CANNES 2024 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

THE MOST PRECIOUS OF CARGOES (Michel Hazanavicius)

SHORT FILM CLIP

In Competition. (Original French title "La plus précieuse des marchandises.") An animated feature that follows the fate of a Jewish baby thrown from the window of a death-camp train and rescued from the snow by a poor lumberjack and his wife who live in a deep Polish forest. They are childless and adopt the baby. As noted in the intro to this thread, this is the first animated feature in Cannes Competition since Ari Folman's 2008 WALTZ WITH BASHIR. It is adopted from Jean-Claude Grumberg's bestselling novel about the Holocaust and WWII and has a score by Alexandre Desplat and is voiced by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant with Grégory Gadebois, Dominique Blanc and Denis Podalydès. With Rasoulof's SACRED FIG, it was a late addition to Cannes Competition (hence its scheduling at the end). Hazavincius has said "It's about people who saved lives." In his VARIETY review Peter Debruge says the film, "blending the heavy lines of early-20th-century woodcuts with the gentle pastels of watercolor painting," finds a "poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kinds of kindness that combatted it. Hazanavincius has crafted "an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come." Debruge contrasts this "gut" approach to the Holocaust with the "abstract intellectual" one of Glazer's ZONE OF INTEREST. The Dardenne brothers are among the producers. This went right to the bottom of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid. The last Competition feature shown at the 2024 Cannes Festival.

[Chris Knipp]

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

[Chris Knipp]

SELENA GOMEZ IN EMILIA PÉREZ

CANNES AWARDS
SOURCE (VARIETY)

Palme d'Or: ANORA (Sean Baker)
Grand Prix: ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia)
Jury Prize: EMILIA PÉREZ (Jacques Audiard)
Best Screenplay: THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat)
Best Actress: Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, Adriana Paz (EMILIA PÉREZ)
Best Actor: Jesse Plemens (KINDS OF KINDNESS, 3 roles)
Special Award Mohammad Rasoulof (THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, which also won the Competition FIPRESCI Prize)
Best Director Miguel Gomes (GRAND TOUR)
Caméra d'Or (Best First Feature): ARMAND (Halfdan Ullman Tondel)
Special Mention: MONGREL (Chiang WEi Liang, You Qiao Yin)
SEE VARIETY FOR THE DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT AND CRITICS' WEEK AWARDS

This will be good for Sean Baker during US awards season, according to Brother Bro of The Oscar Expert. The female-majority jury showed sisterhood in choosing not one but four best actresses, one of whom is a trans person. THE SUBSTANCE, the satirical" body horror film which there was so much fuss, got a small prize, the Screenplay award. Francis Ford Coppola handed out several of the awards, but got nothing. Jia Zhan-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES didn't get mentioned. Bradshaw wrote that this was "a radically romantic festival" and claims that Sean Baker has always had his own unique approach to sex workers, and that ANORA is his best film yet. It sounds like his most entertaining one. The GUARDIAN head film critic says "Many in Cannes will have been deeply disappointed that the Palme didn’t go to THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG," which certainly is a whole lot more serious and a political statement. (Then he would have to say this was a political festival, not a "radically romantic" one. (It's not quite clear that ANORA is a "romantic" story, but I haven't seen it.). Was this a great Cannes Competition year? Can this roster of winners compare with last year's ANATOMY OF A FALL, THE ZONE OF INTEREST, FALLEN LEAES, PERFECT DAYS, ABOUT DRY GRASSES, THE TASTE OF THINGS, and MONSTER? WE'll have to actually see this year's winners to say.


SEAN BAKER,MARK EYDELSHTEYN, AND MIKEY MADISON AT THE CANNES PREMIERE OF AMORA

Sean Baker reacts to winning the top prize for his film, ANORA.

[Chris Knipp]

ABOU SANGARE IN THE STORY OF SULEYMANE

THINGS WE MISSED FROM CANNES - 'THE STORY OF SULEYMANE'

THE FILM VERDICT has a nice summary of this year's Cannes Film Festival (title: "Women's films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema's elder statesmen fell out of favor.") Click on the link to read the whole piece. It covers the whole 2024 festival by regions of the world, festival sections, awards in the individual sections like Un Certain Regard, and new offerings. The thoroughness of the piece will be shown by its concluding paragraphs, which include links to their reviews:

From the troubled Middle East, emerging and veteran filmmakers won awards and a sweet part of the spotlight. Nearly all the films selected explored the themes of hope and resistance in diverse contexts. In addition to the Iranian political thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s Special Prize in the main competition, Saudi newcomer Tawfik Alzaidi’s tribute to artists and art in closed-minded societies, Norah, received a Special Mention in Un Certain Regard. In the Critics Week, the Egyptian documentary The Brink of Dreams championed female emancipation and won the esteemed L’Oeil d’Or. Two other titles of note that won critics’ and audiences’ acclaim were Palestinian Mahdi Fleifel’s masterfully told ode to exiles, To A Land Unknown, in Directors’ Fortnight, and Somali director Mo Harawe’s film about hope and solidarity in a post-war country, The Village Next to Paradise, in Un Certain Regard, making Harawe the first Somali filmmaker to compete at Cannes.

Love poured forth across the official selection at Cannes, but the love for a mother in Boris Lokjine’s The Story of Souleymane may be this year’s most touching depiction of love. Lokjine’s hero is motivated to hustle and to become French because he understands his troubled mother needs him to take care of her. That need takes him from Guinea to Libya to Europe. For his moving performance in the film, first-time actor Abou Sangare, who broke down in tears following a screening at the Théâtre Debussy, deservedly received the Best Actor award in Un Certain Regard (the film also took home a Jury Prize and a Fipresci award.) Sangare was one of two black Africans honoured with awards in that section, the other being the UCR Best Director Prize to Zambian director Rugano Nyoni for her semi-surreal drama On Becoming A Guinea Fowl. Black Africa doesn’t show up too much in Cannes, but four wins at one edition is not a bad return.

Cannes Classics, the strand showcasing restored films and documentaries about cinema, celebrated its 20th anniversary and opened in style with the highly anticipated world premiere of Napoléon, Abel Gance’s 1927 silent epic, now back in its original seven-hour glory. Cannes screened the first half of this opus. With its usual cunning blend of stone-cold classics and less seen (but no less interesting) works from the past, the section expanded throughout the Palais, mainly in the smaller Salle Buñuel but also in larger auditoriums like the Salle Debussy, which hosted the 40th anniversary screening of Paris, Texas with Wim Wenders in attendance.

After Venice, Cannes became the second of the big three European festivals to give immersive works and virtual reality their own dedicated section with the brand new Immersive Competition. An intriguing initiative, albeit one that is likely to remain more niche than Venice’s similar section. The reason: Venice’s Immersive Island is less than two minutes away from the Lido by boat, while Cannes’ Cinéum multiplex is a good half-hour bus ride from the Palais, making it a daunting prospect for attendees with tight schedules.

Boris Lojkine's third feature THE STORY OF SOULEYMANE (L’Histoire de Souleymane), about an African's struggle to gain legal status in Paris, was reviewed by Jessica Kiang in VARIETY and Jordan Mintzer in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. Mintzer compares Lojkine's film favorably to Vitorio De Sica's Italian neorealist classic BICYCLE THIEVES. Kiang says the film "electrifies" and has a "superb lead" in first-timer Abou Sangare.