Woody Allen Screens Film for Cannes

Woody Allen says aging has zero advantages: “you don't get smarter, you don't get wiser, you don't get more mellow, you don't get more kindly,” he told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival when promoting his new film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. You only get more bodily decay. "My relationship with death remains the same—I’m strongly against it," the director says. "All I can do is wait for it." The title of his latest movie has a double meaning; the dark stranger is both the handsome fantasy man and the Grim Reaper, who everyone eventually meets. The flick stars Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, and Anthony Hopkins, who plays the older gentleman struggling to cope with age. Each character grapples with tough life decisions, and two of them turn to fortune tellers for guidance. The director clarified that he thinks fortune-telling is a delusion, but sympathizes with the characters for seeking it out. "One must have one's delusions to live,” Allen says. “I do feel that it is a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself."