CLINT Eastwood’s latest trip to Cannes proved a massive media draw – not least because of the film’s leading lady, Angelina Jolie – but also because it was among the Palme d’Or favourites.

L’Echange, or The Changeling as it was previously known going into the festival, once again finds the director tackling the issue of lost children.

Previously, it was in Mystic River, the film based on Dennis Lehane’s novel that achieved considerable Oscar success and drew top drawer performances from a cast including Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon.

This time, the film is based on the remarkable true story of Christine Collins (played by Jolie) who, in March 1928, was devastated when her nine-year-old son, Walter, vanishes.

Five months later, the LAPD, desperate to repair its faltering image, delivers to Christine a boy who claims to be her son but is not.

To avoid further embarrassment, LA’s police chief Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) demands Collins take the boy home on a “trial basis” – a request she refuses in the hope of continuing the search for her real child.

When she’s institutionalised instead, a radio minister, Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), takes up her case and seeks the truth, while another police officer – Detective Ybarra (Michael Kelly) – begins to investigate the possibility of a serial killer working in the area.

Commenting on the film before a packed Cannes press conference, Jolie said she felt drawn to the role as a mother.

“So much of it is being a mother and imagining, if this is happening to me, my pain and my frustration, but I did have to find something else because I couldn’t respond as I would respond today.

“This is personal, but I lost my mother a few months before the film and she’s very much like my mother.

“My mother was very passive in many ways and very, very sweet, but when it came to her children, she was a lion, but as a woman, very shy almost with her own voice.

“So, in many ways Christine reminded me of my mom and it was a way to revisit my mom after her passing, and in that way very healing and interesting for me.”

And commenting on why he’d chosen to submit the film in competition, Eastwood told reporters: “Well, it seems if you are going to come to a film festival that has a competition, you might as well be in the competition; whether you win something or not is not the point of it. You come and you present the film and see what the response is…

“To play it out of competition is to play it safe. I’m not above that; I put it out there for what it is. A lot of good films have won and a lot of not so good films have won. It’s nice to be here with you, the audience, and I hope they’ll enjoy the film.”

Certainly, critics have – despite the difficult subject matter.

Variety called the film “emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed,” while Screen Daily said it boasted a “career-best” performance from its leading lady.

James Christopher, of The Times, was also full of praise for Jolie, stating: “I shall eat the next person who tells me that Angelina Jolie cannot act. Starring as Collins, she is the entire, anxious point of Eastwood’s film, and absolutely terrific as a mother who is forcibly reunited with the wrong boy by a Los Angeles Police Department rotten to the core.”

Of the film itself, he had reservations but praised the attention to period detail as “sumptuous”, the courtroom scenes as “tearjerkingly awful” and concluded: “Eastwood’s film touches very real nerves.”

And The Hollywood Reporter opined: “A true story that is as incredible as it is compelling, Changeling brushes away the romantic notion of a more innocent time to reveal a Los Angeles circa 1928 awash in corruption and steeped in a culture that treats women as hysterical and unreliable beings when they challenge male wisdom.”

It added: “Jolie puts on a powerful emotional display as a tenacious woman who gathers strength from the forces that oppose her. She reminds us that there is nothing so fierce as a mother protecting her cub.”

• Delicious
• Digg
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Stumbleupon