Helmer Kuosmanen Discusses Compartment No. 6
Marta Balaga, provided by
FacebookTwitterEmail
Following his 2016 Un Certain Regard win with “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki,” Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen is back in Cannes with “Compartment No. 6,” and this time, in the main competition. Inspired by Rosa Liksom’s book, it follows two strangers on a train to Murmansk, Russia: a young Finnish woman, dreaming of seeing ancient petroglyphs, and a Russian miner.
The action takes place on the train for most of the story. What were the challenges of staying in a confined space?
More from Variety
A Forgotten Jude Law Movie Is Blowing Up On Netflix
For whatever reason, the submarine thriller has proven to be a hugely popular subgenre dating back decades, with plenty of great movies taking place in cramped conditions under the sea and wringing every last drop of claustrophobic tension and edge of your seat action from what’s essentially a bunch of dudes standing around barking orders at each other as things get increasingly heated both inside and outside the confines of the sub.
Wolfgang Petersen’s
Das Boot was a global smash hit, John McTiernan’s
The Hunt for Red October pitted Sean Connery against Alec Baldwin in the first big screen Jack Ryan adventure, Tony Scott’s
Thrillers are as good as their villains, and In the Line of Fire has a great one - a clever, slimy creep who insidiously burrows his way into the psyche of the hero, a veteran Secret Service agent named Horrigan (Clint Eastwood). The creep, who likes to play mind games with his opponents, makes a series of phone calls threatening to assassinate the president. He chooses Horrigan because he knows the agent still feels guilty about failing to save the life of John F. Kennedy 30 years ago.
The would-be killer has an all-American name, Mitch, and is played by John Malkovich as an intelligent, twisted man who uses disguises, fake ID and an ingratiating manner to get close to the president. He tells Horrigan more or less what he plans to do, and when, but Horrigan s hands are tied. The president is running for re-election, and his chief of staff (Fred Dalton Thompson) doesn t want him to look like a coward. So after Horrigan sounds a couple of false alarms, he s taken off the White Hous