The Cannes epic has just concluded with Ken Loach’s victory for his film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” which has just won the Palme d’Or while “Volver” by Pedro Almodovar has to settle for the Best Screenplay award.
Nice Première opens its columns to a new film critic, Patrick Mottard, who comes to deliver his impressions on the films that made up the Cannes extravaganza.
From The Da Vinci Code to Volver, passing by Marie-Antoinette, the leader of Nice Plurielle shares his impressions as a great lover of the seventh art.
May 17, 2006
Holy Grail
The Da Vinci Code, by Ron Howard (USA)
Having almost exhausted the allure of the red-carpet evenings at the Festival’s opening, I preempt the call, and it’s in the late afternoon that I attend the screening of The Da Vinci Code in Nice, in an Avenue theater.
One recalls the clever, manipulative, sometimes delightful book, but which ultimately was just an Umberto Eco knockoff, an X-Files with a Catholic twist, a spiritualist version of the famous “They hide everything from us, they tell us nothing” by Jacques Dutronc. Christ supposedly had a child with Mary Magdalene; the official church and its armed wing, the Opus Dei, waged a relentless war to hide a truth that would shatter its dogma. The film adaptation is quite faithful and, as a result, highlights the weaknesses of the novel. Enjoyable to read, the story appears oversimplified on screen. Indeed, a film adaptation of this beach read was not justified, especially since the performances by Tom Hanks (lackluster) and “Amélie Poulain” (silly) are not very convincing.
The end of the film does reveal a well-kept secret. It seems that François Mitterrand, perhaps unwittingly, greatly contributed to the eternal comfort of Mary Magdalene.
May 18, 2006
Yu Hong
A promising first day, with two very good films each telling, in its own way, the fate of two children of the century: Yu Hong, the Chinese student, and Damien, the Irish revolutionary. The times separate them (1989 and the spring of Beijing for one; 1920 and the War of Independence for the other), but their deep humanity brings them together. It’s one of those improbable encounters that happens every year by chance in the Festival’s programming.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley by Ken Loach (UK)
Damien, a young doctor, shocked by the atrocities of the British army, joins the IRA. As long as it’s about fighting for national liberation, everything is intellectually simple (though physically, a war is a war, dirty, inevitably dirty). But when it’s about defining the type of society one wants for a freed homeland, everything gets complicated. As a progressive Republican, Damien does not want a discounted independence that would allow, as he reminds his fellow fighters, the English bosses to continue imposing their law on the Irish people. He will lose his life to this cause. Classic Ken Loach—the one who always refuses black-and-white portrayals, the one who knows how to film humble people, the forgotten of history—like no other.
Summer Palace by Lou Ye (China)
The impossible love because it is absolute between Yu Hong, the provincial student, and Zhou Wei, the darkly handsome campus figure. We are in the late 1980s, Chinese students protest, demanding democracy and freedom, but the story of Yu Hong and Wei Zhou floats above the events. It is, like all love stories, timeless and eternal. She loves him. He loves her. But so intensely that they find themselves incapable of living out their passion. The sexual intensity of their relationship turns out to be a delusion that opens no doors for them. On the theme of miscommunication, there’s a bit of Antonioni in Lou Ye. Like the Italian master, the style is elliptical without being abstract, stripped-down without being austere. The omnipresent political reality (Tiananmen, the Wall, the Gulf War) is not a decorative gimmick but the counterpoint to a story of emotional imprisonment where each is trapped both by their passion and the despair of not being able to communicate it to the other. Perhaps for fear of losing themselves in it. A great film, and with Hao Lei, a striking candidate for the Best Actress award.
May 20, 2006
Jackie’s Regrets…
Fast Food Nation by Richard Linklater (USA)
An unequivocal denunciation of the system that produces fast food: exploited immigrants, overcrowded farms, “Fordist” slaughterhouses, and at the end of the chain, tainted food… Linklater doesn’t mince words; his eco-pamphlet lists, in an hour and fifty-four minutes, all the dysfunctions of a system where consumers themselves are consumed by a voracious industry. This accumulation sometimes makes the film appear manipulative, sometimes too much (the story of the three illegal immigrants sends Emile Zola back to the children’s library). All the more regrettable because everything denounced is correct and authenticated by current events.
That said, send your children to see this film: perhaps their enthusiasm for McDonald’s will cool down… We can always dream! As for me, as soon as the screening ended, having reunited with my friend Richard and his wife Vero in a restaurant near the rue d’Antibes, I vehemently requested that my pizza be strictly… vegetarian.
Red Road by Andrea Arnold (UK)
A remarkable first film (Camera d’Or in sight?).
Jackie, an operator in a surveillance company, has experienced a tragedy: a drugged driver accidentally killed her daughter and husband. Since then, she wanders among the shadows that populate her dull existence. Fate allows her to find the person responsible for her misfortune. She then decides to get revenge by devising a scenario as diabolical as it is convoluted. But what she takes for a thirst for vengeance is just a way to soothe her remorse: the tragic evening, her husband had gone out with their daughter following a marital dispute. Once her revenge is consumed, Jackie is no longer crushed by the weight of guilt, she can therefore forgive. She even starts to smile again and perhaps she will be able to love again.
We are once again amazed by the ability of British directors to depict social reality. The environment of the low-income and semi-marginal people of this popular district in Glasgow is described with a precision and humanity worthy of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh. Special mention for the actress Kate Dickie, who makes unforgettable the character of Jackie, a young woman shattered by grief, but whose body is periodically traversed by waves of sensuality all the more violent as they must be repressed.
According to Charlie by Nicole Garcia (France)
Unquestionably a disappointment. The film narrates the intertwined fates of a brilliant anthropologist, a frustrated teacher, a pitiful bad boy, an adulterous doctor, and a mayor, in an unnamed city by the Atlantic.
The director clearly aimed at something like Altman’s Short Cuts but ends up closer to Lelouch. Once again, a French film features a plethora of actors playing accurate roles in false situations. Indeed, who can truly lend credibility to the soul-searching and trivial pursuits of rootless notables, whose world is miles away from the social reality as presented, for example, in English films? The icing on the cake, the triple or quadruple happy ending of the film seems to have somewhat neo-conservative overtones, rather worrying on the theme of “family first.”
Once again, facing so much wasted talent (Bacri as well as Poelvoorde, Magimel, Lindon…), one is tempted to say All that for this!
May 21, 2006
The Return of… Penelope
Southland Tales, by Richard Kelly (USA)
Not much to say about this film, yet very long (two hours forty). An aesthetic and a scenario very patch-on from the world of post-Enki Bilal comics. A big city, in a very near future, bad guys defending the power and unmentionable secrets, good guys half eco, half crazy wanting to save the world, the in-betweens who obviously hesitate (just like in politics…), and an almost New Age ending. We already have the impression of having seen this story several times (The Fifth Element?). Fortunately, a bit of humor sometimes lets us forget the emptiness of the argument.
Volver, by Pedro Almodovar (Spain)
Late in the day, we catch up with the star film of the beginning of the festival in a theater in Nice.
Pedro Almodovar’s films are, first and foremost, like those of Woody Allen or Eric Rohmer, contributions to a universe. Volver (To Return) is primarily that: an additional touch to this colorful, unusual, passionate and terribly Spanish world of the director who will always remain the symbol of the movida. The story, as often with Almodovar, is deceptively naive, bordering on a fairy tale. Without revealing the content, it can be said that in Volver the dead well deserved their death. As for the living, despite their not always very commendable secrets, they earn the right to survive and perhaps even to live and be happy. But above all, beyond the story, there is emotion. Emotion caused by a look, a line, a few notes of music… Never by the big fabricated scene that the director always refuses. In each of Almodovar’s films, there is a moment when our throat tightens: Volver is no exception.
Volver is also a magnificent film about women, their secrets, their complicity, their generosity. Their cries and their whispers. Almodovar loves them so much that he has managed to make an actress bimbo a superb Sophia Loren of La Mancha… Bravo Penelope, you did well to leave your Hollywood scientologist, Spain suits your complexion!
May 23, 2006
Demester and Barbe
Le Caïman (The Caiman), by Nanni Moretti (Italy)
It is fashionable to compare Moretti’s film with Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore, Palme d’Or two years ago. The difference is essential, though. Fahrenheit was not a film, The Caiman is… and what a film! A film that immediately takes the viewer off-guard: it is less a pamphlet against Berlusconi than a dismayed interrogation on the extraordinary collective cowardice that allowed this denial of democracy that was the taking of power in Italy by the Cavaliere. It is the story of this renunciation that is told through the difficult redemption of the execrable producer Bruno Bonomo, a real Ed Wood of the Cinecitta sauce, who – hero in spite of himself – finds himself on the front line by producing a film about the Caiman. As always with Moretti, the personal story telescopes the grand history. A grand history that reveals chilling in the last scene of the film, suggesting that Berlusconism is neither more nor less than the antechamber of a new fascism.
The Lights of the Suburb (Laitakaupungin valot), by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland)
On the red carpet, during the climb of the steps, Aki Kaurismaki sketches a dance step with one of his performers (to the tune of Carlos Gardel, “Volver” … well, well). This offbeat and friendly scene makes us smile before the screening of the film. It will be the last for a long time. Indeed, the story of Koskinen, the lonely security guard, is not really a comedy. Ignored by all, Koskinen ends up becoming a stranger to himself. Each time he tries to reconnect with society, he is rejected and returned to his solitude. To top it off, he will be betrayed by the only woman who was likely to enable him to find his place in the sun, a small place, under a poor sun. This film is a new and magnificent portrait of the marginal that enriches the particular universe that Kaurismäki offers us film after film. A relentless universe for the weak, a universe where rays of hope are as thin as those of a winter sun in the drab suburbs of Helsinki.
Flandres, by Bruno Dumont (France)
Northerners supposedly have in their hearts the sun they don’t have outside. At Bruno Dumont’s, it’s not always very obvious. Demester and Barbe are childhood friends, vaguely lovers (24 seconds chrono!!), but incapable of expressing anything other than mutual indifference. Yet, their non-story leads one into the hell of war, the other to the doors of madness. After Yu Hong and Zhou Wei, the Chinese students from the first day, it’s the new drama of communication of the selection. The only difference, this one will end well. Dumont, impeccably supported by the Pas-de-Calais region, continues, seven years after Humanity (Best Director Award in 1999), his observation of the muddy furrows of the northern rural soul. It’s beautiful like the Antique, often moving, and very far from the pretension of the ordinary French production these days.
Babel, by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (USA)
A daring synthesis of the myth of Babel and the butterfly effect, from Morocco to Mexico, through the United States and Japan, the film demonstrates the disastrous consequences of an act linked to the susceptibility of a young Moroccan shepherd. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears in a film that could have been sponsored by Europe Assistance. But in the end, the viewer feels that in this complex and dangerous world for all, it’s better to be American or Japanese than to be from a southern country. Isn’t that right, Brad? The narrative is perhaps a bit too demonstrative, but it’s not black-and-white. As for Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, he is very talented: when the word “end” appears, we feel that we’ve attended three (good) different films. Despite the butterfly effect.
May 25
We Are the Africans…
Marie-Antoinette, by Sofia Coppola (USA)
I remember, a few years ago, having attended, sitting next to Faye Dunaway (there are details one never forgets), the premiere of “The Virgin Suicides”. At the time, I had been impressed by this somewhat hallucinatory dive into the world of adolescence by this frail young woman who had made a brief appearance on the stage of the Noga Hilton after the screening. I was therefore looking forward to her Marie-Antoinette, preceded, moreover, by a flattering reputation. We were going to see what we were going to see: a glam rock version of the baker, the baker’s wife, and the little pastry chef, a “Phantom of Paradise” of the Hall of Mirrors, perhaps even a kind of “In bed with Marie-Antoinette”. The disappointment is all the more keen. What do we see on screen? A somewhat bland actress (Kirsten Dunst) playing a conventional Marie-Antoinette: lost teenager, then unloved young woman, and finally, when the final struggle begins, a dignified queen. Nothing disrupts our certainties or even our prejudices about the character. And it’s not the few rock-minuets that punctuate some scenes musically that are likely to tip the film into madness and excess. Finally, when the character of Marie-Antoinette admits to never having uttered the famous phrase about bread and brioche, I can tell that Dominique, who had used it during her debate with Christian Estrosi, is a bit disappointed… so is she!
The Law of the Weakest, by Lucas Belvaux (Belgium)
A small group of lost souls, true “Pieds Nickelés” of despair, organize their social suicide. Without work, without hope, without a future, they decide to pull off an old-fashioned hold-up (the scattering of the bills in the last scene of the film recalls the classic “Mélodie en sous-sol”) to be able to smile again. This improbable hold-up obviously turns into a tragedy, one of the protagonists even losing his life. Lucas Belvaux films with talent this no future of Liege, halfway between English social cinema and the Dardenne brothers: less committed than the former, more than the latter. He is also a remarkable actor: his performance as a more or less repentant ex-convict makes him a credible contender for the acting award.
The film leaving little room for hope, I am somewhat melancholy as I meet my students to subject them to some oral exams… They can rest assured, their grades did not suffer the consequences of this blues.
The Family Friend (L’amico di famiglia), by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy)
The first film by Paolo Sorrentino, presented at Cannes in 2004 (“The Consequences of Love”), had left me a good impression. An elderly mobster fell in love with a very young woman and – if my memories are correct – he died for her. In The Family Friend, we find the same pattern with an old usurer, ugly, dirty, and stingy, who seduces a young bride who, however, should not be confused with a white goose. This new version of Beauty and the Beast, indeed, runs short, the Beauty proving to be at least as Beastly as the Beast. The direction, a bit mannered and highly symbolic, recalls the cinema of the seventies, a cinema that did not really succeed in moving us. We still have to praise the actor Giacomo Rizzo, a slap in the face who still has a hell of a face.
Indigènes, by Rachid Bouchareb (France)
Accompanied by Esmeralda and Ibrahim, a young couple I married last year, we attend the screening of this highly anticipated film.
Through the epic of a small group of Moroccan and Algerian soldiers, the director evokes the commitment of one hundred and thirty thousand “natives” in the French army
