A FILM inspired by the closing chapters in the life of Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana singer, brought rock 'n' roll to Cannes yesterday.
However, anyone expecting a conventionally bombastic and eventful biopic may be taken aback by Gus Van Sant's Last Days, which takes a singularly oblique approach to the demise of its iconic protagonist.
Van Sant told the Cannes press that Last Days is intended as "a poetic experience" rather than a fact-based portrait of the rock star, who shot himself in 1994.
The director, whose previous films include Drugstore Cowboy, Good Will Hunting and the 2003 Palme d'Or winner, Elephant, said: "My first idea was to make a biopic about a guy called Kurt Cobain.
"But it would have been a regular biopic, nothing special. It would have been too much information."
Instead, Van Sant chose to cast 24-year-old Michael Pitt as a musician known only as "Blake". Holed up in a decayed mansion with various addled hangers-on and a litter of kittens for company, Blake mutters under his breath, waves a shotgun around, and prepares some truly disgusting-looking macaroni and cheese.
Meanwhile, record company executives, private detectives, and a very temperamental ex make fruitless efforts to bring him back into line.
"Small things about Kurt's life - like that he liked macaroni and cheese - started to make more sense than him fighting with the record company over album cover designs or whatever, " said Van Sant.
"Also, those last days are kind of lost days; we don't really know what happened."
The script may evade specific reference to Cobain, but Pitt's performance is a strikingly precise impersonation. With his straggly blond hair, scrawny frame and wide blue eyes, the former teen star of TV's Dawson's Creek channels Cobain's fragile physicality to poignant effect.
"I played it as though he was remembering his death for a lot of his life, " was Pitt's appropriately enigmatic comment. "It was less about the events leading up to it, more that he always knew it was going to happen."
Pitt and Van Sant have been in discussion about the project since Pitt was 17. Van Sant said: "By the time we got to do it, Michael looked a lot like Kurt. There are images that are very striking, that look very much like photos you've seen of Kurt the rock star."
Pitt's efforts to slim down in emulation of Cobain's slight physique had uncomfortable but fortuitous consequences.
He recalled: "I changed my diet, but I didn't really know how to do it. I just ate lettuce and fruit the whole time I was shooting, so my stomach was in pain - which was really good." Cobain claimed to suffer from agonising stomach pains, which he quelled with heroin.
The director said: "Michael always looked to me as if he was carrying something very heavy; as if the weight of Blake's mythology had become part of his being."
However, Pitt modestly confirmed: "Really I just had gas."
Pitt's co-stars in Last Days include Asia Argento, Lukas Haas and Ricky Jay. Cameo parts are played by filmmaker Harmony Korine and musician Kim Gordon.
Gordon, the bass player with Sonic Youth, the legendary American underground band, spoke yesterday of her friendship with the real Kurt.
"It's always frustrating when you see someone who's really intelligent lose their perspective, " she said. "But you can only do so much to help someone. It was a sort of psychosis, where Kurt was alienated from what he thought he wanted, and entrapped by it."
Thurston Moore, Gordon's husband and band-mate, acted as music consultant to the film, which features songs written and performed by Pitt and Haas.
Conspicuous by her absence from the main narrative is the figure of Kurt Cobain's widow, the musician and actress Courtney Love.
"We were afraid that she was going to sue us, " confirmed Van Sant - but he added that Love has been aware of the project for some years and that he has discussed it with her on many occasions.
"We've offered to screen the film for Courtney, but she hasn't seen it yet, " said Colin Callender, head of the production company, HBO.
Another doomed musical legend is mourned in Stoned, a British-made biopic of Brian Jones, the Rolling Stone, that was launched to the press yesterday - although not ready to be screened. The film is the first directorial project by Stephen Woolley, the producer of Scandal, The Crying Game and Backbeat.
Leo Gregory plays Jones, who, like Cobain, died at the age of 27 - under somewhat enigmatic circ*mstances. In the course of his research Woolley claims to have unearthed a witness who has provided new evidence pointing to Jones's murder.
"It was very important to corroborate what happened on the night Brian died, " Woolley noted - but he would provide no further information about his source. Would he present this new evidence to the police? "Possibly - I hadn't considered it."
