So as mentioned a couple of times, last weekend I went to a three-day screening fest of recent Cannes movies, but I guess I didn't find the time nor the mood to report on them until now. Considering I've now seen 9 out of the 19 movies that competed for the Palme - as well as half of those that did end up receiving official awards - and that most of the remaining 10 were uniformly rated at the low end, I think I can say we're looking at a shaky year. Still holding some hope for the new Lanthimos (
The Lobster,
Dogtooth) and for Lynne Ramsay's (
We Need to Talk About Kevin)
You Were Never Really Here (even if this last one was seen already in my capital by critics and movie-goers I follow and was deemed the epitomy of style-over-substance), plus Zvyagintsev's
Loveless will probably be the usual dose of chest-emptying dread - but otherwise... myeah.
As far as tendencies go, I sensed too much of a "going in the same direction previous Festival award-grabbers did" vibe, which is less than ideal, of course, in terms of actually promoting original, cutting edge or forward-thinking works. Oh look, auteurs who are sticking to their tropes and thus repeating themselves (Haneke, Baumbach, presumably Zvyagintsev as well)! Oh look, a liberal gay drama (
Blue is the Warmest Color was only four years ago winkwinkwinkwink)! Oh look, a refugees drama! Oh look, self-congratulatory arthouse pretentiousness!
Oui, ouiii, oh là là, c'est Cannes! I must be coming off strong by the tone of this, but this is probably the first year I've grown wary of these movies being more about pushing a certain agenda in search for laurels rather than crafting a potent message.
But anyway, let me now be even more verbose by going into the actual individual reviews.
A (10)/A- (9) /
B+ (8) /
B (7) /
B- (6) /
C (5) /
D (3-4) /
F (1-2) / No rating
Day One
The Square (
link) - Palme d'Or 2017 - this movie is in a really weird spot, I'd say, since it's neither a top notch work to remember in five years' time as a Palme winner, but seeing its competition thus far, you could very well scratch your head in trying to answer "what else could / would / should have..." If some of you may be well familiar with the term "Oscarbait" and with the type of movies that may attain such a derogatory tag each year, well, this one may well be considered proper Cannesbait. I mean, it's not awful by any means and pulls off some absurd, cringe comedic stunts, but upon drawing the line, it also felt comprehensively shallow and insignificant.
Oh right, context. This was by Swedish director Robin Östlund, whose previous big work,
Force Majeure, was also a critical hit (taking Cannes' Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard - the small league - category). I appreciated that one to a certain degree, especially for creating a total potboiler of a psychological family drama out of a very small, triggering event, whilst also coating it with some alpine scenery, musical cues that are cheeky by default (Vivaldi's
Seasons) and a merry dose of satirizing humor. Östlund's taste for satire carries over in full swing on this new movie, centered on a contemporary museum curator who sort of lives in his own bubble, both trying to organize an exhibition that's as elementary in its presentation as it is highfaluting in its message and experiencing within this line of work and prestige a high-bourgeois disconnection from real, pedestrian human living, only to then be shaken up by a real, pedestrian event that sends him into doing the stupidest shit, worthy of a Mr. Bean episode. This movie seriously throws its satirical themes right at you - art as a medium for snotty, vainglorious pomposity; social media appetite for shocking value and controversy; increasingly prefunctory human connections; yadda yadda - but also executes everything in a way that, with each step, it wants to scream
"that's the joke". Hence turning into a movie holding the mirror to high art pretentiousness, whilst also proving itself high-art pretentiousness - cause "that's the point tee hee". Again, this had some decent levels of absurd comedy - with some bits reminiscent of Roy Andersson's own gaga works - and a delirious party scene (hinted at in the trailer) that invites cult delight, and yet it makes you none the wiser, nor does it fully earn an acknowledgement towards being something truly serious.
Day Two
Good Time (
link) - competing 2017 - the only thing I could say against this movie is that it failed to knock my socks off or anything. Otherwise, this created some rave at the festival and outside it, not being hard to see why. This is a new work by indie newcomers Safdie Brothers (
Heaven Knows What, which I've yet to actually see) who don't shy away or sugarcoat anything in the process of bringing some grimy, suburban stories on the screen, as
verité as possible, but also with some cinematic flair. This one's premise is as mild as a heist-gone-wrong for two brothers, one of them being mentally challenged and ending up imprisoned (Ben Safdie, interestingly casting himself in the role), while the other (Robert Pattison) goes then a limb to try everything in his powers (outside the law,
biensur) to snatch his brother back. This caper is then delivered in an edgy fashion - extreme close-ups; joyless situations and cynical human interactions; rugged characters that give less the impression of actors playing roles than real life people. Slight adornment comes with a retro synth soundtrack offered by Oneohtrix Point Never and with different locations shot at their distinct visual potential - from the squalor of darkly lit households to wide-shot drone flybys of cars speeding on highways to the nocturnal neons in an amusement park. Pattison's acting was praised as growing into full method and, sure, he does a tight, fully invested job. This movie doesn't try by any means to be shocking or unsettling, but it does depict with subtle trepidation and dizziness someone's obsessive goals and trials in the name of brotherhood.
Jupiter's Moon (
link) - competing 2017 - didn't go into this one with much expectations, because during the festival I had read mostly deriding reactions towards it. Just like Östlund above, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó stepped up to Palme competition tier after winning the Un Certain Regard with his previous movie,
White God, one hard to explain (or even remember nowadays) except for the narrative and technical audacity of stray dogs storming through and wrecking havoc on the streets of Budapest. A clear element of technical wizardry from Mundruczó persists, as this new movie can at least treat you with a dazzling one shot intro of immigrants fleeing arrest through plains, swamps and forests, a 360°spin and destruction of an apartment chamber, a dizzy chase scene through a crowded subway station and, of course, magical scenes of human flight - as the premise is about a young Syrian refugee who gets mercilessly shot at the border only to awaken levitation abilities. Thereafter, a disgraced doctor tries to both protect him and take advantage of his powers, whilst the border police force embark themselves on a good old manhunt. Unfortunately, the movie otherwise dives into convoluted, multi-genred messiness - aiming to be a sympathetic refugee drama, a potential dissent towards the Hungarian government's border enforcement and alarming authoritarian undertones, a downcast dystopian brew
strongly emulating
Children of Men, a murky character study of empathy, solidarity or malevolence and some kind of "magic-realistic" superhero bolt. I even watched afterwards the press conference with this movie's crew and didn't get the sense Mundruczó can send a focused, rigurous message across; nor is he a polished stylist through and through. I even had some issues with the dialogues, as they seemed eerily and heavily overdubbed. This movie had perhaps the spark, even for such an audacious, mesmerizing concept, yet got bogged down by hardboiled cliches and weak narrative flows. This was Will Smith's favorite movie from the jury, so there you go.
BPM / 120 Battements par minute / 120 Beats per minute - Grand Prix (runner-up) 2017, but for a while the hot favorite, especially considering LGBT-favoring Almodovar was chairman of the jury -
directed by Robin Campillo, who
wrote the screenplay of a previous Palme d'Or winner
Entre les murs / The Class (I've seen some confuse him as having also directed that one). Now,
The Class was a fairly atypical Palme winner itself, yet, if it didn't reveal any special cinematic qualities, it still had great flow, dynamic and tension in its dialogues between a large group of actors - which is a direct nod to the screenplay. Well then, this one chronicles the French branch of the advocacy group ACT UP and its activity during the early 90s to get proper legal policies, medical transparency and better social awareness about the AIDS pandemic, and the movie's best parts rely, once more, in the screenwriter's virtue to create collective dialogues, debates, confrontations etc. that feel genuine, alert, emotional and interesting. Less fortunately, Campillo also decided to build a proper drama around a standout person from this group (the one in the poster, played by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) and his life putting his heart out with the group, whilst struggling with the disease, something that's shown, in great lengths, through all its predictable phases - and it sure takes its sweet ass time; the last 30 minutes felt interminable. There is also explicit gay romance (well, maybe not entirely explicit; showing female genitalia is ok, but showing dongs is still a no-no, apparently) that, honestly, as I've hinted, rivaled with
Blue Is the Warmest Color in terms of pure buzz value - though one scene in particular was of such unerotic context, it came off impressive in its depiction; there is also a penchant for a lot of
discotheque transitioning scenes in which the character would kinetically purge their bodies; there were also CGI scenes of molecules and cells, meant to come off poetic and Mallickian, but which served little purpose. Overall, I would say that the lack of "any special cinematic qualities" surfaced in the drama chapters, as it aimed for more outside its socio-politically charged scenes of collective campaigning and debate. Not a bad movie by any means, if you want an emotional melodrama, but it's hard not think of it as by the book, in that regard.
Day Three
Jim Jarmusch's
Paterson - competing 2016 - was also screened, but I didn't go see it a third time, except for getting there on time to rewatch my favorite scene from it, towards the end. I've written about it twice here, I don't need to expand upon what a subtle, humble gen I found it to be.
Happy End (
link) - competing 2017 - this was... frustrating; it had what felt like a perfect finish during its last 15 minutes, but before that, for roughly an hour, I could almost feel my skin peel off. And I'm not saying this out of any naïveté of not being aware how much Michael Haneke can suck the soul out of you with his movies. In a way, everything he does here is as clinical, formalist and so-alike-him as in the past: the ensemble acting is great (including a 12-year old Fantine Harduin acting
well beyond her age), although at the same time all the storylines were hella fragmented (purposefully so, one could say, but still); the realism is classy as always; he even incorporates Snapchat or Messaging in a way that's resourceful, plot relevant and sardonically delivered - yet it also felt like a minor chamber piece, with a lot of rehashed ideas of his, bafflingly so on occasion - I mean Jean-Louis Trintignant plays again an old widower who went through a certain experience with his wife that seems
copy-effing-pasted out of
Amour! So, really, there is nothing surprising in Haneke putting you through another story with a rich-people-are-awful moral of a rotten-to-its-core, big high-class family in which everyone's messed up in some way and, gradually, you'll find less motive to root for anyone in particular; but there was also little of great vision, this time around - or at least so it felt. I see that we're also supposed to believe this movie addresses in some way the refugee crisis, since it's shot at Calais and features some African refugees, even though those additions felt hamfisted in a "gee, rich white priviledge, shocker" way, plus Haneke downplayed it as Calais having been a mere pleasant or convenient location choice. Like, huh...?
Krotkaya / A Gentle Creature - competing 2017 - fatigue probably got to me with this last full-length feature of the festival, which required another two hours and a half to sit through. Directed by Sergei Loznitsa, with whom I was unfamiliar, and loosely adapted from an eponymous short by Dostoyevsky, this proved that, in stark contrast to Western cineasts mentioned above, self-absorbed in creating realism that's mostly just in their head, Eastern cinema (as I'm sure Zvyaginstev himself will prove once more) is absorbed in realism that still hits so bitterly close to home. Story is about a married woman with a faceless, nameless and ultimately "seen-less" husband serving time, who one day finds out the packages she's been sending to him were rejected and returned, with no official explanation. She then embarks on a journey to see his husband in prison, only to face the same bureaucratic and inhumane wall, not to mention expose herself to the dangers of a remote village with no real friendly face in sight. The woman's uncanny stoicism only deepens the miserable, vile world surrounding her, aching to be described as kafkaesque or to be seen as... well, y'know... Russia. Anyway, gossip I picked at the venue, plus a few local critics I read reacted positively to this woeful rural tale, that's so hyperrealistic in its ugly, depressing depiction of what seems like a genuine circle of hell, but I have to say I found it tough to endure. And for an hour and 45 minutes, it was purely that - but then, the director considered one final trick and pushed the narrative into the realm of magic realism, including a long-winded scene that seemed to satirize old communist congressional speeches, only to finally crash this fantasy itself into more dreariness. This was not really miserabilist cinema, but more like a morose, desolate fable. I just couldn't or didn't have energy left to resonate with it.
Unrelated to Cannes, but in connection with Loznitsa's movie, we were also treated with a Moldavian short film,
Chers amis (
this doesn't even have an IMDb page), directed by one of the actors from
A Gentle Creature, Valeriu Andriuță. Running for 20 minutes, it's shot like a bottle episode of a TV drama, in which the teachers of a derelict school sit in the staffroom, each one invested with some stereotypical traits, sharing their woes as they face bitter winter and little resources, only to shortly be emboldened by an implausible donation/charity letter received all the way from France. The movie is meant as a bittersweet comedy, with its harsh reality sure to resonate deep not only in Moldova, but Romania as well, plus its humor translated well, too, at least for us, since at least half of the audience cracked up big time.
Addendum
Lastly, I could add to this bunch the fact that I've watched
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (
link) in private - it got released on Netflix, afaik, if not also in theaters - which is the new Noah Baumbach movie. Personally, I'm not a Baumbach devotee by any means; each new movie of his either resonates with me to some degree or flies by. Whenever it's not mumblecore or hipster-esque, it's sure to still come off as something of a bittersweet, dysfunctional drama, which is the case here as well. I'm going to leave this one unrated for now, but sure, this is like a better Woodyallen-esque story than Woody Allen cares to conceive anymore these days and I could acknowledge that both Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler are steered into giving solid, quality performances as sons in a not-very-rewarding relationship with their loony, self-centered and difficult father, played by Dustin Hoffman. This was also referenced as a spiritual sequel to
The Squid and the Whale, since it deals with pressuring relationships within a family of artists, bound to think too highly of themselves - but I remember not having enjoyed that movie one bit, and that must have been at an age in which I was still too young to even develop critical thinking, that's how little I must have enjoyed it. Also reminded me of
The Savages for a good stretch of it. It was ok, savorful and maddening in its father-sons interactions, but again, you'll mostly get a shrug from me at the end of any Baumbach viewing.