Cannes 2021 selections; notes

[Chris Knipp]

Festival de Cannes 2021 (édition n°74) du 06 juillet 2021 au 17 juillet 2021
Cannes 2021 lists of films


WES ANDERSON'S THE FRENCH DISPATCH GOT A STANDING OVATION From left, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Wes Anderson, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Benicio Del Toro at the premiere of The French Dispatch.Credit...Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images [NYTIMES]

Cannes 2021 Competition Films

Ahed's Knee/הַבֶּרֶךְ‎‎ (Habereḵ) (Nadav Lapid) Israel, France
Annette (opening film) (Leos Carax) France, Germany, Belgium
Benedetta (QP)/Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven) France, Netherlands
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve) Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico
Casablanca Beats/Haut et fort (Nabil Ayouch) Morocco, France
Compartment No. 6 (QP)/Hytti nro 6 (Juho Kuosmanen) Russia, Finland
The Divide (QP)/La Fracture (Catherine Corsini) France
Drive My Car/ドライブ・マイ・カー (Doraibu mai kā) (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) Japan
Everything Went Fine/Tout s'est bien passé (François Ozon) France
Flag Day (Sean Penn) United States
France Par un demi clair matin (Bruno Dumont) France, Italy, Germany, Belgium
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson) United States
A Hero/قهرمان (Ghahreman) (Asghar Farhadi) Iran
Lingui (Mahamat Saleh Haroun) Belgium, Chad, France, Germany
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, Thailand, United Kingdom
Nitram (Justin Kurzel) Australia, United Kingdom
Paris, 13th District/Les Olympiades (Jacques Audiard) France
Petrov's Flu/Петровы в гриппе (Petrоvy v grippe) (Kirill Serebrennikov) France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland
Red Rocket (Sean Baker) United States
The Restless/Les Intranquilles (Joachim Lafosse) Belgium, France
The Story of My Wife/A feleségem története (Ildikó Enyedi) Hungary, France, Germany, Italy
Three Floors/Tre piani (Nanni Moretti) Italy, France
Titane (QP) (Julia Ducournau) Belgium, France
The Worst Person in the World/Verdens verste menneske (Joachim Trier) Norway, Sweden, France
________________
(QP) indicates film in competition for the Queer Palm.


Un Certain Regard

After Yang (Kogonada) United States
Blue Bayou (Justin Chon) United States
Bonne mère (Hafsia Herzi) France
Commitment Hasan/Bağlılık Hasan (Semih Kaplanoğlu) Turkey
Freda (CdO) (Gessica Généus) Haiti
Gaey Wa'r (CdO) (Jiazuo Na) China
Great Freedom (QP)/Große Freiheit (Sebastian Meise) Austria
House Arrest/Дело (Delo) (Aleksey German, Jr.) Russia
The Innocents/De uskyldige (Eskil Vogt) Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, United States
La Civil (CdO) (Teodora Mihai) Belgium, Mexico, Romania
Lamb (CdO)/Dýrið (Valdimar Jóhannsson) Iceland, Poland, Sweden
Let There Be Morning/תן לזה להיות בוקר (Eran Kolirin) Israel
Moneyboys (CdO, QP) (C.B. Yi) Austria, Belgium, France, Taiwan
My Brothers and I (CdO)/Mes frères et moi (Yohan Manca) France
Onoda, 10 000 Nights in the Jungle (opening film)/Onoda, 10 000 nuits dans la jungle (Arthur Harari) France, Germany, Belgium, Italy
Prayers for the Stolen/Noche de fuego (Tatiana Huezo) Mexico
Rehana Maryam Noor/রেহানা মরিয়ম নূর (Abdullah Mohammad Saad) Bangladesh
Playground (CdO)/Un monde (Laura Wandel) Belgium
Unclenching the Fists/Разжимая кулаки (Razzhimaja kulaki)(dir. Kira Kovalenko) Russia
Women Do Cry (QP)/Жените плачат (Zhenite plachat) (dir. Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva) Bulgaria, France
__________
(CdO) indicates film eligible for the Caméra d'Or as a feature directorial debut.
(QP) indicates film in competition for the Queer Palm.


Out of Competition

Aline, the Voice of Love/Aline (Valérie Lemercier) Canada, France
BAC Nord (Cédric Jimenez) France
Emergency Declaration/비상선언 (Bisangseongeon) Han Jae-rim South Korea
In His Lifetime/De son vivant Emmanuelle Bercot France
OSS 117: From Africa with Love (closing film)/OSS 117 : Alerte rouge en Afrique noire (Nicolas Bedos) France
Stillwater (Tom McCarthy) United States
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) United States
Where Is Anne Frank (Ari Folman) Israel


Midnight screenings

Bloody Oranges/Oranges sanguines (Jean-Christophe Meurisse) France
Suprêmes (Audrey Estrougo) France
Tralala (Arnaud Larrieu, Jean-Marie Larrieu) France

Cannes Premiere section

Belle/Belle: Ryū to Sobakasu no Hime (竜とそばかすの姫) (Mamoru Hosoda) Japan
Cow (Andrea Arnold) United Kingdom)
Deception/Tromperie (Arnaud Desplechin France
Evolution/Evolúció (Kornél Mundruczó) Hungary
Hold Me Tight/Serre-moi fort (Mathieu Amalric) France
In Front of Your Face/당신의 얼굴 앞에서 (Hong Sang-soo) South Korea
Jane by Charlotte (CdO)/Jane par Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) France
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (Oliver Stone) United States
Love Songs for Tough Guys/Cette musique ne joue pour personne (Samuel Benchetrit) France
Marx Can Wait/Marx può aspettare (Marco Bellocchio) Italy
Mothering Sunday (Eva Husson) United Kingdom
Val (Ting Poo, Leo Scott) United States
Vortex (Gaspar Noé) Argentina, Italy

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES 2021 REMOTE NOTES.


LÉA SEYDOUX APPEARS IN FOUR FILMS FEATURED AT CANNES 2021

Not promising to 'cover' Cannes remotely (it's already half over anyway), but the previews are appealing. Jonathan Romney calls this the Cannes "that had critics salivating." Excerpts from Romney's "blog" intro to Cannes from Film Comment:

Opening film: Annette, by Leos Carax "Carax was presumably aiming for than a simple rock opera (to use an archaic term), and one with marginally less narrative complexity than Ken Russell’s Tommy (1975). It didn’t bring out the best in either Marion Cotillard or a morose, stormy-browed Adam Driver—although the overture number 'So May We Start' was a buoyant saving grace." -Romney, Film Comment

Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: A New Generation, an update of his encyclopedic TV series. His new chapters simply propose that this century, cinema has seen as many artists expanding or breaking rules as it ever has: beginning with the odd juxtaposition of Joker and Frozen, via Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Claire Denis, Tsai Ming-Liang’s VR, the Spider-Verse, and all points beyond. "a free-associative expression of faith in the continuing validity of the very thing that brought us to Cannes."

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II, "continuing her 2019 semi-autobiographical drama about pain, passion, and the problems of becoming a filmmaker when you’re posh and a young woman" - as well as coping with the death of the difficult addict boyfriend who dominated Part I. Has a fantasy ending unique to this director that's a fitting end to this "superb diptych."

Emmanuel Carrère’s Between Two Worlds, with Juliette Binoche launching a very Loachian investigation into unemployment in Northern France.

François Ozon’s Everything Went Fine, "based on Emmanuèle Bernheim’s book about her father’s choice of assisted suicide. It dealt subtly and intelligently with questions of life, death, and ethics, and while lead Sophie Marceau didn’t quite have the range of nuance that the Bernheim role called for, veteran great André Dussollier was masterly as a man exerting his will despite a debilitating stroke. But the film felt slightly… if not academic, then well-behaved, even studious, which is not Ozon’s natural mode." [But Ozon was certainly plenty serious in his 2018 By the Grace of God, about pedophile priests. This sounds like another film in that new vein.]

Arthur Harari’s Onoda. New French director's 2n d feature "was a drama in Japanese about Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who famously held out after the end of World War II, refusing to believe that the conflict was over, and hiding out on an island in the Philippines..." "magnificent and crazy... captures war as derangement, and heroism as delusion, to troubling and even moving effect. . . extraordinary, Herzogian...but it's somewhat excessive 166-minute length kept Romney, he says, from seeing it all the way through.

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LÉA RULES

Not mentioned by Jonathan Romney (Yet) but Deadline has a piece, "With Four Films In Cannes, Léa Seydoux Will Rule The Croisette – Interview." Léa comes with almost suspiciously "royal" movie lieange, being directly descended on both sides from the two most powerful film producing families in France (her grandfather is the chairman of Pathé, her granduncle is the chairman of Gaumont). But since she came on the scene and started working prolifically 15 or 16 years ago, she has over and over shown that she can carry her own weight as a hard-working, versatile, and yes, glamorous actress. She's most known for Kéchiche's sexually bold lesbian love affair film La Vie d'Adèle aka Blue Is the Warmest Color, but she is associated with many other as good or better titles.

She has been in Bond movies, in Robin Hood (Ridley Scott) and Mission Impossible (J.J.Abrams). But like Robert Pattinson she is a glamorous star who seeks to work with the most interesting directors - sometimes in very small roles. (She may be ahead of Pattinson in that.) She has worked with, besides Kéchiche, among others, Raoul Ruiz, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Catherine Breillat, Wes Anderson (twice), Bertrand Bonello, Benoît Jacquot (twice), Christophe Honoré, Ursula Meier, Xavier Dolan, and Arnaud Desplechin (now twice) and Bruno Dumont (now for the first time). She has wrapped or is completing films with David Cronenberg, Arnaud des Pallières, Mia Hansen-Løve, and her second performance as Dr. Madeleine Swann in a Bond film, this time with Cary Fukunaga; the first time was with Sam Mendes.

In this Cannes Léa Seydoux "will be reunited with directors Wes Anderson and Arnaud Desplechin, with whom she’s worked before, for The French Dispatch and Deception, respectively. France marks her first collaboration with Bruno Dumont, while Hungarian woman director Ildikó Enyedi directs Seydoux in The Story of My Wife."

"It’s crazy," Seydoux says of the flurry of activity. And she’s excited about what the work represents. "I’ve done one American film, a European film and two French films, and they are all so different. It’s exciting they’ve all been chosen by Cannes."

She has had to skip the Cannes premieres because she has tested positive for COVID-19 and she is isolating at home in Paris.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.


VICKY KRIEPS, TIM ROTH IN BERGMAN ISLAND

Mia Hansen-Løve: BERGMAN ISLAND. In Competition. The French filmmaker's 7th film explores a couple, both filmmakers, as they spend time on Faro, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived, writing screenplays. Variety;s headline is "Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth Look for Love, and the Ghost of Ingmar, in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Beguiling Cinephile Shell Game." Telegraph gives it 5 out of 5 stars. If you like Hansen-Løve, and I definitely do, and you like Bergman, and what cinephile can discount him? - this flick's for you - though it not be for every everyday moviegoer. Also with Mia Wasikowska. Obviously partly related to Hansen-Løve's relationship from 2002 to 2017 with French director Olivier Assayas. (Opened in French cinemas today; it will coming to the US via IFC.)


CAST & DIRECTOR (2ND FROM RT.) AT CANNES OPENING

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILM.


PODALYDÈS AND SEYDOUX IN DECEPTION

Arnaud Desplechin's TROMPERIE/DECEPTION. It features Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos, Rebecca Marder, Madalina Constantin. I fear Deadline's Anna Smith says it's "a self-indulgent Philip Roth adaptation that’s only marginally better than 2017’s derided Ismael’s Ghosts. " And I hated Ismael's Ghosts (NYFF 2017). Nonetheless it stars Léa Seydoux, featured above for being in no less than four Cannes films this season. Tellingly the film isn't in Competition but in the Cannes Premieres section. It appears a rather glum version of Léa. I don't blame her with Podalydès as her lover. There are many film adaptations of Philip Roth's many novels; they never quite succeed. I always like watching Emmanuelle Devos, though. And I'd like to see wha Léa does with this lead.

[Chris Knipp]

THE CANNES JURIES: COMPETITION AND UN CERTAIN REGARD

Spike Lee, who won big Cannes cred by receiving the Grand Prix three years ago for BLACKKKLANSMAN, is going to make a strong impression this year: he's head of the most prominent Cannes Competition jury. The girls outnumber the boys on the jury, and with Tahar Rahim, a French Arab actor, a South Korean actor, and NEIGHBORING SOUNDS Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho a the other boys, a conventional mainstream viewpoint is likely to be avoided. Girls outnumber boys in the Un Certain Regard jury too. And there are two directors I greatly admire included: England's Andrea Arnold (FISH TANK, AMERICAN HONEY) and the creator of THE CLIMB, my favorite American movie of last year, Michael Angelo Covino. Cool aggregations indeed.

Main competition
Spike Lee, American director, Jury President
Mati Diop, French-Senegalese director and actress
Mylène Farmer, Canadian-French singer and songwriter
Maggie Gyllenhaal, American actress, director, and producer
Jessica Hausner, Austrian director and screenwriter
Mélanie Laurent, French actress and director
Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazilian director, film programmer, and critic
Tahar Rahim, French actor
Song Kang-ho, South Korean actor


Un Certain Regard
Andrea Arnold, British director, Jury President
Daniel Burman, Argentine director
Michael Angelo Covino, American director and actor
Mounia Meddour, Algerian director
Elsa Zylberstein, French actress

[Chris Knipp]

OTHER CANNES FILMS.


AGATHE ROUSSELLE AS ALEXIA IN TITANE

Julia Ducournau's TITANE follows her 2016 debut RAW and reportedly is just as demented - perhaps less successfully, but still with name actors and beautiful images. There are many reviews. I liked David Erlich's for IndieWire, which made it a "Critic's Pick." The focus is on a woman serial killer and "car model" who has sex with her car, and turns up at the house of firefighter Vincent Lindon, who spent several years working out to build muscle mass for the role. She poses as his long lost son, who disappeared as a boy years earlier. See also Erlich's interview with Vincent Lindon, who will appear soon in Claire Denis's new film, FIRE, a love story. "Titane," titanium, refers to a plate in the girl's head, an important part of her backstory.Director Bertrand Bonello plays the girls's irresponsible father. Peter Bradshaw gives this 2/5 stars in the Guardian and says it's "a car crash." In Competition. See the trailer.

This film was a sensation on the Croissette, but did not score high on the SCREEN DAILY CRITICS GRID. Leos Carax's ANNETTE did welll but Hamaguchi's DRIVE MY CAR did better. Verhoeven's BENEDETTA dis pretty well; other interesting looking films (including Hansen-Love's) fared disappointingly. At the halfway point in the GRID scores were on average lower than the equivalent point in 2019. Ten titles into 2019’s 21 film-strong GRID the average score was 2.5, but this year 12 titles in the average score was just 2.1. Different critics and different films; but this hints that reactions are less enthusiastic at this year's Competition.