which would otherwise have little chance of distribution. This year, 21 feature films and 14 shorts were screened for the press and also for possible buyers in the marketplace.

The hoopla may go to premieres such as “Star Wars,” but Cannes takes pride in its reputation as the premiere auteur festival; its highly coveted Camera d’Or prize, awarded to first-time directors such as Henry, puts the emphasis firmly on the filmmakers rather than the stars. The festival’s unofficial mantra may be “Where art meets commerce,” but even the commerce is almost completely cinema-driven -- there is none of the swag, the free cellphones and designer jeans that clutter other festivals such as Sundance.

In other words, Henry is Cannes boiled down to its elements -- the filmmaker not worried about points or box office or the demands of A-list celebrities.

“Room” is a classic festival film, the video-shot story of a woman who, caught between the pressures of her job and family, has what could be characterized as either a nervous breakdown or a visitation. After perceiving a series of images -- windows, a half-finished wall, an empty floor -- she abandons her family, and goes to New York in search of, well, this room of her own.

But Henry’s vision is not exactly out of Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury. Julia Barker, played by Cyndi Williams, is no artistic intellectual. She works in a bingo parlor and delivers telephone books for a living. Her daughter is out prowling at night and her husband is more a distant roommate than lover. As tensions mount, she begins to experience blackouts and visions of this flickering other place, visions that are at once ominous and compelling. The narrative is dark, at times both graphic and oblique, and the ending is difficult to decipher. That’s exactly how Henry wanted it.

“I’m calling this a ‘midlife crisis American thriller,’ ” he said. “I want to provoke a discussion about midlife crises for women and also the genre.”

Henry, who lives in Austin, Texas, is 32, though with his bright blue eyes and rumpled hair he looks younger. As he speaks, he gives voice to the passion that drives artists of every genre -- the desire to change not only the way people view the world but also the media through which they view it.

Before “Room,” Henry’s first feature film, he had directed two documentaries: “American Cowboy,” a Student Academy Award winner, and “University Inc.,” which toured 75 colleges and museums. He has also directed several short films.

“What she experiences,” he said, speaking of his current leading character, “is a combination of mental illness and paranormal experience.... I was reacting to my own fear of middle age -- looking at what options society gives you. I wanted to show that you can be a sexual being, a whole person, rather than a mother or a father or a consumer for children’s products, which is what society reduces you to.”

When “Room” was shown at Sundance as part of its showcase for new and unconventional filmmakers, the reaction was mixed, Henry said. Some marveled that anyone would create a leading lady whose first “real” act is to abandon her family, others were irritated by the resolutely unresolved ending.

“Americans weren’t given what they were expecting,” he says. “I wanted to create characters who were complicated because we are complicated -- we seem one way then we do the opposite. Inconsistency is the only consistent thing about human nature, but that is exactly what a script editor tries to weed out first -- inconsistency.”

The Europeans who saw the film were more willing to make the leap, he said, including representatives of Directors Fortnight. “They came up to me after the screening and said, ‘We love your film, we want to program it.’ ... I still can’t believe it.”

In Cannes, Henry had another such moment.

“This all feels completely unreal,” he said, looking out at the yachts, at the crescent of white tents, and all the excesses and opulence in the distance.

While other filmmakers filled the rooms and suites of the posh hotels along the Croisette, Henry and his group -- his partner, Carlos Trevino, who is also in the film, and Williams -- stayed in an apartment in Cannes la Bocca. The penny-pinching tendencies of a first-time filmmaker prevailed: “We wanted to be able to get our own food and cook it,” Henry said, laughing. “We’re not used to all this.”

Williams, a stage actress in Austin who had no film experience when she took the lead role in “Room,” said she woke up at 5 the morning of the screening to practice giving intelligent answers to any possible questions that might come up at the press conference.

Though she never had to fight off the Paris Hilton-obsessed press, she was recognized by no one. “Not here, not at Sundance,” she said with a laugh. “I talked to one British guy who had just seen the movie and when he was saying goodbye, he asked what it was I had done in the movie.”

Henry had originally had another actress in mind, she said, but he asked Williams to put together a clip for him -- “He shot me in a stairwell on campus, praying” -- and then never auditioned anyone else.

Although Williams doesn’t have any children, she identified with the character’s despair over feeling sexless and stuffed into preconceptions of how middle- aged women should behave.

Henry intentionally cast stage actors because, “and don’t take this the wrong way,” he said to Williams, who is older and rounder than most of the actresses at Cannes, “they look like real people. Like someone you know.”

Held in a white tented area in front of the St. Georges hotel, the press conference was small and most of the questions came from the moderator rather than the dozen or so people who had gathered after the film.

When asked by an audience member what sort of chances he thought it had for distribution, Henry pointed out that there are many ways a small film can be successful.

“DVDs, television, art houses,” he said. “Though it’s depressing that more American narratives aren’t set in the realistic landscape like this one. I mean the rest of the world is dealing with America as it is, why isn’t America dealing with America?”

Afterward, he was happy enough with how it went.

The film screened several more times before the end of the festival, and there was a cocktail party in addition to the luncheon. Produced by the 7th Floor, the financing for “Room” was put together the old-fashioned way, Henry said, including maxed-out credit cards, small grants and “the friends and family plan.”

He has met with international sales agents at Celluloid Films in the hopes of getting some sort of distribution deal. “I do what they tell me to do,” he said of his sales agents and the publicists they had hired. He’s working on a script with Trevino about a commune that may or may not be a terrorist cell.

“I feel like this is a first step,” he said. “I’m not a ready-made auteur with the package and the sound bite. I’m not ready to deliver my raison d’etre. I feel like I’m more in process.”

After a brief stop in the American Pavilion, Henry and Williams were led to the luncheon for Camera d’Or entrants. On the back terrace of the fifth floor of the Palais de Festivals, Henry and Williams mingled with other first-time directors.

Inside, enormous screens carried the Lucas press conference, though the sound was turned low so as not to interfere with the conversations of other directors. All young, most of them male, they seemed giddy with a mutual sense of disbelief, happy to meet one another, even if the language barriers kept talk small.

Champagne circulated and a buffet of salads and salmon was assembled. Williams sipped her wine, looked around and laughed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and you could definitely hear Texas in her voice, “but just last week I was at a film festival in Austin and one of the toilets broke and I was standing there with a friend in an inch of [dirty] water and now I am here. It just doesn’t seem possible, does it?”