CANNES Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

Some films from earlier days.



The Orphanage/Parwareshgah (Shahrbanoo Sadat). Directors' Fortnight. (May 18)

Jay Weissberg's Variety review notes this "episodic film" is about "an Afghan teen's time in a Kabul orphanage" (and attempt to survive on the street) just before the Russian withdrawal, and it has some "knowingly clumsy Bollywood recreations" that "add significant flavor." This number two of a planned five-part sequence is "something of a comedown from her 2016 debut," says Weissberg, but like it, mixes "folklore with realism." In her Screen Daily review, Sarah Ward says that by "stepping back" three decades from current woes, the film offers "a rare but worthy viewpoint," and while "filtering the experiences of 15-year-old Qodratollah (Wolf and Sheep’s Qodratollah Qadiri) through his love for Indian cinema" may seem an odd choice, it's one that "proves as smart as it is bold." The "Bollywood-style dream sequences," Ward says, "are likely to resonate with audiences." "Not exactly a tightly wound narrative," says Jordan Mintzer in his Hollywood Reporter review, but "a minor but moving coming-of-age drama set in a difficult time and place."



The Cordillera of Dreams/La Cordillera de los Sueños" (Patricio Guzmán). Special Screenings. (May 17).

This is the completion of a "sublimely meditative, deeply persona trilogy" that tracks "a personal, political and philosophical journey" through "Chile's history and landscape," explains Jessica Kiang in her Variety review. Deborah Young explains in her Hollywood Reporter review that throughout the trilogy Guzmán has sought to relate landscape to collective experience, comparing "the vastness, grandeur and indifference of nature" to "the human horrors that Chileans have lived through." But she feels that this completion to the trilogy, though "deeply felt," but "much less interesting than its predecessors." Guzmán has lived in France since the 1973 coup, and, returning, finds Santiágo, with its new skyscrapers nearly unrecognizable. Guzman’s "sad backwards glance, says young "will strike a universal chord." The earlier trilogies focused on desert and waterways; this one, on the Andes Cordillera mountains which, though impressive, are not as good a symbol of this country's irreparable damage. The film is also a tribute to documentarian Pablo Salas, who remained in Chile and recorded protests over the past 45 years. I reviewed Guzmán's previous film, The Pearl Button, in Paris in 2015.



First Love/初恋 Hatsukoi (Takashi Miike). Directors' Fortnight. (May 17).

"A riotous rom-com with a high body count," says Stephen Dalton in Hollywood Reporter. The "pulp splatter-fest" is mild by Miike standards, with nothing much new, explains Dalton, but " the Tarantino-style rollercoaster ride is as effortlessly enjoyable as ever.' Likewise Kaleem Aftab's Cineropa review confirms that this is one of the ultra-prolific and frequently uneven Japanese pulpmeister's successes. Bradley Warren of The Playlist says this "finds the filmmaker at his most engaged, playful and coherent." Another collaboration, notably, with British producer Jeremy Thomas and his Recorded Picture Company, which has led to such highly watchable Miike films as 13 Assassins, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai and Blade of the Immortal. This however is a modern-dress film. It focuses on one long night, and concerns a baby-faced gangster who "tries to double cross his bosses," setting up a "secret side deal" with "crooked cops to hijack an incoming drugs shipment," which of course goes awry, says Dalton. A young women wielding s sword is out seeking revenge for her yakuza boyfriend's murder. A "huge showdown" in a warehouse store involves "mobsters, police, one-armed bandits and elite Chinese assassins." It's all staged with "typically zippy, kinetic, brightly colored panache." In his IndieWire review David Erlich calls the result a "hysterically violent absurdist comedy," a "hard-boiled piece of pulp fiction" that he finds "frequently sublime."