Cannes 2022, remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

THE ADVENTURES OF A MULE (IN COMPETITION FOR THE PALME D'OR)



EO (Jerzy Skolimowski) .
Cannes, in Competition. Jordan Mintzer of Hollywood Reporter warrants it merits "the Palme d'Eyore." This free-spirited mule has an adventure traveling from Poland to Italy so this is a road movie, I guess. The director had played Naomi Watts' racist uncle in EASTERN PROMISES, and his FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA I reviewed as part of the 2008 NYFF -a literally very dark drama of a strange man who becomes falsely accused of rape. The director was then seventy and now is eight-four. A Beckettian tale with an added sweetness, I observed. Unlike Bresson's AU HAZARD BALHAZAR, Mintzer observes, Skolimowski adopts "a directly experimental approach, filling his movie with breathtaking imagery and a daunting soundscape atop a minimalist narrative."

Cannes tends to get more exciting as it goes along. This is just day 3.

[Chris Knipp]

FROM 'THE VERDICT', FILMS IN OTHER SECTIONS.


STILL FROM LES HARKIS

FATHER & SOLDIER/TIRAILLEURS (Mathieu Vadepied)
Cannes Un Certain Regard opening film. Affecting portrait of paternal love hinges on intensely involving performances by Omar Sy (the "Lupin" star known on Netflix) and Alassane Diong, as an African father who goes to war to protect his conscript son. Tirailleurs Sénégalais were a corps of colonial infantry in the French Army. This film is set during or just before WWI.

GOD'S CREATURES (Saela Davis & Anna Rose)
Cannes Directors' Fortnight. Emily Watson plays a troubled Irish matriarch in this "handsome but heavy-handed family psychodrama" from directing duo Seala Davis and Anna Rose Holmer. There have been a lot of reviews of this and it sounds strong. Bradshaw goes only for 3/5 and calls it "a tense cine-ballad of guilt and shame."

LES HARKIS (Philippe Faucon).
Cannes Directors Fortnight. "A fiery and timely reflection about a dark episode in French history at the risk of being written out of the books with the normalization of far-right politics in the country," says Clarence Tsui. "Philippe Faucon’s humble mastery of cinematographic pithiness puts under the microscope the cruel page of history of local soldiers engaged on the French side during the Algerian war," says Fabien Mercier (Cineuropa). Philippe Faucon was born in Morocco, and he specializes in depicting the fallout of French colonialism. I reviewed his FATIMA in 2016 (R-V).

[Chris Knipp]

May 20. THE GOOD ONES ARE COMING. Mia Hansen-Løve - a Cannes winner.


PASCAL GREGGORY, LEA SEYDOUX IN UN BEAU MATIN

ONE FINE MORNING/UN BEAU MATIN (Mia Hansen-Løve)
Cannes Directors Fortnight. Bradshaw gives this French film 4/5 stars and compliments its "briskly and urbanely photographed Paris." The ubiquitous Léa Seydoux appears in short hair and jeans in this humdrum, pleasingly mainstream romance about a young mother who raises her daughter alone while seeking help for her sick father (Pascal Greggory). While this is happening, Sandra (Seydoux) reconnects with Clément (Melvil Poupaud), a friend not seen in a while and, though he is married, a passionate relationship begins. Jon Frosch in Hollywood Reporter calls the film "quietly miraculous" and says it "make[s] the old feel new again." The director, who for 15 years was partners with Olivier Assayas, has made ten films 90% of which have been critical successes, and her last, BERGMAN ISLAND, did unusually well in the US. ONE FINE MORNING has been nabbed by Sony Pictures Classics.

CORSAGE (Marie Kreutzer)
Cannes Un Certain Regard. Reviews are uniformly enthusiastic for this film where Vicky Krieps "gives an exhilaratingly fierce, uningratiating performance" as the 19th-century Empress Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary, says Bradshaw, who gives it 4/5 stars. Adam Solomans of IndieWire calls this film "fierce, revisionist history." Variety calls it "sneaky and terrific" and Krieps "superb." Kreutzer's Metascore, by the way, is 83%, though this film is not included on that site yet. In many ways this is "a study in anger," Bradshaw says, and "an austere and angular picture," but the critics love it, and it seems a triumph for the multilingual Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps, who has been emerging lately as a more and more important international star.

ENYS MAN (Mark Jenkin).
Cannes Directors Fortnight. A second 4/5 stars from Bradshaw for what he calls "another eerie prose-poem of a film, about a isolated woman lost inside her own mind" and "a supremely disquieting study of solitude" from the British director of the 2019 BAIT. Laila Latif in IndieWire calls it an "experimental tale of loss" and "an artfully constructed folk horror film" about "never-ending grief."

BOY FROM HEAVEN (Tarik Saleh)
Cannes. In Competition. Another 4/5 stars review from Bradshaw: "Egypt’s religious and secular institutions both breed mistrust in Tarik Saleh’s superbly realized paranoid nightmare." It's about a rural fisherman's son with a prestigious fellowship to study at Al Azhar, the ancient Islamic university in Cairo, who gets somehow embroiled in a power struggle between religious and political force when the grand imam dies; Bradshaw is reminded of John Le Carré by this undercover spy movie from the maker of 2017'S THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT. Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter notes that it's a conventional thriller but in a "thrillingly unconventional setting." Filmed in Turkey and Sweden.


TAWFEEK BARHOUM IN BOY FROM HEAVEN

[Chris Knipp]

MAY 20 additions.


MELVIL POUPAUD, MARION COTILLARD IN BROTHER AND SISTER

BROTHER AND SISTER/FRÈRE ET SOEUR (Arnaud Deplechin).
Cannes, in Competition. This film starring Melvil Poupaud and Marion Cotillard, already widely reviewed, is about long estranged siblings who're reunited due to their parents' demise. IndieWire says it's a "greatest hits retread" and thus a "lesser effort" from the French auteur. Variety calls it an "overwrought melodrama" explaining the attention-getting violent events it begins with. It has elements in common with Desplechin's excellent A Christmas Tale while lacking any of its richness and charm, Variety concludes. Bradshaw, who pungently summarizes the film's plot, gives it 2/5 stars and says it "has plenty of filmmaking elan but not one line of plausible dialogue." Desplechin's auteur reputation, Cotillard's international fame, and Poupaud's suave charm will still draw French film fans. See the AlloCiné critic rating: 4.0, 80% (though the spectator rating is 2.5). TRAILER

PLAN 75 (Chie Hayakawa)
Cannes, Un Certain Regard. This "Speculative sci fi" film that adds a "social realist treatment" in this Japanese international coproduction about a future time when the government routinely widely euthanizes the elderly via a voluntary program. There has been a lot of interest in the provocative subject. The Hollywood Reporter review just describes, doesn't assess, this unusual film that responds to hardened attitudes in Japan the first-time director says she encountered after ten years of living in New York, plus the fact that Japan has by far the world's oldest population and that puts a clearly perceived growing burden on the social system. TRAILER

[Chris Knipp]

MAY 21, CANNES DAY 5


STILL FROM WAR PONY

WAR PONY (Riley Keough, Gina Gammell).
Cannes, Un Certain Regard. The Variety review gives us a handle on this film about two Native American males at different stages (teens, early twenties), which Bradshaw's enthusiastic 4/5 stars summary doesn't quite, when it says this is the picture Larry Clark would have made if he'd spent time at the Pine Ridge Reservation: "hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults," "presented without judgment." The two first-time directors "developed this unvarnished portrait in collaboration with their actors" (as Larry Clark would have done).

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (George Miller)
Cannes. Out of Competition. Miller's first since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015), GUARDIAN'S Xian Brooks gives it 3.5 stars, saying this "belated followup" to his previous film is "a loquacious Arabian Nights-style fantasy" and "a consciously unfashionable" one based on the short story "The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye" by A. S. Byatt concerning "a wary academic" and "a chatty genie" that "may leave you wanting for more." Mainly a two-hander between Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. After the Cannes showing it got a six-minute ovation; but it's Metascore is 59%, brought low by David Rooney in Hollywood Reporter, who thinks it may be okay as a "palate cleanser" between FURY ROAD and the soon-to-come next MAD MAX movie, but the aa"mysteries it conjures" are "windy and academic," and lack emotional power. Bradshaw gave it 3/5 stars too. Release date: Aug. 31, 2022. TRAILER

Xian Brooks in the Guardian of May 21 a breezy and eloquent summary of this week's Cannes hits and roster of the ones (including the ELVIS biopic-musical, Kelly Reichardt's latest SHOWING UP, and an Iranian serial killer thriller HOLY SPIDER) coming up on the Cannes menu next week.

[Chris Knipp]

A SMALL SCOTTISH DEBUT IS A CRITICAL HIT OF DAY 5.
(MAY 21).


FRANKIE CARO, PAUL MESCAL IN AFTERSUN

AFTERSUN (Charlotte Wells).
Cannes, Critics' Week. This Scottish-born, NYC-based director's 96-minute debut feature, which MOONLIIGHT director Barry Jenkins produced, is the bittersweet reminiscence of a woman's (probably too young, certainly emotionally challenged) divorced father when they went to the seaside in Turkey twenty years earlier. Its performances by Irish actor Paul Mescal (of the much admired series "Normal People") and nine-year-old Frankie Caro have garnered raves. Carlos Aguilar in The Wrap calls it a "heart-achingly stirring and sensorially entrancing debut feature." Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian gives it 5/5 stars and calls it "captivating" and "brilliant," describing the subtlety of the unfolding picture of memories that now mean much more than at the time. ("What a pleasure," he concludes.) Anna Smith in Deadline says it's "absorbing" and "a terrific two-hander with engaging supporting performances." Fionnualla Halligan of Screen Daily says this "Marks Wells out as one of the most promising new voices in British cinema in recent years." She says "you have to go back to Lynn Ramsey to find a voice with this much potential." Sheri Linden in a lengthy review in Hollywood Reporter calls this debut "sharp and tender" and "indelible" and goes into detail about the richness and subtlety of the performances, especially Mescal's. This sounds like Competition material, but its modesty seems to mark it for small release, only with more critical praise and perhaps lasting recognition.

[Chris Knipp]

ÖSTLUND'S NEW SATIRE IS POPULAR, DESPITE DETRACTORS. (MAY 21).


CHARBI DEAN AND HARRIS DICKINSON IN TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (Ruben Östlund).
Cannes, In Competition. Critics differ sharply on this high profile new film from the Swedish director but it appears an audience favorite. Östlund this time skewers the beautiful (fashion models) and Euro super-rich, as he skewered the art world in his 2017 Palme d'Or winner, THE SQUARE, but this time in English. The protagonists are Charbi Dean as an "Instagram princess/model" and Harris Dickinson as her failing male model power couple partner, who go on a freebie ride on a luxury super yacht to make up after a big row. Bradshaw likes the way the odd world of the cruise ship is conveyed but thinks the targets are messily missed and the critiques clichéd and awards a lousy 2/5 stars. The Variety reviewer finds the film "wickedly funny" and admires the "meticulous precision" in the way Östlund "constructs, blocks and executes scenes"; he goes into more detail about the action, which concludes marooned on a desert island where " a Rolex is worth nothing, but it helps to be hot." Jonathan Romney in Screen Daily admires some scenes and some satirical points but finds this film "lacks the pitiless ironic cool" of Östlund's two previous films and is "laborious" in its "take on the excesses of capitalism." Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gives this a 5/5 stars and calls it "the best Cannes film so far." Ben Croll of The Wrap condemns the film as "overlong and under-stuffed" (it runs two hours and a half, including diarrhea and projectile vomiting) but says it left the "notoriously tough" Cannes audience "doubled over with laughter" - and it got a 7-8 minute standing ovation, longest so far. Given that and the director's track record, it's likely to figure at Cannes awards time, despite the detractors.
EXCERPT/TRAILER