The Movie Sweeping Cannes: "Looking For Eric"

Eric Cantona headlines a heartfelt film that is sweeping through the Cannes Film Festival this week.



Ken Loach could not have painted a more perfect, bittersweet picture for Cannes. Looking for Eric stars the French football legend Eric Cantona in a rare Loach comedy. Needless to say, it is a film of two halves. In the first, a postman called Eric Bishop is having a nervous breakdown. He drives the wrong way around roundabouts; the cupboards in his thoroughly grubby Manchester terrace are stuffed with unmailed letters; his black and white teenage sons from two broken marriages treat him like a doormat; and he’s still racked by guilt for leaving his first wife Lily, the love of his life.

Cue Cantona. How would the King handle Bishop’s crises? In a surreal and comic scene, the former Manchester United player steps out of a poster on the wall of Bishop’s rancid bedroom and dispenses gnomic gobbets of advice. It’s an extraordinary piece of magic realism for a director who usually specialises in art-house grit.

Cantona is basically a ghost, visible only to the delusional Bishop. His vague advice about how to handle Lily and the boys is delivered like poetry. Indeed, Cantona’s quote about sardines and seagulls — after he kicked a Crystal Palace supporter in the chest, earning a nine-month suspension — is central to this barmy comedy.

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