CANNES, France - Tommy Lee Jones took his cinema career to a new level Friday with the Cannes premiere of his first film directing effort, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada".
Set on the border of Texas and Mexico, the film builds on a theme of friendship set in a tough landscape filled with tough characters and little joy.
Jones plays a straight-talking rancher in a modern-day Texas town who befriends an illegal Mexican immigrant and is determined to personally see justice done when the man is killed.
He abducts the border patrol guard responsible and heads over the border on horseback to perform a decent burial.
The story does not unfold in a linear way, though, but rather fast-forwards and reverses, telling a little bit more about the characters each time.
For Jones, 58, the journey in making the film and coming to Cannes as a director (as well as the movie's star) has parallels with the path already trod by pal Clint Eastwood.
But in his down-home fashion, and with his lined face creased in a stern scowl, he brooked little comparison between his film and others -- especially Westerns.
"I don't know why (that description) would apply to our movie. Maybe it's because we've got horses and big hats," he said.
The real motivation behind the movie was to bring to the screen the land around the US-Mexican border -- an area where he lives, that he knows well and that had a character all of its own. Jones is also married to a Mexican woman.
Moments in the film underline the shared American-Mexican culture, for instance with residents of both sides of the border watching the same US soap opera, though in very different settings. Spanish and English are freely interspersed throughout the movie.
Jones, best known for films such as "The Fugitive" and "Men in Black", was not in the running for Cannes's Camera d'Or prize awarded to first-time directors because of a helming gig he did years ago for US television.
But he said "Three Burials" -- which was thought up while he was on a hunting trip with buddies -- was a labour of love, and a step in a new direction for him in cinema.
"I didn't have to do it (the film) -- but I sure did want to," he said.
Will more projects follow? Jones said he had nothing immediate lined up, "but I'm looking for work."
05/20/2005 13:55 GMT