LOU YE'S UNFINISHED FILM
CANNES 77 , 2024: roundups and awards
In Bradshaw's GUARDIAN Cannes roundup, he shows this year wasn't apolitical at all, though sex and love were also featured. And his guesses at what the awards will be, though only guesses, are logical from festival reports.
Number one on the political list, which is not only spectacular but also its director just escaped with great difficulty from his country, is Mohammad Rasoulof's THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG. This film came out at the top of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid. There was a #MeTo French short film, MOI AUSSI. Bradshaw calls SEED "a brazen and startling picture about [Rasoulof's] country’s misogyny and theocracy. He summarizes that it "attempts to intuit the nightmare experienced by dissenting women by taking a downbeat political and domestic drama and progressively escalating it to a violent confrontation that resembled a pueblo shootout by Sergio Leone." It still is hard to picture how that works in person, but certainly makes one curious to see the film. Attempts to show the growth of fascism had various degrees of success, Bradshaw said. The portrait of the young Trump by Ali Abbasi THE APPRENTICE is weak. LIMONOV, a portrait of the poet turned far-right Russian nationalist Eduard Limonov starring Ben Whishaw, was a "satiric black comedy" that was "more successful."
Lou Yee's AN UNFINISHED FILM about China's COVID crisis (Out of Competition) was "in some ways the best thing" in the festival." (Bradshaw's review.). Jia Zhang-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES after all was political too, since it runs through all of modern Chinese history.
Love and sex come a lot (whoops!) in Sean Baker's tale of an exotic dancer and the naive son of a Russian billionaire ANORA; there is "much eroticism" in "Payal Kapadia’s sublime ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT; there is group sex in Yorgos Lanthimos’s KINDS OF KINDNESS; and there's "a fairly candid sex scene" between Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger in Cronenberg's THE SHROUDS.
There were also some "slaughtering of sacred cows," Bradshaw says, i.e., famous filmmakers bombing: notably MEGALOPOLIS and Schrader's OH, CANADA. The French "gave us some self-regarding, under-par works," but Jacques Audiard stunned everyone with his semi-musical Latin American gangster/romanc/sex change flick, EMILIA PÉREZ, and Coralie Fargeat "absolutely tore the place up" with her 'feminist body horror satire," which he says does for Demi Moore what the Palme d'Or-winning PULP FICTION did for John Travolta.
Auteurs "showed us how prolific they are," namely Yourgos Lanthimos with KINDS OF KINDNESS and Karim Aïnouz with MOTEL DESTINO.
JACQUES AUDIARD WITH HIS EMILIA PÉREZ STARS AT CANNES
Bradshaw's predictions of the Cannes prizwinners:Palme d’Or Emilia Pérez
Grand Prix Anora
Jury prize The Substance
Best director Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Best screenplay Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine As Light
Best actor Ben Whishaw for Limonov - The Ballad
Best actress Demi Moore for The Substance
MARK EYDELSHTEYN, MIKEY MADISON IN ANORA
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