By Oscar-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen took the stage at Lyon’s Lumière Film Festival on Friday evening to receive the prestigious Lumière Award, celebrating four decades of filmmaking with a characteristically irreverent tribute to the inventors of cinema.
Walking on to the sound of the Gipsy Kings’ Spanish-language rendition of Hotel California, the brothers thanked the Lumières with pure Coen deadpan. Ethan’s line drew the biggest laugh of the night: thanking the Lumières for inventing the movie camera, joked that without it they would have been in deep trouble — with considerably more colorful language.
Joel and Ethan Coen (Credits: Lumière Film Festival)
Stars Pay Tribute
The ceremony drew some of the Coens’ most celebrated collaborators. Javier Bardem paid tribute to the brothers with stories from the set of No Country for Old Men, the film that earned them Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife and star of Fargo and Three Billboards-era triumphs, was also in the audience applauding alongside French star Benoît Magimel.
The 18th edition of the festival, running October 10 to 18, is headlined by a 16-title Coen retrospective and a master class with the brothers on October 16. Nearly 450 screenings are planned across some fifty venues in the Lyon metropolitan area, drawing around 185,000 festivalgoers to what is now the largest heritage cinema gathering in the world.
A Reunion on the Horizon?
The timing of the honor is especially meaningful. The brothers, now 71 and 69, have spent recent years pursuing solo projects — Joel’s The Tragedy of Macbeth with McDormand, Ethan’s documentary and Honey Don’t with wife Tricia Cooke. But speaking ahead of the ceremony, the pair told AFP they fully intend to direct together again, joking that it had better happen soon given their advancing ages.
Joel denied reports of any schism between the two, insisting their solo runs were simply personal projects, and confirmed they have several scripts sitting in what they call their library. Their last film together remains 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, but if Friday night’s celebration is any indication, the cult masters are far from finished.
Source: Variety — read the full story there.
