CANNES Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

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THE OFFICIAL CANNES POSTER DEPICTS A YOUNG AGNES VARDA


The Cannes Film Festival 14-25 May 2019

You'll find a quick survey of the Cannes 2019 Competition list by Peter Bradshaw today in the GUARDIAN. (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/18/cannes-2019-lineup-peter-bradshaw?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0ZpbG1Ub2RheS0xOTA0 MTg%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=FilmToday&CMP=filmtoday_email)

2019 Cannes Film Festival Lineup: Terrence Malick, Xavier Dolan, Almodóvar Compete for Palme d’Or
Cannes is celebrating its 72nd year in 2019 beginning May 14.

The 2019 Cannes Film Festival has announced the majority of its official lineup, including films set to debut in sections such as Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, Special Screenings, and Midnight Screenings. The lineup was announced this morning during a press conference. One thing to note is that additions to the lineup will most likely happen in the coming days. The lineup being announced this morning is the majority of the 2019 slate.

One film already confirmed for the festival is Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” which has been selected to open Cannes 2019 on May 14. The movie is a zombie comedy starring Adam Driver, Bill Murray, and Chloe Sevigny as police officers who must protect their small town from the undead. “The Dead Don’t Die” will be in competition at Cannes, bringing Jarmusch back to the Palme d’Or race after “Paterson” in 2016. Other Jarmusch efforts that have competed for the Palme at Cannes include “Only Lovers Left Alive,” “Broken Flowers” (winner of the Grand Jury Prize), “Dead Man,” and “Mystery Train.” Jarmusch’s short film “Coffee and Cigarettes” won the Best Short Film prize at Cannes in 1993.

Potential Oscar Contenders of Cannes 2019 (somebody thinks) Include 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' and Isabelle Huppert. Isabelle Huppert Says Her Performance in Cannes-Bound 'Frankie' is something completely new for her.

This year it appears that both Netflix and Amazon film releases are excluded, logically since these "giants" have not changed their policy toward French cinema release.

This year’s Cannes COMPETITION JURY will be led by “Birdman” and “The Revenant” Oscar winner Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The filmmaker won the Best Director prize at Cannes for “Babel” in 2006 and returned to the competition lineup in 2010 with the drama “Biutiful,” which won star Javier Bardem the Best Actor prize. The rest of Iñárritu’s jury will be announced later.

The late Agnès Varda is featured in the official poster. There are still only four women directors included in the Competition list (though as Deadline (https://deadline.com/2019/04/cannes-film-festival-2019-lineup-full-list-movies-official-selection-competition-1202598140/) points out in its tidy review, that is "the most of any recent year"). The lucky ladies are Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Céline Sciamma and Justine Triet. The second two are French.

Opening Night Film
“The Dead Don’t Die,” Jim Jarmusch (also in Competition)

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Competition
Pain & Glory/Dolor y gloria, dir: Pedro Almódovar
Parasite/ 기생충 (Gisaengchung), dir: Bong Joon-ho
The Wild Goose Lake/南方车站的聚会, dir: Diao Yinan
The Traitor/Il traditore, dir: Marco Bellocchio
Young Ahmed/Le jeune Ahmed, dirs: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Matthias & Maxime, dir: Xavier Dolan
Oh Mercy/Roubaix, une lumière, dir: Arnaud Desplechin
A Hidden Life, dir: Terrence Malick
Sorry We Missed You, dir: Ken Loach
Little Joe, dir: Jessica Hausner
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire/Portrait de la jeune fille en feu , dir: Céline Sciamma
Atlantique, dir: Mati Diop
Sibyl, dir: Justine Triet
It Must Be Heaven, dir: Elia Suleiman
Frankie, dir: Ira Sachs
Bacurau, dirs: Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
The Whistlers/La Gomera, dir: Corneliu Porumboiu
Les Misérables, dir: Ladj Ly
Later addition:
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, dir. Quentin Tarantino

Un Certain Regard
Invisible Life, dir: Karim Aïnouz
Beanpole, dir: Kantemir Balagov
The Swallows Of Kabul, dirs: Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobé Mévellec
A Brother’s Love, dir: Monia Chokri
The Climb, dir: Michael Covino
Jeanne, dir: Bruno Dumont
A Sun That Never Sets, dir: Olivier Laxe
Chambre 212, dir: Christophe Honoré
Port Authority, dir: Danielle Lessovitz
Papicha, dir: Mounia Meddour
Adam, dir: Maryam Touzani
Zhuo Ren Mi Mi, dir: Midi Z
Liberté, dir: Albert Serra
Bull, dir: Annie Silverstein
Summer Of Changsha, dir: Zu Feng
Evge, dir: Nariman Aliev

Out of Competition
Les Plus Belles Années D’Une Vie, dir: Claude Lelouch
Rocketman, dir: Dexter Fletcher
Too Old To Die Young – North Of Hollywood, West Of Hell (two episodes); dir: Nicolas Winding Refn
Diego Maradona, dir: Asif Kapadia
La Belle Epoque, dir: Nicolas Bedos

Special Screenings
Tommaso, dir: Abel Ferrara
Share, dir: Pippa Bianco
For Sama, dirs: Waad Al Kateab & Edward Watts
Etre Vivant Et Le Savoir/To Be Alive and Know It, dir: Alain Cavalier
Family Romance LLC, dir: Werner Herzog
Que Sea Ley, Juan Solanas

Midnight Screenings
“The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil,” Lee Won-Tae

Critics week (Features competition)
About Lelia, dir: Amin Sidi-Boumédiène
Land Of Ashes, dir: Sofía Quirós Ubeda
A White, White Day, dir: Hlynur Pálmason
I Lost My Body, dir: Jérémy Clapin
Our Mothers, dir: César Diaz
The Unknown Saint, dir: Alaa Eddine Aljem
Vivarium, dir: Lorcan Finnegan

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ALAIN DELON WILL GET A SPECIAL PALM; XAVIER DOLAN IS BACK; SO IS CÉLINE SCIAMMA (WATERLILIES, TOMBOY, GIRLHOOD)

[Chris Knipp]

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Does anyone recognize those two guys? They are featured in a poster for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino's new movie. It's not ready yet. If it gets ready, it will be at Cannes.

Bruce Lee is a character, also Charles Manson.

[Chris Knipp]

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Directors' Fortnight /Quinzaine des réalisateurs announced.

The Directors’ Fortnight runs from 15-25 May. There is some hint of controversy since a Netflix film, Anvari's Wounds, was chosen, and Cannes bars Netflix films. But the Fortnight has been run independently of but concurrently with the Festival since 1969.

Some cool genre variations are featured here. Eggers is the director of the much-admired The Witch (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4118-THE-WITCH-(Robert-Eggers-2015)) (Filmleaf reviewed, 2015). This one casts Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe in a tale drawn from seafarer myths. It's released by A24. Wounds actually debuted at Sundance. It's a psychological horror film starring among others Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson. Bertrand Bonello's film, set in Haiti in 1962, depicts a return from the dead, a family curse, and sugar plantations. Fabrice Luchini plays the mayor in Pariser's political film. Dogs Don't Wear Pants is a Finnish film about S&M practices. Song Without a Name is about child trafficking in Peru in the Eighties.Guadignino's The Staggering Girl is a 35 min. film directed for the clothing company Valentino and starring Julianne Moore.

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ALICE AND THE MAYOR

Directors’ Fortnight lineup
Alice and the Mayor (dir Nicolas Pariser)
And Then We Danced (dir Levan Akin)
Blow It to Bits (dir Lech Kowalski)
Deerskin (dir Quentin Dupieux) – opening film
Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (dir Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää)
First Love (dir Takashi Miike)
An Easy Girl (dir Rebecca Zlotowski)
For the Money (dir Alejo Moguillansky)
Ghost Tropic (dir Bas Devos)
Give Me Liberty (dir Kirill Mikhanovsky)
The Halt (dir Lav Diaz)
The Lighthouse (dir Robert Eggers)
Lillian (dir Andreas Horwath)
Oleg (dir Juris Kursietis)
The Orphanage (dir Shahrbanoo Sadat)
Les Particules (dir Blaise Harrison)
Perdrix (dir Erwan Le Duc)
Sick, Sick, Sick (dir Alice Furtado)
Song Without a Name (dir Melina León)
Tlamess (dir Ala Eddine Slim)
To Live to Sing (dir Johnny Ma)
Wounds (dir Babak Anvari)
Yves (dir Benoît Forgeard) – closing film
Zombi Child (dir Bertrand Bonello)

Special screenings
Red 11 (dir Robert Rodriguez)
The Staggering Girl (dir Luca Guadagnino)

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[Chris Knipp]

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Ode to cinema … Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Pacino in Once Upon
a Time in Hollywood. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia Pictures Corporation

Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will be at Cannes, after all.

Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to have world premiere at Cannes
Director 'has not left the editing room in months' to complete much-anticipated film in time for festival unveiling

-Headlines for today's Guardian article. You'll find it H E R E (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/02/tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-will-have-world-premiere-cannes-film-festival).

That's good news for Tarantino fans. Tarantino loves Cannes and really appreciates it as cinema heaven, the global center for everything exciting that happens for the year in movies. The new Tarantino film will be included in Competition for the Palme d'Or, which he won in 1994 for Pulp Fiction.

The festival also announced that Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo, the second part of a projected trilogy by Blue Is the Warmest Colour director Abdellatif Kechiche, and Gaspar Noé’s Lux Æterna have been added to the selection.

The Cannes film festival runs 14-25 May.

[Chris Knipp]

Controversy over that special Palm for French film actor Alain Delon.

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ALAIN DELON [VARIETY]


The Cannes Film Festival is going forward with its decision to award an honorary Palme d’Or to Alain Delon despite criticism from the U.S. organization Women and Hollywood over comments that the veteran French actor has made about slapping women, opposing the adoption of children by same-sex parents [he's called it "against nature"] and supporting the rise of the far right in France.
VARIETY (https://variety.com/2019/film/news/cannes-film-festival-criticized-honoring-alain-delon-1203197576/)

Alain Delon is one of the most glamorous and iconic French movie stars of all time. The French are not amused by the PC American condemnation of Delon's getting an honorary Palme at 83, and call it a reversion to the McCarthyism of the Fifties. When one thinks of Delon one particularly recalls René Clément's classic Patricia Highsmith adaptation Purple Noon/Plein soleil and Jean-Pierre Melville's noir masterpieces Le Samouraï and Un flic. With his cool, hard-edged French male beauty and subtle physical acting, Delon is one of the great ones, whatever bad views he has expressed on talk shows as a sad old man. AS Frémaux said, this is not the Nobel Prize, it's a movie award. He was also chosen by Antonioni to costar with Monica Vitti in L'Eclisse.

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ALAIN DELON IN RENÉ CLÉMENT'S PURPLE NOON

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes 2019 Festival opens. Sex, violence, gender parity issues. Netflix. Jury President Iñárritu.

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ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ IÑÁRRITU AT CANNES [GUARDIAN]

Guardian[/I] (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/13/cannes-2019-party-kicks-off-as-clouds-of-controversy-gather-netflix-quentin-tarantino?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0ZpbG1Ub2RheS0xOTA 1MTM%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=FilmToday&CMP=filmtoday_email) and Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/cannes-alejandro-inarritu-trump-netflix-1203214365/)]

[B]Tarantino controversies

So Tarantino is coming, with his new film ready for Competition. But will its treatment of the Sharon Tate murders offend taste? QT is in trouble with the #MeToo crowd following rumors of his maltreatment of Uma Thurman while making the "Kill Bill" movies (he apologized; but he has also been quoted as saying that Polanski's 13-year-old sex victim was "down with it"). Another Cannes biggie who'll be present is Ken Loach, with his gig economy drama Sorry We Missed You, likewise Pedro Almodóvar with his film industry memoir Pain and Glory, and the Dardenne brothers with a radicalization story, The Young Ahmed. Terrence Malick's film, A Hidden Life, is about the anti-Nazi Franz Jägerstätter. (Malick has been elusive of late years, and may not even be present at the festival.)

The gender parity issue

The festival directorship itself has no great feminist reputation given how slow it is to bring in more female directors. Despite Thierry Frémaux's signing a gender parity pledge, only 4 out of 23 Competition films are by female directors. Frémaux has said people are asking more of Cannes than of other festivals. In defense of the honoring of the sexist and homophobic Alain Delon, he has declared, "We’re not going to give the Nobel peace prize to Alain Delon. . .He is entitled to express his views. Today it is very difficult to honor somebody because you have a sort of political police that falls on you."

Netrlix and theaters

French distributors were furious at the 2017 Cannes inclusion of Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories, for which Netflix disobeyed the French requirement of holding streaming release for 36 months after theatrical release. Last year Netflix held their prime release ROMA for another festival. There are no Netflix movies in this year's Cannes Festival either (but Martin Scorsese’s mob tale The Irishman and Steven Soderbergh’s Panama Papers journalist investigation tale The Laundromat simply weren't ready in time anyway).

Jury President Iñárritu speaks out

The Jury president Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (incidentally the first Mexican ever to hold this post at Cannes) has used his position to blast Trump's wall and defend movie theaters against the encroachments of their territory by Netflix. "Cinema was born to be experienced in a communal experience," he said (i.e., not to be watched at home alone). Of Trump's policies, Iñárritu said "As an artist, I can express through my job and with my heart open what I think to be truthful. I think the problem is what is happening is the ignorance. People do not know, it’s very easy to manipulate." He said his selection by the festival is a repudiation of Trump's anti-immigrant policies.

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ROHRWACHER, FANNING, N'DIAYE, IÑÁRRITU AT CANNES [GUARDIAN]

[Chris Knipp]

Mel Gibson to star in Rothchild film?

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MEL GIBSON

A movie to be shopped at Cannes has casting that sparks controversy: Mel Gibson, who was ostracized from Hollywood for anti-semitic talk, is reported cast as the scion of a very rich New York family named Rothchild. This is the name of perhaps the most famous Jewish family in history. Emily Nussbaum, the New Yorker TV critic, tweeted:
I tend to lean excessively forgiving about a certain amount of addict behavior & bad speech. But Mel Gibson seems like an unrepentant bigot to me & it's honestly shocking to me that he would be in this movie. I truly don't get it. Seth Rogen tweeted 'Ho-ho-holocaust denier." The film title is Rothchild. That is of course the name of what is known as the richest family in history, which was Jewish. It began with a German Frankfort court factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_Jew) in the 18th century who was able to pass on his wealth; it established bases in numerous European cities (London, Paris, Frankfort, Vienna and Naples) and was elevated to noble status in France and England. (Guardian story (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/14/mel-gibson-casting-in-rothchild-comedy-sparks-outrage)),

The movie is described as "an action-packed cautionary tale [of] wealth and power."

[Chris Knipp]

The Cannes 2019 Competition Jury

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Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mexican filmmaker, Jury President (Amores Perros, Birdman)
Enki Bilal, French graphic novel author, artist and filmmaker
Robin Campillo, French filmmaker (Eastern Boys, BPM)
Maimouna N'Diaye, Senegalese actress and filmmaker
Elle Fanning, American actress (Somewhere, Neon Demon)
Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek filmmaker (The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite)
Paweł Pawlikowski, Polish filmmaker (Ida, Cold War)
Kelly Reichardt, American filmmaker (Old Boy, Wendy and Lucy, Night Moves, Meek’s Cutoff
Alice Rohrwacher, Italian filmmaker (Corpo Celeste, The Wonders, Happy As Lazzaro

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes 2019 Un Certrain Regard jury

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President: Nadine Labaki
Lukas Dhont (Girl)
Marina Foïs (L'Atelier)
Nurman Sekerci-Porst
Lisandro Alonso (Los Muertos, Fantasma


Belgian direcor Lukas Dhont, French actress Marina Foïs, German producer Nurhan Sekerci-Porst, and Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso have joined Nadine Labaki on the jury for Un Certain Regard a this month’s Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25).

Dhont participated in the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence in 2016 with the script of his first acclaimed feature Girl, which won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature in Un Certain Regard in Cannes last year. He is now working on his second feature.

Foïs was nominated for the César for most promising actress in Filles Perdues, Cheveux Gras in 2003. She followed that up with best actress nods for Darling in 2008, 2011 Cannes Competition selection Polisse in 2012, Irréprochable in 2017, and Un Certain Regard 2017 entry L’Atelier in 2018. The actress appeared in the 2018 Gilles Lellouche comedy and Cannes 2018 selection Le Grand Bain, and earlier this year garnered a Molière awards nomination for her portrayal of Hervé Guibert on stage in Les Idoles by Christophe Honoré.

Buenos Aires-born Alonso’s Los Muertos screened in Directors’ Fortnight in 2004. Two years later, he completed his trilogy with Fantasma. Liverpool screened in Cannes in 2018, and Jauja, set in 19th century Denmark and Argentina and starring Viggo Mortensen, which won the FIPRESCI award in Un Certain Regard in 2014.

Şekerci-Porst has worked with German director Fatih Akin since 2005. They co-founded the production company Bombero International in 2012 and produced The Cut and In The Fade, which premiered in Cannes 2017 and earned Diane Kruger the best actress award.
-Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/news/cannes-2019-un-certain-regard-jury-revealed/5138910.article)

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes opening night film: Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die

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STILL FROM THE DEAD DON'T DIE

Opening Night at Cannes. Some reviews.

Mixed reports, but a sense this will worth seeing for Jarmusch completists but not particularly invigorating. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian: (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/14/the-dead-dont-die-review-stumbling-zombie-comedy-kicks-off-cannes) "Jim Jarmusch’s undeadpan comedy is laconic, lugubrious and does not entirely come to life, despite many witty lines and tremendously assured performances by an A-list cast." "Lethargic," and has "more brains than bite," says David Erlich in IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/dead-dont-die-review-jim-jarmusch-cannes-1202140841/). The premise is that an excess of polar fracking has warped the planet’s rotation and reanimated the corpses at the local morgue. The theme, Erlich says, is "When Hell is full, the dead will walk the Earth. And when the Earth is fucked, the living will do whatever they can to sleepwalk through the nightmare." Many interesting cast members including Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Danny Glover, Chlöe Sevigny, Caleb Landry Jones, Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits, with Tilda Swinton as a Scottish immigrant mortician whose "delightful performance shoots the movie full of fresh embalming fluid every time it starts to rot. Which is often." Owen Gleiberman of Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-dead-dont-die-review-adam-driver-bill-murray-1203213609/) typecasts this as a "hipster zombie comedy" and says it "congratulates itself for doing what other movies have done better." Nonetheless there are some original plot twists, as you'll learn if you read Todd McCarthy's Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/dead-dont-die-review-1210459)review, which tells all about the flick's plot-line. Current Metascore: 64%. Hipness level: surely much higher. Note: A favorite of mine, Dead Man, has a Metascore of 62. Todd McCarthy's concluding words:
Typically for Jarmusch, the songs, led by the title tune, and score are outstanding, enlivening nearly every scene. And the sheer diversity of the castmembers, along with their individual senses of humor, sustains one’s attention even when inspiration sometimes lags. It’s a minor, but most edible, bloody bonbon.

[Chris Knipp]

From the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, his "top ten must-see films" at Cannes

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LEO DICAPRIO IN ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD


Peter Bradshaw is one of the few high-profile English-language film critics who provide detailed daily coverage at Cannes so if you want to follow it day-to-day and your language is English, he's invaluable. His list but my notes. Note: I continue to miss Mike D'Angelo, whose thumbnail tweet-reviews were very useful. Let's hope the fest offers more than what's below.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
Leo DiCaprio is a fading TV star and Brad Pitt his stunt double in Hollywood, late Sixties, as the Sharon Tate murders occur. Bruce Lee is a character. Much anticipated, at first not expected, promoted by Cannes Festival director Thierry Frémaux who declared QT is "a friend."

Portrait of a Lady on Fire/Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma)
Noémie Merlant plays a young painter asked to do a portrait of a young woman (Adèle Haenel) without her knowledge. The 40-year-old French woman director Céline Sciamma is noted for female-centric gender-conscious films. Her first three, Water Lilies, Tomboy, and Girlhood, have brought her rapid prestige in a 12-year-period. She also did the screenplay for the animation My Life As a Courgette/Zucchini. In French.

Little Joe (Jessica Hausner)
English philosophical comedy with Emily Beecham and Ben Whishaw concerning a botanist who develops a flower she nicknames Little Joe that can induce happiness in all those who grow it properly, but when its developer takes it home, she comes to suspect it may have a dark side. (The theme somehow makes one think of Alexander Mackendrick's 1951 English classic, The Man in the White Suit, starring Alec Guinness.)

Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)
Loach continues his worker-centric filmmaking with the study of a delivery driver having hard times. With longtime cowriter Paul Laverty. Loach's last film, I Daniel Blakek won him his second Cannes Palme d'Or.

The Swallows of Kabul/Les hirondelles de Kabou (Zabou Breitman, Eléa Gobé Mévellec)
Animated film based on a novel by the very prolific Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra (who writes in French, and is actually a man), about Kabul in the late Nineties and a young love affair threatened by the Taliban. In French. You can see a clip of this on IMDb, but without English subtitles. Un Certain Regard.

The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch)
Cannes regular Jarmusch, who two features ago delivered the swoony, gloomy vampire movie Only Lovers Left Alive] (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3583-New-York-Film-Festival-2013/page3#post31066) (NYFF 2013), offers the festival "a bit of unwholesome confectionery" (Bradshaw) with this Opening Night film, a slow-moving zombie comedy-nightmare set in a small town, with an offbeat A-List cast including Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Steve Buscemi, Adam Driver, Selena Gomez and Danny Glover and with an appearance by Iggy Pop. (Already reviewed: Opening Night film.)

An Easy Girl/Une fille facile (Rebecca Zlotowski)
A romance set on the French Reviera. Bradshaw desribes Zlotkowski's Grand Central (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3681-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-at-Lincoln-Center-2014&p=31811#post31811) (R-V 2014) as a 'cult classic.' I was not so impressed, though I certainly liked the stars, Tahar Rahim and Léa Seydoux. Directors' Fortnight. In French.

Frankie (Ira Sachs)
Isabelle Huppert stars (with Brendan Gleeson, Marisa Tomei and Greg Kinnear) in Ira Sachs’s film about a family on holiday in Portugal. In English. (I don't think Huppert is as good, ever, in English, as in her native French. It loses the edge.)

Sick, Sick, Sick/Sem Seu Sangue ["Without your blood"] (Alice Furtado)
Debut feature by the young Brazilian director depicts an obsessive and tormented high-school love affair (with Nahuel Pérez Biscayart of 120 Beats Per Minute). Directors' Fortnight. Tragic, deranged finale. IMDb summary: "An introspective young girl falls for the new boy in class, an outcast who is also a hemophiliac." For a longer summery, go H E R E (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/sick-sick-sick-teaser-alice-furtado-cannes-1202129632/). In Portuguese.

Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia)
The hand of God descends with this documentary from British filmmaker Asif Kapadia, who made the successful doc about Amy Winehous, Amy, about the troubled football genius. Emir Kusturica has already done a film about him but Bradshaw says this "promises a treasure trove of new material." Already bought by HBO Sports. See article H E R E (https://www.thehindu.com/sport/football/maradona-will-be-the-cynosure-at-cannes/article27119911.ece).

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[Chris Knipp]

Other anticipated titles at Cannes

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TARON EGERTON AS ELTON JOHN IN ROCKETMAN

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)
A biopic about Elton John with Taron Egerton in the lead role. Egerton is the handsome 30-year-old British TV actor-singer known for the series "Smoke" and the 2014 action comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service. Dexter Fletcher, who was memorable (briefly) playing the young Caravaggio in Derek Jarman's film, got lucky last year by landing the job of finishing Bohemian Rhapsody. This film's screenplay is by Lee Hall, who did the writing for Billy Elliot, and is costars Jamie Bell as John's longtime songwriter Bernie Taupin. When shown the photo above Elton John is said to have thought it was him. Premiering Out of Competition.

A Hidden Life (Terence Malick).
A German-language film with Bruno Ganz and August Diehl about the Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II. Competition. This seems to signal the end of Malick's long period of navel-gazing. Why he chose this subject matter remains to be discovered.

Pain and Glory/Dolor y gloria (Pedro Almodover)
This stars Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Penélope Cruz, Julieta Serrano and Leonardo Sbaraglia. It's a kind of retrospective, being focused on a director (played by Banderas) who ponders on his life choices as he finds the world crashing down on him. This opened in Spanish theaters (Sony) in March, but is in Competition at Cannes nonetheless.

The Traitor/Il traditore (Marco Bellochio)
Bellocchio's seventh time in competition at Cannes, but he has never been a winner. Depicts pentito Mafia boss (Italian word) Tommaso Buscetta. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Buscetta with Maria Fernanda Cândido and Luigi Lo Cascio. The only Italian film in Competition at Cannes this year. Buscetto claims "I am and remain a man of honor. It's they who betrayed the ideals of Cosa Nostra." Caught in Brazil, where he managed the drug trade, he saw the killing of sons and brothers in Palermo, and the film shows his trial.

[Chris Knipp]

Reviews from days one and two.

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SCENE FROM BACURAU; SONIA BRAGA, CENTER

Bacurau (Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho 2019): a tale of hunting people for sport in contemporary Brazil. Competition.

Kleber Mendonça Filho is the director of the excellent Neighboring Sounds/O Som ao Redor (2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3246-New-Directors-New-Films-and-Film-Comment-Selects-2012&p=27538#post27538) and Aquarius (2016) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4198-New-York-Film-Festival-2016&p=35022#post35022), both of which were reviewed on Filmleaf. Here he codirected with his production designer/producer, Juliano Dornelles. They take a new direction in what Peter Bradshaw in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/15/bacurau-review-brazil-outback-western-cannes) yesterday (Wed., May 15) called a "disturbing ultraviolent freakout." David Erlilch in IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/bacurau-review-cannes-2019-1202141739/) calls it "Seven Samurai Meets Hostel" and a "Delirious Brazilian Western." It's set some years in the future, where a group of rich Americans have come led by Udo Kier to hunt the locals (a matriarchal village) for their sport, as Peter Debruge explains in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/bacarau-review-1203215347/). The film becomes, says Debruge, "an almost Buñuelian science-fiction thriller, shot to look like a spaghetti Western, complete with weird zooms, arbitrary crane tricks, and horizontal wipes." It suffers as a genre piece, however, Debruge says, because it's too complex and sophisticated, demanding "the extra labor of unpacking its densely multilayered subtext to appreciate." Sonia Braga is back (from Aquarius) playing an alcoholic doctor. Ominously, Bacarau suddenly is wiped off of online maps. It becomes clear soon enough that the town is going to have to fight for its life, because a high-tech ultra-rich safari has come to amuse themselves by pick;ing off the inhabitants one by one. Critics seem agreed that this film is stylistically brilliant, even if its point is not so clear other than to make some clear "broad swipes" (Erlich) against the current anti-native, anti-environment, pro-wealthy policies of the unprincipled new right wing Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher 2019) Out of Competition.

The Elton John biopic starring Taron Egerton opened tonight, making Paramount the first major studio to present gay sex openly, says Tatiana Siegel in a Hollywood Reporter article (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/rocketman-blazes-trail-as-first-major-studio-film-depict-gay-male-sex-1210947), one of several on this topic. She explains her claim by saying this is aimed at a "broader" audience than did Brokeback Mountain and Call Me by Your Name, which of course also showed gay sex in films not made purely for niche audiences. There is no Metascore out on this movie yet, or any online reviews, but much discussion of its presumed trailblazing boldness (which Fletcher himself however discounts). Fletcher has pointed out this is a musical, and Bohemian Rhapsody was a biopic, hence the two shouldn't keep being compared (as they are). Rami Malek was outstanding as an actor; Taron Egerton's task is more to sing.

Litigante (Franco Lolli 2019). Critics Week.

The Colombian director's second feature is a subtle treatment of family relationships, not a legal drama as the title implies. It might be considered a "belated breakout vehicle" for the lead Sanin, says Guy Lodge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/litigante-review-1203216875/), because she's unfamiliar and so good, except that she's actually a non-pro Colombian writer and academic. Lollo has also cast another non-pro, his own mother, Leticia Gómez, in a key role. The film's "many scenes of loaded domestic conflict have a nervy authenticity that perhaps betrays Lolli’s close-to-home casting preferences," says Lodge. One of these two characters has terminal cancer, yet the two women go on bickering even in the hospital. An excellent complex family drama that keeps many balls in the air, Lodge concludes (a mom with cancer, raising a son alone, a scandal at work) - till it ends in an anticlimactic finale. Leslie Felperin in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/litigante-review-1210840)calls this "an engaging if hardly groundbreaking work."

Deerskin/Le Daim (Quentin Dupieux 2019)

"The latest oddball concoction from French iconoclast Quentin Dupieux stars Jean Dujardin as a man who falls in love with his jacket", says Boyd van Hoeij in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/deerskin-le-daim-review-1210665) of this film that opened Directors Fortnight at Cannes. I know what he's talking about because I just reviewed his previous one, Keep an Eye Out!/Au poste! (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4608-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-2019&p=37406#post37406) a couple of months ago as part of this year's Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center. Dupieux is definitely a droll, but also silly and frivolous filmmaker whose work can't appeal to more than a small segment of the French public, and smaller one of the non-French. But he is fiendishly clever, and commands good casts. This one also has the talented and fiery Adèle Haenel.

The Unknown Saint/Le Miracle du Saint Inconnu (Alaa Eddine Aljem 2019). Critics' Week.

This debut feature by the young Moroccan director Alaa Eddine Aljem was also reviewed by Boyd van Hoeij in Hollywood Reporter. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/unknown-saint-review-1209924) It begins with a thief burying his loot at the top of a dune in a desert as police sirens are heard approaching in the distance. He goes to jail, and when he gets out the fake grave where he buried his swag has become a place of pilgrimage to an "unknown saint" so he can't get at it. Van Hoeij says this is a "bone-dry comedy and light drama," and "an absurdist tale about superstitions, beliefs and just plain bad luck." He suspects it won't do well outside the realm of festival audiences or at least "might be just a little too undernourished for more than niche theatrical action." More positively, Alissa Simon in her Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-unknown-saint-review-1203216332/) calls The Unknown Saint "Beautifully shot and ideally cast" and says it's "a droll, entertaining, absurdist fable about spirituality and greed that signals an important new talent."

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SCENE FROM ALJEM'S THE UNKNOWN SAINT

[Chris Knipp]

More Cannes 2019 reviews.

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MAME BINETA SANE IN ATLANTICS

Atlantics/Atlantique (Mati Diop 2019)

This is one of the four women directors who got a film in Competition this year, enough to make it known widely. She is Senegalese and more known as an actress but her shorter films have gained her notice as a director leading up to this feature debut, whose plot has the sound of myth or fable: and even the bare words evoke striking images. It's the melancholy story of a Ada, young woman about to be married to the well-to-do Omar when she truly loves Soleiman. And just then, Soleiman is lost at sea with a group of others he went out in an open boat with heading for Spain, leaving her devastated. The lost men worked on a big building on the edge of Dakar and were owed a lot of back pay. Their ghosts return and inhabit the young women to demand the money. Focus shifts to Issa, an investigator called in when the marriage bed is set aflame. There have been numerous films focused on the men lost at sea trying to escape to Europe, Jay Weissberg says in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/atlantics-review-1203217085/), and it's refreshing to see one focused on the women they leave behind. Weissberg finds narrative or structural weaknesses in this movie, but it sounds potentially vivid and beautiful. In his enthusiastic Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/16/atlantique-review-cannes-mati-diop-senegal-mystery)Peter Bradshaw calls it an "intriguingly ruminative and poetic movie," "a Voodoo-realist drama, or docu-supernatural mystery" whose strangeness doesn't keep it from saying some very "pertinent things" about the "contemporary developing world." He gives it 4 out of 5 stars.

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MATI DIOP AT CANNES [GUARDIAN]

[Chris Knipp]

Review

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OPENING SCENE FROM LES MISÉRABLES

LES MISERABLES (Ladj Ly 2019). A powerful French cop thriller with sociological bent. In Competition.

Though it bears little direct narrative resemblance to the eponymous Victor Hugo tome, this crime thriller (the feature debut of a former documentary filmmaker) that examines the tensions between Paris anti-crime police and poor Muslim populations they torment is set in the housing estate of Les Bosquets in Montfermeil, in the département of Seine-Saint-Denis that figured in the Hugo novel. It also shows the same extreme injustices still prevail. David Erlich of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/les-miserables-review-cannes-2019-1202141330/) says this shows Ly grew up in the influence of Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 La Haine (about social tensions in Paris) and (as others also say) invites comparisons to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Erlich calls this "a gripping and grounded procedural," "never more tactile and kinetic than in the breathtaking prologue," "powered by the raw muscularity of its filmmaking." There's a kind of police riot, which a ghetto kid captures on film with a drone. The banlieue setting is Ly's own home turf. Guy Lodge's Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/les-miserables-review-ladj-ly-1203215299/) (and others) praises highly with some reservations. He calls this film "a furious work of social geography that satisfies slightly less as a character piece," dramatizing the "violent anxieties on both sides" but perhaps "selling some of the victims a little short." The cops are not seen sympathetically, yet most of the action is through the point of view of a three-man crime unit, two vets and a newbie, on a single day. Still the whole social topography of Montfermeil is also depicted. according to Jordan Mintzer of Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/les-miserables-review-1210837), who relates this to David Simon's iconic TV series "The Wire." Peter Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/15/les-miserables-review-ladj-ly-debut-feature-paris-suburb-cop-procedural) hails this film's "striking and even glorious pre-credit" sequence (of Paris celebrating France winning the World Cup) and thinks it excels at its ordinary, everyday moments. But then he thinks it tries to work on too broad a scale and turns too violent. Not a pan, though: he gives Les Misérables 3 out of 5 stars. Ly also was codirector with Stéphane de Freitas of the uplifting César-nominated doc Speak Up/À voix haute : La Force de la parole (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/speak-up-a-voix-haute-994312).

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LADJ LY

[Chris Knipp]

Almodovar's Pain and Glory/Dolor y gloria.

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ANTONIO BANDERAS IN PAIN AND GLORY

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/17/pain-and-glory-review) says in Dolor y glória Almodóvar "delivers another sensuous and deeply personal gem" in this "wistful extravaganza" in which "life meets art," and gives it 4 out of 5 stars. Ruminative, painful, with a sense of declining powers, the director presents an aging movie director played by Antonio Banderas. Peter Debruge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-pedro-almodovars-pain-and-glory-1203218880/) calls it a "remarkably mature metafiction." AlloCiné, whose press rating (http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=264147.html)(based on 23 French reviews) is an exceptional 4.6 (even Cahiers du Cinéma gives it a rave), asks: "Is Almodóvar on the way to the Palme d'Or?" and he indeed looks like a prime contender. This clearly sounds like a very positive consensus, perhaps to remain the most admired 2029 Competition film. Perhaps the best has come first. But could this be a little too familiar a maker and topic to be up for a top prize? Time will tell.

Hausner's Little Joe.

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JESSIE MAE ALONZO AND BEN WHISHAW IN LITTLE JOE

Another much anticipated film at Cannes was Jessica Haussner's Little Joe. Haussner is known for her Lourdes (2009). But Peter Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/17/little-joe-review-cannes-2019) says he was disappointed, and gives it a measly 2 out of 5 stars. It's a horror film that likens the spread of antidepressants to the invasion of an alien force a la "Bodysnatchers." Erlich of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/little-joe-review-cannes-1202142527/) finds in this "plenty of potential to offend," though he calls the film "brilliant." Bradshaw finds " plot implausibilities" and a movie "too high on the art-house register" to notice its lack of "out-and-out thrills or suspense."

Fletcher's Rocketman.

The comparison with Bohemian Rhapsodyis inevitable: two pictures about gay glam rock stars directed by Dexter Fletcher. Nicolas Barber of BBC Culture (http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190517-cannes-2019-review-rocketman)says "this year’s Elton John biopic is superior to last year’s Freddie Mercury biopic in almost every way: funnier, more moving, more imaginative, more upfront about its hero’s sexuality." That's nice, isn't it? I wonder if the public will go along. Probably not, and later in the review Nicolas Barber doesn't even seem to like the movie so much, though he still rates it and Fletcher and Egerton high.

[Chris Knipp]

Recent Cannes reviews

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PAMELA MONDOZA IN CANCIÓN SIN NOMBRE

Canción Sin Nombre/Song Without a Name (Melina León). Directors Fortnight.

"In a dingy clinic, a newborn child is whisked away from her exhausted mother, supposedly for routine health checks, and is never returned; in short order, the clinic vanishes into thin air too, leaving the stolen baby’s bewildered, impoverished parents with no recourse." So Guy Lodge states the film's premise in his admiring but critical Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/song-without-a-name-review-cancion-sin-nombre-1203219363/) about this child-trafficking tale. The Peruvian writer-director's film is a "visually striking period piece" that's "a Kafka-esque crime thriller inspired by real events" says Stephen Dalton of Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/song-a-name-review-1210737). It has some similarities to Cuaron's ROMA, being about a poor peasant woman and in black and white. (Today.)

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THE CAST OF SORRY WE MISSED YOU

Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach) Competition.

A "fierce, open and angry" new film about life in the British "service-economy serfdom" says Peter Bradshaw who gives it a full five stars in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/16/sorry-we-missed-you-review-ken-loach). In his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/sorry-we-missed-you-review-ken-loach-1203217397/), Owen Gleibeman says 82-year-old Loach has grown spryer as he's aged and now is at the top of his game and is making films that "connect, with a nearly karmic sense of timing, to the social drama of our moment." This one is about "how the gig economy screws over the people it promises to save." This is indeed perhaps the dominant, and fastest growing, labor issue in the developed world today and an even more relevant film than Loach's last one, which won the Palme d'Or in 2016. But a feeling is he won't win again. Three Palme d'Ors would be a bit much for one director. (May 16th.)

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IMAGE FROM THE WILD GOOSE LAKE

The Wild Goose Lake/南方车站的聚会 (Diao Yinan). Competition.

An understatedly brilliant and poetic noir that winds up being less than the sum of its parts, says David Erlich of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/the-wild-goose-lake-review-cannes-1202142593/). It works with traditional ingredients, a gangster on the run, a femme fatale at his side, and cops and bad guys trying to do them in, he writes. But along with that it's also a picture of "contemporary China as a vast land of exploitation and criminality." The central Chinese capital of Wuhan is the setting for a lot of eye-catching and rich seediness. It has some ingenious ultra-violence, some over-congested plot moments, style, and the benefit of Dong Jinsong, one of the dp's of Bi Gan's visually entrancing Long Day's Journey Into Night. Jessica Kiang of Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-wild-goose-lake-review-1203219296/) says Diao has made a "sumptuously sleazy film" in which he shows "an extraordinarily elastic mastery of form," and has a superbly precise sound design. This may, Kiang says, wind up being "the last word in Chinese crime noir." For fans of Asian neo-noir, this film is a must-see, maybe a cult classic. The images are so ravishing I was sorely tempted to reproduce more than one here. (Today.)

[Chris Knipp]

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LOUISE LEBEQUE, WISIAND LOUIMAT IN ZOMBI CHILD

Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello). Directors Fortnight.

(French film, English-language title.) The spelling follows the original Creole, which is the kind of zombies or zombis Bonello is focused on (one that slowly struggles to come back to life), along with a second story about girls in a state school, one of whom may be a zombie too. This is Bonello's first stab at a genre film,and his eighth feature, says Jordan Mintzer in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/zombi-child-review-1210505). Only the three last ones are well known, but they are very well known (and I am a fan): House of Tolerance aka L'Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close), Saint Laurent, and Nocturama). Zombi Child, says Mintzer, "feels like two incomplete movies in one, neither of them fully satisfying in the end, though there are "some graceful moments scattered throughout", particularly in the Haitian scenes. Not one of Bonello's greatest successes, perhaps, but a fresh take on the subject, apparently, marked by exquisite craft, and with great music, largely by Bonello himself as usual.

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LEYNA BLOOM IN PORT AUTHORITY

Port Authority ( Danielle Lessovitz). Un Certain Regard.

From New York, first-time writer-director Lessovitz follows a young guy who barely escapes homelessness when he comes from Pittsburgh to the big city and his half-sister is not at the famous grim bus terminal to greet him, and he falls in with "New York’s Kiki ballroom scene (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/27/kiki-review-flamboyant-and-uplifting-look-at-new-yorks-ballroom-scene) – a carnivalesque LGBT club culture that evolved from voguing," and is troubled to be attracted to a young trans gender woman. "Port Authority is vehement, urgent and sensual – not perfect, and I would have liked to have seen more extended dance sequences. But it is made with storytelling gusto and heart" writes Peter Bradshaw, who gives in 4 our of 5 stars in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/18/port-authority-review-heartfelt-trans-love-story).

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LISE LEPAT PRUDHOMME IN ROUEN CATHEDRAL IN JOAN OF ARC

Joan of Arc/Jeanne d'Arc (Bruno Dumont). Un Certain Regard.

Dumont's biopic is "a stately, deadpan classical-absurdist pageant" of "a child warrior on the march," adapted from Charles Péguy’s writings about her, says Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/18/joan-of-arc-review-bruno-dumont-lise-leplat-prudhomme-cannes-film-festival), that's "passionless and exasperating." Lise Leplat Prudhomme, who played in Dumont's 2017 Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc, (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4456-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-2018&p=36551#post36551) (RV-2018), back again, has "undoubted charisma," and there's a cameo by Fabrice Lucchini as Charles VII (he played Percival in Eric Rohmer's Percival le Valois in 1978, an early role), but the whole thing may be a "longeur," and is often "torpid." It may best be seen as a way-station toward something more evolved by the formerly compelling director, says Bradshaw, who gives it a dismal 2 out of 5 stars. Like its predecessor, the film is full of lip-synched rock numbers, is shot on the beaches of northeastern France (and in Rouen Cathedral), and makes no attempt at historical authenticity. For Dumont completists only, and 137 minutes long. I have a lot of time for this amazing and original filmmaker, but this latest bent has not repaid my patience as well as earlier work or amused as do his recent "Li'l Quinquin" films.

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Too Old to Die Young (Nichlas Winding Refn). TV. Grand Theatre Lumiere.

Not sure what Cannes category this falls under (Out of Competition, clearly), but two episodes (4 and 5) of this new TV series (Refn calls it a 13-hour film) have just been shown at Cannes on the super-big screen of the Grand Theatre Lumière there, and it has been vividly reviewed. With caveats: that it's tedius and horrifying. It concerns Los Angeles cop, played by the energetic Miles Teller, who moonlights as a contract killer and "who comes under the sway" of former military colleague John Hawkes' "apocalyptic visionary," writes David Rooney in his Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/too-old-to-die-young-cannes-2019-1211933), who says it shows the Danish director's "steady slide deeper and deeper into empty genre posturing" has gone as far as it can go. Bradshaw is more taken with it, calling it a "doomy, sepulchral, and very plausible evocation of pure evil" and a "dead-eyed LA nightmare," and giving it 4 out of 5 stars. Gregory Ellwood, on Collider, (http://collider.com/too-old-to-die-young-review-nicolas-winding-refn/)thinks it's ambitious and "at times brilliant" but "not as deep as it thinks it is." Sounds to me as if cop series binge-watchers will want to take a look, but some may not have the patience for its long silences.

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The Whistlers/La Gomera (Corneliu Porumboiu 2019). Competition.

This time the noted Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu (Police, Adjective, When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism , The Treasure) takes a turn into genre territory with a neo-noirthriller set in the Canary Islands and Singapore. Leslie Felperin describes it in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/whistlers-review-1211959) as an "entertaining but dense" depiction of a cop who doubler-crosses both his department and gangsters he's cooperating with. It "constantly corkscrews around in every sense, deploying flashbacks frequently as it reveals twist after twist" while the protagonist, Lee Marshall writes in Screen Daily, (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-whistlers-cannes-review/5139623.article)is deliberately cast as a "passive cipher" or "poker-faced Everyman." The shared note from Polombiu's earlier arthouse works, says Felperin, is a preoccupation with language, power, and the legacy of the corrupt and repressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime. The result, though, "feels a little woolly and unfocused," says Marshall. Peter Bradshaw in is Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/20/the-whistlers-la-gomera-review-corneliu-porumboiu), however, likes The Whistlers very much, calls it "thrilling," "knotty, twisty, nifty," and "An elegant and stylishly crafted piece of entertainment," and gives it 4 out of 5 stars.


Tomorrow:
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, of The Witch). Directors Fortnight.

[Chris Knipp]

Eggers' new film

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WILLEM DAFOE, ROBERT PATTINSON IN THE LIGHTHOUSE

THE LIGHTHOUSE (Robert Eggers). Directors Fortnight.

Peter Bradshaw's Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/19/the-lighthouse-review-robert-pattinson-shines-in-sublime-maritime-nightmare)gives it 5 out of 5 stars and suggests the new movie by Robert Eggers (whose The Witch (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4118-THE-WITCH-(Robert-Eggers-2015)&p=34449#post34449) was so much admired) is likewise a rousing success. It is a tense portrait in striking black and white of two men in 1890's Maine in physical and psychological torment as they man a lighthouse together and come apart under pressure of shared solitude and conflicting roles, with mood swings and tormenting mermaid visions. Eggers lets the tale hover between intense realism and horror, never making genre an issue, says Bradshaw, and Both Willem Dafoe as the man in charge and Robert Pattinson as number two chafing under his lowly role are fine, Pattinson especially, who "just gets better and better." Bradshaw also praises the rich poeticism of the period dialogue and the actors' delivery (the "script is barnacled with resemblances to Coleridge, Shakespeare, Melville"). Variety's (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-lighthouse-review-robert-pattinson-willem-dafoe-1203220127/) Owen Gleiberman calls it "a gripping and turbulent drama," praising its "powerfully antiquated sense of myth and legend," the "weird immersive clarity" of its "shimmeringly austere black-and-white" and striking near-square aspect ratio, a movie "made with extraordinary skill" that you "can't pigeonhole." David Rooney's Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/lighthouse-cannes-2019-1212078) hails the "gripping performances thick with flavorful period dialect and jolts of ever-intensifying insanity soaked in rum." Nobody really has reservations, except whether this will be as great a commercial success as The Witch. (A24 produced again, and most of the Witch crew is back.)

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JESSE EISENBERG, IMOGEN POOTS IN VIVARIUM

VIVARIUM (Lorcan Finnegan). Critics Week, Feature Competition.

The premise of this second feature for Irish director Lorcan Finnegan is a couple goes to a plasticky suburb, in jest visit a model home, and are trapped and forced to live in it and raise a freakishly precocious baby supplied to them by malevolent outside Big Brother forces. It feels a lot like an extended episode of the Netflix sci-fi series Black Mirror, says Stephen Dalton (Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/vivarium-review-1211969)), with echoes of "cult dystopian authors" like JG Ballard and John Wyndham and with "eye-pleasing nods to the surrealist art of Rene Magritte and MC Escher." Poots shines and has more emotional depth while Eisenberg seems underused and miscast as a rugged outdoor type tasked with lots of physical work. A "smart and gripping yarn," says Dalton. But Ben Croll of The Wrap (https://www.thewrap.com/vivarium-review-jesse-eisenberg-satire-bites-off-more-than-it-can-chew/) thought it tries to say too much about too many topics and "never fully satisfies on any one front." He thinks it could have been good as a "comic allegory" à la Jorge Luis Borges or a more overtly sci-fi piece that would "lean harder into the human menagerie connotations of the title," but unfortunately, it is neither one nor the other, and winds up unfocused, a shame because it "engages from a technical perspective."

[Chris Knipp]

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August Diehl in A Hidden Life

A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick). Competition.

David Erlich of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/a-hidden-life-review-terrence-malick-cannes-1202142833/) says this is his best movie since Tree of Life but the material is different: the true story of Austrian farmer turned conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to take the Hitler oath as a Wehrmacht conscript and in 1943 was duly executed. No battlefields, the war simply between a Christian and his conscience. Bradshaw says in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/19/a-hidden-life-review-terrence-malicks-rhapsody-to-an-austrian-conscientious-objector) that it's "a high-minded hymn to modern saint that never quite comes to life" and gives it 3 our of 5 stars. This still has the Malilckian swirling camera and meditative mood, as Bradshaw describes it, with "An overpowering sense of being ecstatically, epiphanically in the present moment," with the "camera shots swooning, swooping and looming around the characters who appear often to be lost in thought, to an orchestral or organ accompaniment, and a murmured voiceover narration of the characters’ intimate but distinctly abstract feelings and memories." The problem is that the swoony approach has, Bradshaw says, "marooned and islanded Jägerstetter," cutting him off from the all-important historical moment and resultingly making his anguish as generic as that of Bale in Knight of Cups or Afflick in To the Wonder, though the stakes are so much higher here, and the details should be so much more distinctive. Peter Debruge oin Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/a-hidden-life-review-terrence-malick-radegund-1203220352/) acknowledges this film works best for the Malick fan, but affirms that it's his best since Tree of Life and "feels stunningly relevant" about religionists selling out for political advantage.

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Diego Maradona in the film by Asif Kapadia

Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia). Out of Competition.

By the maker of the Amy Winehouse doc, this is, by many reports, a stunningly effective film about the poor boy from Buenos Aires who became the successor to Pele as the god of soccer, and his eventual fall from grace. HIs '86 World Cup "Hand of God" winning goal, photos show, was hand-assisted, which a commentator calls "a little bit of cheating and a lot of genius," and that goes for his career, says Eric Kohn in IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/diego-maradona-review-asif-kapadia-cannes-2019-1202140734/) (he gives it an A-). The path to downfall is multiple, including an extra-marital affair and child, involvement with a crime family, and a drug bust. Sometimes details come too fast even in over two hours, says Kohn, but Kapadia still keeps it hypnotically watchable. The account is "gripping," says Bradshaw in his enthusiastic Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/20/diego-maradona-review-asif-kapadia-documentary-cannes-film-festival) (he gives it 4 out of 5 stars) even though hampered by a lack of the kind of new material he had for his Winehouse film. Owen Gleiberman of Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/diego-maradona-review-cannes-film-festival-1203219438/) goes farther, says it all doesn't make sense to him, and Kapadia tries to reach for the stars, but doesn't have the revealing material to do "what he did for the fallen idols of 'Amy' and 'Senna'." A different fan base for an audience, though.

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Fabrice Luchini, Anaïs Demoustier in Alice and the Mayor

Alice and the Mayor (Nicolas Pariser). Directors Fortnight.

Alice et le maire (the French title) is the sophomore effort of the French director who debuted with the subtle, understated political thriller The Great Game/Le grand jeu (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4104-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-2016&p=34423#post34423)(R-V 2016) in which key players follow Nietsche's advice, "Whatever is profound loves masks." That seems to be a favorite saying of Fabrice Lucchini, the mayor of this new film, mayor of the city of Lyon, who after 30 years of politics is totally out of ideas. Sparks fly and preconceptions are shaken when he's provided with Alice Heinemann (Anaïs Demoustier), a brilliant philosophy scholar, to inspire him. Jay Weissberg of Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/alice-and-the-mayor-review-1203220562/) thinks the result is far too talky, and Boyd van Hoeij of Hollywood reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/alice-mayor-alice-le-maire-review-1211949)thinks Pariser can't decide if he wants to focus on ideas or people. He grants that Pariser, who studied with Eric Rohmer, handles the talk well. He thinks the rapport between the middle-aged mayor and the young teacher is fascinating, but has nowhere to go and ultimately stagnates. We'll have to see what French critics, who may appreciate the talk more, think of this movie when it hits French cinemas in October.

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Camille Cottin, Vincent Lacoste, Chiara Mastroianni in Chambre 212

On a Magical Night/Chambre 212 (Christophe Honoré). Un Certain Regard.

Stephen Dalton says in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/a-magical-night-review-1212121)that this came just at the right time midway in the Cannes Festival when attendees much needed a "frothy" "bed-hopping" French farce as a "palate-cleanser." "Christophe Honore’s bittersweet comic fantasy stars Chiara Mastroianni as a highly sexed college lecturer weighing up the steep cost of loving," Dalton writes. Suppose, the film fantasizes, you could go back a few decades to your spouse in his youthful prime, would you still like him, knowing how jaded you'll get later on? A great "springboard into screwball comedy and counterfactual fantasy," says Dalton, even if Honoré gets his plot-line a bit muddled. Vincent Lacoste plays the young version of haughty oversexed prof Chiara Mastroianni's mature hubby played by Benjamin Biolay. This is a top cast. Honoré doesn't quite know how to end, says Dalton, but the final sequence, where Chiara and all her former lovers, including both the young and old version of her husband, meet at a bar and dance away the night to Barry Manilow, is a "patently dumb notion" that nonetheless delivers "a perverse kind of pleasure." It all may be too French for outside audiences, but the setup is readymade for a Hollywood remake.

[Chris Knipp]

Today, 20 May 2019 at the Cannes Film Festival.

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NOÉMIE MERLANT, ADÈLE HAENEL IN PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma).

Céline Sciamma has built a distinguished reputation in the past 12 years for fresh and original femme-centric films, sometimes with a trans or gay bent. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (the French title) is set in 1770 and concerns a painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant), who must paint the marriage portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel, of Sciamma's debut Water Lilies (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2265-San-Francisco-International-Film-Festival-2008&p=20073#post20073)), the young daughter of a countess who has just left a convent. Peter Debruge in Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-review-1203220399/) calls this "a gorgeous, slow-burn lesbian romance." Héloïse is uncooperative. Her mother, the countess, orders Marianne to observe her during the day and work on her portrait at night, so she must devour her with her large eyes. The mutual fascination that develops eventually turns physical. The result is a subtle, nuanced depiction of the female gaze that only a woman could paint, Debruge says. Peter Bradshaw heralds the film in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/20/portrait-of-a-lady-on-fire-review-celine-sciamma) as "superbly elegant, enigmatic drama," that reveals the director's "new mastery of classical style." He gives it his top rating, 5 out of 5 stars.

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VICTORIA BLUCK AND IDIR BEN ADDI IN YOUNG AHMED

Young Ahmed (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne). Competition.

Le jeune Ahmed (the French title) is about a Belgian teenager (the actor, Idir Ben Addi, was 13) of paternal Moroccan Arab descent but with a white non-muslim mother (whose husband is no longer around) who hatches a plot to kill his teacher after being taught a radical interpretation of the Quran. Leslie Felperin of Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/young-ahmed-review-1212193) thinks Addi a "blank" actor like those of the Dardennes' earlier films that won them two Golden Palms, but neither she nor the Variety critic thinks this quite up to their strongest work, though better than their blandest: Eric Kohn of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/young-ahmed-review-dardenne-brothers-cannes-2019-1202143071/) places it midway on the spectrum. Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/20/young-ahmed-review-dardenne-brothers) thinks this (like Sciamma's new film) "subtle". He gives it 3 out of 5 stars. Ahmed goes from video games to jihad in the space of a month and begins lecturing his mother and sister on their behavior. Ahmed attacks his teacher for too liberal an approach to teaching the Quran, and is put in youth custody. He may rethink, or more likely not. A work release meeting on a farm with an attractive girl who likes him could make a difference. Bu how he will develop is uncertain. The movie is marred, says Bradshaw, by a silly chase sequence used to jazz things up for an artificial conclusion. Peter Debruge of Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/young-ahmed-review-le-jeune-ahmed-1203220931/) suggests that as a sympathetic (if ambiguous) portrait of a budding Islamic terrorist, this may be the Dardennes’ "most controversial film yet." It sounds at least like one of their most puzzling.

[Chris Knipp]

Also May 20.

Two portraits of two women

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An Easy Girl (Rebecca Zlotkowsk). Directors Fortnight.

Une fille facile (the French title), is a watchable film, "Rohmer for the instagram age," says Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/an-easy-girl-cannes-review/5139630.article) of this fourth film by the director who effectively pared Tahar Rahim and Léa Seydoux for her film Grand Central. This time it is two sisters, who pair off for the summer in Cannes, when the younger one (Mina Farid) is drawn into the luxurious ways of her older sister (actress, model and lingerie designer Dehar), with Benoît Magimel also in the cast.

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ERRADI AND AZABAL IN ADAM

Adam (Maryam Touzani). Un Certain Regard.

Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani's debut feature turns "a simple story" into "gold" with its warm depiction of a homeless unwed pregnant woman and the widowed small bakery owner who befriends her, says Deborah Young in her Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/adam-1212273). Set in Casablanca’s Old Medina, it's a tale that allows the actors time to make delicate transitions, and a main one is the bakery owner's gradual softening toward the pregnant woman.

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ISABELLE HUPPERT IN FRANKIE

Frankie (Ira Sachs). Competition.

Peter Bradshaw makes it immediately clear that he hated this film with a Guardian critique (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/20/frankie-review-isabelle-huppert-cannes-2019) headed "Frankie review – Ira Sachs' bickering poshos bore us to tears," and he gave it an almost unprecedented 1 out of 5 stars.David Rooney of Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/frankie-review-cannes-2019-1212362) says it "offers many gentle pleasures," a main one being the mountainous Portuguese scenery for which Sachs has left left behind his New York settings (it's like a bland Woody Allen location film, Bradshaw comments, but without the humor). And yet the longtime indie director has assembled an A-List cast here. Huppert is supported by the likes of Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Jérémie Renier and Marisa Tomei. Bradshaw acknowledges Sachs' recent Little Men (2016) and Love Is Strange (2014) have been superb, so he can't fathom how he could have laid an egg "so big that the walls of the Palais des Festivals may have be knocked down so it can be safely removed." The premise: Francoise (Frankie, Huppert), a film and TV star, has brought her family to the Portuguese town of Sintra for a luxurious holiday to tell them something, but this is complicated when one of them takes the opportunity to propose marriage to another member of the party. Rooney acknowledges that this is a "sedate" and "gossamer-thin" effort lacking the "emotional complexity" and "intense personal investment" of Sachs' best work. But he supposes that its "classy old-school art house veneer" will make it sell as a fall Sony Picture Classics release.

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HAFSIA HERZI IN YOU DESERVE A LOVER]

You Deserve a Lover (Hafsia Herzi). Critics Week.

Tu mérites un amour (the French title) features Hafsia Herzi in front of and behind the camera in (says Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/you-deserve-a-lover-cannes-review/5139688.article)) "a brisk, energetic low-budget tale of a Parisienne’s romantic trials and tribulations." "A brisk femme-positive approach and the personal urgency that comes with Hafsia Herzi’s energetic, no-bullshit presence", and it's her directorial debut. She became known playing the lead in Abdellatif Kechiche's Secret of the Grain. The story's all about Lila (the protagonist played by director Hirzi) coming to accept that her boyfriend who dumped her wasn't worth it anyway. "Some of the dialogue is wickedly pungent," says Deborah Young in her Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/you-deserve-a-lover-1212183). Naturalness, warmth, humor, a relaxed pace as well as a very modern frankness about sex (and the director-star's beauty and personal charm) make this otherwise conventional Parisian screen entertainment stand out from the crowd.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes May 21, 2019

MOST ANTICIPATED EVENT today is the showing of Quentin Tarantino's new movie, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, about some down-on-their luck actors at the time of the Sharon Tate murders, with Bruce Lee and Charles Manson as incidental characters and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. Tarantino has posted an open letter to all Cannes writers and attendees about spoilers - asking all not to give away stuff. See the letter H E R E (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/quentin-tarantino-letter-cannes-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-spoilers-1202143055/).

Bradshaw calls Gaspar Noë's Lux Æterna "self-parodic silliness" and gives it 2 out of 5 stars.

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BENNY EMMANUEL, GABRIEL CARBAJAL IN CHICUAROTES

Chicuarotes (Gael García Bernal). Special Screenings.

This is the second directorial outing from Gael García Bernal, a long time since the first (2007), and a disappointment, says Screen Daily's Jonathan Romney (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/chicuarotes-cannes-review/5139707.article). That debut was Deficit , a "coolly ironic depiction of Mexico’s spoiled middle-class youth," This one, explains Romney, returns "more or less" to Amores Perros territory (the film that brought him international recognition as an actor), depicting "two young working-class chancers desperate to improve their lot" who wind up "screwing up in every way." It's like a "WhatsApp-era Los Olvidados, with "energy to spare" but a "tonal discontinuity" that "scuppers the film," oscillating between "goofy comedy, hard-nosed violence and wildly overplayed melodrama."

[Chris Knipp]

Screen Daily's jury grid.

Yesterday's (https://www.screendaily.com/news/pedro-almodovars-pain-and-glory-storms-into-screen-cannes-jury-grid-lead/5139607.article) showed Almodóvar's Pain and Glory in the lead of critics' ratings (3.3), then Portrait of a Lady on Fire (3.1), Atlantics (2.8), Wild Goose Lake (2.7), Bacaru (2.6), and Les Misérables (2.4). Malick, Polombiu and Loach all got the same in-between score (2.5). Jim Jarmusch's opener The Dead Don't Die scored lowest (2.2).

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[Chris Knipp]

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LEO DICAPRIO IN ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino). Competition.

Controversial, but likely to be up there in ratings, Quentin Tarantino's ninth feature, set in 1969, premiered today on the 25th anniversary of Pulp Fiction's triumphant Cannes opening (it won the Palme d'Or and made the director famous), and the new film is felt by some to have structural and other affinities to the earlier one. A "shocking, gripping, dazzlingly shot" movie, Peter Bradshaw writes in a 5-out-of-5-star Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/21/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-tarantino-dazzling-dicaprio-pitt), "in the celluloid-primary colors of sky blue and sunset gold." He will not reveal the shocking finale. The period is "recovered with all Tarantino’s habitual intensity and delirious, hysterical connoisseurship of pop culture detail," says Bradshaw, with a new thing, not just cinephilia but "TVphilia", with lots about the small screen of the time, an aspect Richard Lawson is particularly interested in in his Vanity Fair review (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-review-quentin-tarantino-brad-pitt-leonardo-dicaprio). Rick Dalton, the alcoholic actor played by DiCaprio, becomes a has-been when his TV western series is cancelled. Cliff Booth (Brad PItt) is his stunt double, factotum, and only friend. They live in the shadow of the Manson murders, which have not yet occurred. Sharon Tate is Rick's neighhbor. The cast includes Al Pacino and Margot Robbie. Robbie Collin, in his Telegraph review (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/upon-time-hollywood-review-tarantinos-ode-pre-manson-la-pure/), likewise gives the movie 5 out of 5 stars and calls it "pure movie-world intoxication," giving more details of its relationship to the Sharon Tate murders - which some believe is when the Hollywood dream ended with a crash. "There’s a gleeful toxicity here that will launch a thousand think-pieces," writes Collin. "Pitt’s character is capital-P problematic, absolutely by design." "But," he concludes, "the transgressive thrill is undeniable, and the artistry mesmerisingly assured." Tweets are enthusiastic, and praise is being heaped on Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. Al Pacino reportedly has a hilarious cameo as Dalton's agent. "This curious fairy tale may not be the truth, and it may prattle on too long, writes Lawson in Vanity Fair. "But when its stars align, and they let loose with their unmistakable shine, Hollywood movies do seem truly special again. And, sure, maybe TV does too."Justin Chang in his LA Times review (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-quentin-tarantino-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-20190521-story.html) calls this a "richly evocative, conceptually jaw-dropping, excessively foot-fetishizing, inescapably terrifying and unexpectedly poignant movie."

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MARGOT ROBBIE AS SARON TATE IN ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD [Sony Pictures Releasing]

[Chris Knipp]

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PARK SO-DAM, CHOI WOO0SIK IN PARASITE

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho). Competition.

Parasite/(기생충 (Gisaengchung) is "a pitch-black tragicomedy about economic inequality in modern Korea," Jessica Kiang explains in her Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/markets-festivals/parasite-review-1203221435/). His past filmography - Snowpiercer, Memories of Murder, The Host and Okja - shows Bong to be a genre unto himself, says IndieWire's (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/parasite-review-bong-joon-ho-1202143634/)David Erlich. Peter Bradshaw (who elsewhere (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/24/best-of-cannes-festival-almodovar-tarantino-malick-loach-celine-sciamma) compares it to Joseph Losey's The Servant)calls this film "a bizarre black comedy," "satirical suspense drama," a "creepy invasion of the lifestyle snatchers" set in "a modern-day 'Downton Abbey situation" that "gets its tendrils into you." He gives it 4 out of 5 stars in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/21/parasite-review-bong-joon-ho). There's a resemblance to Hirakazu Koreeda's Palme d'Or-winning Shoplifters in that here there is an impoverished family that hides its relationships, in this case to rob an ultra-rich family. The invading poor family burns with resentment and wants to take on a lifestyle that they think should be theirs. This is at once Bong's "most tightly plotted" and " most formally polished work," says Kiang, and proceeds seamlessly and with finely crafted settings with "a watchmaker’s skill" In the way it keeps "the pendulum of our sympathies swinging back and forth between the grasping desperation of the poor and the idle hatefulness of the rich."

Looks like Parasite will take a high spot on Screen Daily's Jury Grid - where, incidentally, Tarantino's new film got four 4.0's but averaged 3.0, in third place below Pain and Glory and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, because big fans it also had scoffers and a hater, having received a 3, two 2's and a zero (the latter from Die Zeit's Katja Nicodemus). Nonetheless Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has current Metacritic score of 86%. (Cannes press conference for Tarantino: H E R E (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIlsmK_FqFM).)

The post-Tarantino Screen Daily jury grid (https://www.screendaily.com/news/quentin-tarantinos-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-splits-critics-on-screens-cannes-jury-grid/5139821.article):
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[Chris Knipp]

Wed. May 22 at Cannes: Dolan and Desplechin.

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XAVIER DOLAN IN MATTHIAS & MAXIME

Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan). Competition.

After two ambitious turnoffs - a "one-two stumble," one critic calls them - that seemed to bring his career to a crisis, despite the first winning a big prize at Cannes, Dolan is back in secure, comfortable territory, says Guy Lodge in his admiring Variety (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/cannes-film-review-matthias-maxime-1203223223/) review, with a tale of uneasy male friendship starring Dolan himself and Gabriel D’Almeida Fritas, as longtime pals, one (Dolan) a mess (with a toxic mom à la Mommy), the other (Freitas), a together young lawyer. They may be more then friends: having to kiss in front of friends acting in a friends' short film reminds them they've done so for real before. Now Matthias' pending promotion and Maxime's upcoming two-year sojourn in Australia forces them to decide. The "warmth and restraint" here feels like maturity at last (just turned 30), says Steve Pond of The Wrap (https://www.thewrap.com/matthias-maxime-film-review-xavier-dolan-finds-maturity-at-the-ripe-old-age-of-30/). Here says Pond, Dolan returns to "the sweet spot he hit so often in his earlier films." Dolan depicts complicated tensions with old pals and business associates, including the Beach Rats star Harris Dickinson as a kind of cock tease temporary law associate of Matthias. But Jon Forsch of Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/matthias-maxime-review-1212922) feels this film lacks the emotional urgency of Dolan's first films, their "formal and emotional risk-taking," their "dramatic richness." Dolan's formerly "messy, complicated characters, layers of provocative ambiguity, tension and stakes" all are muted or missing here, Forsch says. Moreover, the toned down, sexually repressed puzzle-relationship at the movie's center "today registers as quaint, even dated." (Matthias & Maxime wound up near the bottom of the Jury Grid with a 1.7; only Kechiche's film scored lower (1.5), and of those polled only Peter Bradshaw liked it. Kechiche's scores were more mixed, with two 3's and even a 4 but two zero's.)

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LÉA SEYDOUX, ROSCHIDY ZEM IN ROUBAIX, UNE LUMIÈRE

Oh Mercy/Roubaix, une lumière (Arnaud Desplechin). Competition.

Desplechin must feel very much at home here, having had six films in Cannes Competition and several more in sidebars, served on the Jury in 2016 and opened the festival with Ismael's Ghosts in 2017 (also featured at the NYFF). Nonetheless his turn to something ostensibly more genre in Oh Mercy met with a mixed response. Peter Bradshaw in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/22/oh-mercy-review-arnaud-desplechin-lea-seydoux-cannes) describes this northern French crime movie with its "annoyingly wise police captain" (Roschdy Zem) as "fatally split" in tone by Desplechin’s "lofty pretensions." It's supposed to be a police-procedural, but also wants to be a "musing prose-poem about the vanity of human wishes," says Bradshaw, and this dual role is too much for its star to put across. Bradshaw finds the film "self-admiring" and gives it 2 out of 5 stars. The narrative pieces through various cases, explains Ben Croll in The Wrap (https://www.thewrap.com/oh-mercy-film-review-is-this-cop-drama-a-pilot-in-disguise/), settling eventually on the murder of an 80-year-old woman which the Zem's Captain intuits at once was done by the two drug addicts next door (Léa Seydoux and Sara Forestier, both in very unglam mode). Desplechin is more interested in "relationship power dynamics," says Croll; but the whole film seems to him more TV pilot than feature. Weissberg says exactly the same thing in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/oh-mercy-review-1203223481/). (Weissberg's nonetheless may be the most sympathetic of these reviews.) Lee Marshall of Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/oh-mercy-cannes-review/5139678.article) thinks this a "detour" for Desplechin. It "roots in" a 2008 TV documentary and is most interested in the interrogation transcripts, some used here verbatim, for what they show about the relationship between Seydoux's and Forestier's characters, ultimately becoming, Lee Marshall feels, "a ritual of expiation and redemption" but ultimately more the portrait of a washed-up city (Desplechin's original home town) than a crime story. There are elements, Marshall says, such as voiceovers from a rookie cop's diary, that feel like fragments from an earlier draft. Maybe Desplechin wanders too far afield for a film that defines itself as of the crime genre.

Final Competition films still to come:
The Traitor, dir: Marco Bellocchio
Sibyl, dir: Justine Triet
It Must Be Heaven, dir: Elia Suleiman
Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo, dir: Abdellatif Kechiche

[Chris Knipp]

Winning animation in Critics' Week.

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STILL FROM ANIMATED PRIZEWINNER I LOST MY BODY

I Lost My Body/J'ai perdu mon corps (Jérémy Clapin). Critics' Week.

French filmmaker Jérémy Clapin’s feature-length animation J'ai perdu mon corps (the original French title) garnered the top award, the Nespresso Grand Prize, at Cannes’ Critics' Week, the prestigious parallel section aimed at emerging directors and showing shorts and first and second-time films. "It's time for animated films to stop being considered a separate genre," Clapin delcared. The film concerns a young man's severed hand that goes looking for its body. It stood out, says Variety's (https://variety.com/2019/film/festivals/french-animation-i-lost-my-body-tops-cannes-critics-week-winners-1203223714/) Guy Lodge, for being the only "toon" in the sidebar, and also for its "blend of morbid humor and touching drama.:" The film's producer Marc de Pontavice said in an interview in AlloCiné (http://www.allocine.fr/article/fichearticle_gen_carticle=18681437.html) it was the challenge of arousing audience sympathies for an object that drew him to the story, and he liked the idea of a part longing for the whole rather than the reverse. The film will go to the big Annecy animation fest, and is looking for a distributor.

[Chris Knipp]

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DAKOTA JOHNSON, ARMIE HAMMER IN WOUNDS

Wounds (Babak Anvari). Directors Fortnight.

This Netflix-sponsored horror flick, an adaptation on Nathan Halligrud's novelThe Visible Filth, is British-Iranian director Anvari's sophomore film following his 2016 Under the Shadow (" a retro spook story set in ’80s Tehran" - Variety) (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/wounds-review-1203119627/), but is much cruder and a bust, says Peter Bradshaw in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/22/wounds-review-babak-anvari-armie-hammer-dakota-johnson). Armie Hammer is a college dropout tending bar at "a rough dive in New Orleans" who dates Dakota Johnson's Eng. Lit. grad student but is enamored of Zazie Beetz, who drinks at his bar with her boyfriend. Things get supernatural and super-creepy for Armie when there's a bad fight and a student leaves behind a cell phone with a video of it that Armie opens. (The debt to J-horror is clear.) Hammer, says Bradshaw, seems to be competing "for a bad-acting award" and givesWounds 2 out of 5 stars. Variety says it's "a spooky, silly body-horror flick that's thrilled to torture Armie Hammer." Amy Nicholson's Variety review suggests this may be a fun picture for younger audience members, and Bradshaw may miss the humor in how Armie is used by Anvari in it, but not a very good movie: Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/wounds-sundance-review/5136323.article)says it has "some shockingly uninspired jump-scares" and Erlich in IndieWire calls it "a woefully underwritten jump-scare machine." It debuted at Sundance; perhapas there was no need to review it here.

[Chris Knipp]

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WILLIAM LEBGHIL IN ALL ABOUT YVES

All About Yves/Yves (Benoît Forgeard). Directors' Fortnight.

The French director Benoît Forgeard's second feature closed out the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes. It is a screwy comedy something like if John Waters made a movie where a "wannabe rapper" (William Lebghil), his dream girl (Doria Tillier), and a talking fridge all have sex at one point, says Jordan Minter in his Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/all-yves-yves-review-1212892), which says it "overstays its welcome" but is also "a memorably weird experience." Yves is the name of the fridge, which Lebghil's character is a product-tester for, "a Sub-Zero-type device inhabited by the mind of 2001’s HAL 9000 and the musical prowess of contemporary beatmakers like Drake's 40 and Boi-1da," says Mintzer. The whole thing is a "spoof" on "where artificial intelligence is headed" with "smart" appliances if you imagined them capable of competing in "the Eurovision song contest," says Lisa Nesselson in her Screen Daily review (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/all-about-yves-cannes-review/5139811.article), which also praises this film but similarly says it "overstays its welcome." Last year Lebghil costarred with Vincent Lacoste in the popular in France med school film The Frehshman/Première année (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4608-Rendez-Vous-with-French-Cinema-2019&p=37417#post37417) reviewed on Filmleaf in February (R-V 2019).

[Chris Knipp]

Parasite tops the Jury Grid.

As predicted, Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is the critical leader now in Competition films, according to Screen Daily's latest Jury Grid compilation of ten critics. It's now

Parasite 3.4
Portrait of a Lady on Fire 3.3
Pain and Glory 3.3
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 3.0

With Sciamma's and Almodóvar's films tied. Xavier Dolan is "struggling" notes Screen Daily (https://www.screendaily.com/news/bong-joon-hos-parasite-takes-the-lead-on-screens-cannes-jury-grid/5139863.article) with a 1.7; only Peter Bradshaw liked it much. But while Dolan's It's only the end of the World got a 1.4 in 2016, it won the Grand Prix and the Jury Ecumenical Prize. Sometimes a Jury goes its own way.

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[Chris Knipp]

Sidebar Cannes films.

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WILLEM DAFOE IN TOMMASO

Tommaso (Abel Ferrara). Special screenings.

Mainly to be watched for the performance of Willem Dafoe, who fortunately is on screen most of the time, says Todd McCarthy in his Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/tomasso-review-1212921). This is an autobiographical piece by Ferrara about a "director and recovering addict living in Rome" to which Dafoe brings "a pulsing gusto," says McCarthy. This costars Ferrara's own wife and child, Owen Gleiberman's Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/tommaso-review-willem-dafoe-1203223805/)explains, and is a serene, literally sober piece: Tommaso is clean-and-sober and goes to 12-step meetings.

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Lillian (Andreas Horvath). Directors' Fortnight.

A long-in-the-making biopic by the Austrian director/photographer Horvath of Lillian Alling, a mysterious woman who walked from New York to Alaska in 1926-27 and has been much written about, explains Deborah Young in her Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/lillian-1212964). The lead is played by newcomer Patrycja Planik, who does not speak during the film. A strange tale of a homeless person headed back to Russia because her chances of work in America have vanished, this is a foreigner's depiction of the US (perhaps an updating of Robert Frank's The Americans?).

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The Bare Necessity/Perdrix (Erwan LeDuc). Directors' Fortnight.

Debut feature from a French sports journalist is another sui generis creation featuring WWII relics, a crateful of personal journals, and nudists, an oddball family with some sleeping around and a police captain in a sleepy village in the northeastern Vosges region, says Boyd van Hoeij in his Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/bare-necessity-perdrix-review-1212986) which calls this "Not perfect, yet easy to love." The aim is an amorous comedy, and an examination of love, and features a sleeping-around Fanny Ardant as " host of a radio show called Love Is Real." The film should "consolidate the reputation" of lead actor Swann Arlaud, following his s"tar-making turn" in Bloody Milk in the 2017 Critics’ Week, which was "a drama with fascinating thriller and genre notes," says van Hoeij.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes May 23

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PERFRANCESCO FAVINO IN TRADITORE

The Traitor/Il traditore (Marco Bellocchio). Competition.

This is the only Italian film in Competition at Cannes this year. It features another Tommaso, Tommaso Buscetta, "the highest level Mafia don to sing to authorities." This tale of a Mafia "pentito" is "a master filmmaker questioning the nature of repentance," says Jay Weissberg in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-traitor-review-il-traditore-1203224495/). Weissberg was expecting another theatrical film on the order of Bellocchio's Vincere, but this is mostly surprisingly "straightforward," he says; the director must have figured the story had "built-in theatrical flourishes" enough. Popular actor Pierfrancesco Favino was "never better," says Weissberg. He makes his character "a commanding presence as Buscetta — imposing but also unknowable," says Tim Grierson in his Screen Daily review (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-traitor-cannes-review/5139679.article). Buscetta revealed "Sicily's criminal hierarchy" in a series of "dramatic testimonies" some of which are available on YouTube. Weissberg explains that he turned because the Cosa Nostra had betrayed its own family values, its leaders beginning to murder women and children, "a step too far" for him. Luigi Lo Cascio is featured as a fellow informer, hitman Totuccio Contorno, speaking in Sicilian dialect. The courtroom scenes are the centerpiece of the film, but the ones showing the lead-up are important. Weissberg suggests more of Buscetta's criminal life might have been shown. The grand picture is handsomely done, but Bellocchio risks " making Buscetta look like an attractive ladies’ man who did a few bad things in his life but repented when he realized how much he loved his wife and kids." Grierson is more critical, but both he and Weissberg compliment dp Vladan Radovic for tiving the film visuals, which encompass scenes in Brazil as well as Italy, "the scope and grandeur of a crime epic" (Screen Daily). David Erlich's IndieWire review (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/the-traitor-review-marco-bellocchio-cannes-1202144226/)finds The Traitor "lively but scattershot and exasperating biopic," best when it departs from historical fact, too seldom cracking its own "brittle surface," its courtroom drama section "repetitive and somewhat impenetrable."

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes May 24

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Mektoub My Love: Intermezo (Abdellatif Kechiche). Competition.

Peter Bradshaw, who approved Kechiche's previous feature, Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno (which never got US distribution), as being justified and "interesting," departs company from him with the new film, which he says is "colossally self-indulgent" and "blows its cinephile credentials in four hours [actually 3 hours 26 minutes] of indulgent sweat" and indulges a "female buttock fetish" from virtually the first frame. He gives it a miserable 2 out of 5 stars in his Guardian review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/24/mektoub-my-love-intermezzo-review-abdellatif-kechiche). Bradshaw says this is "the most purely experimental film" in this year's Cannes Festival. It has a scene on a beach and then a scene in a nightclub that lasts "a staggering three hours" and adds up to a "monumental photolove-smutfest." The previous "Mektoub" film was accused of "the toxic male gaze," but, Bradshaw points out, it was not a "white gaze," because of Kechiche's sharp, "sympathetic eye" for the " North African communities in Sète," in southern France where it and The Secret of the Grain were filmed. Justin Chang, now with the LA Times (https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-cannes-mektoub-my-love-intermezzo-abdellatif-kechiche-20190523-story.html), calls this film "the disaster of the Cannes Film Festival." Chang notes Kechiche won the Palme d'Or six years ago for his young lesbian love story, Blue Is the Warmest Color. Subsequently the leads, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, described the shoot in ways that made Kechche sound abusive and over-demanding on set, and he's come on the wrong side of the #MeToo movement. Here, says Chang, he "sells out his own talent." Guy Lodge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/mektoub-my-love-intermezzo-review-1203224347/) leads up more gently to his pan, but eventually says "Intermezzo" is "vacuous, almost spitefully monotonous." The only plot setup is in the opening beach segment, he explains; the three-hour nightclub part is just ogling visuals. This came out at the absolute bottom of the Jury Grid, 1.5.

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Elia Suleiman in It Must Be Heaven

It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman). Competition.

Suleiman, playing a version of himself, travels from his native Nazareth to Paris, Montreal, and New York looking for a producer for a film in his new feature, It Must Be Heaven, while finding surprising parallels with his Palestinian homeland, of which he now sees the rest of the world as a "microcosm." In his "delightfully absurdist, unfailingly generous gaze" he stands apart from a "Palestinian landscape generally perceived as monolithic," his distinctive work by now "not just well-known but eagerly anticipated," says Jay Weissberg in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/it-must-be-heaven-review-1203225342/). Acting in his own films (here wordlessly), Suleiman's "wide-eyed, expressive face" Weissberg adds, is now "forever compared with Buster Keaton" as he regards "a world full of small wonders and incongruities." It's been ten years since he released a feature. This time the style still "has all the hallmarks," but the "vision shifts" from the "struggle in Palestine" to the "condition of the global Palestinian." Weissberg foresees a positive reception worldwide. Peter Bradshaw gives (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/24/it-must-be-heaven-review-palestines-holy-fool-lives-the-dream) This Must Be Heaven 3 out of 5 stars, but with reservations. "The latest satire-fable from Elia Suleiman," he writes, "is as droll as ever, but while there’s a kernel of seriousness here it too often lapses into elusive mannerism." Deborah Young is far more appreciative in her Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/it-be-heaven-review-1213473), which starts by saying Suleiman "uses his own face and body to express the soul of Palestine in his films," and "never more so" than this time. And though he thought Palestine was the world of guards and check-points, he finds the rest of the world too has become a police state, full of arms and menace. Yet all this is depicted with the lightest of touches, Young shows. It Must Be Heaven wound up with a 2.6 on the Jury Grid, on a par with The Traitor and Bacaru. The film wound up with the Jury Special Mention award.

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Virginie Efira, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sibyl poster

Sibyl (Justine Triet). Competition.

It's a comedy about a jittery, tippling shrink with Virginie Efira, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Gaspard Ulliel, and others in the cast. AlloCiné's press rating (http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm-263900/critiques/presse/) is 4.0, a chorus of raves, really (with Cahiers du Cinéma the most enthusiastic, always unusual), while Bradshaw in his Guardian review calls it a "muddled, silly comedy" and gives it only 2 out of 5 stars. Eric Kohn of IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/sibyl-review-justine-triet-cannes-2019-1202144259/) sees the film as "a stylish thriller with dark ideas about the dangers of storytelling" that deliberately unwinds a "ludicrous soap-opera mess" of a plot. Virginie Efira, star of Triet's 2016 In Bed with Victoria, is the psychiatrist who records distraught new patient Adèle Exarchopoulos, an actress tormented by an unwanted pregnancy by coming costar Gaspard Ulliel, shrink planning to use her new patient's story in a novel, but also tormented herself by memories of old flame Niels Schneider - and also with doubts about her deception. Her own shrink tells her to stop analyzing Adèle's character because she can't even analyze herself. Like Assayas' recent Non-Fiction, says Kohn, this is "a riotous sendup of the dangers facing narrative in an age of distraction." Guy Lodge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/sibyl-review-1203225243/) calls this "a highly pleasurable collaboration" (with Efira) that's "a witty, slinky psychodrama with just enough on its mind." This setup sounds like Ozon, and indeed Lodge calls Sibyl "certainly the most purely enjoyable French fancy to play in Cannes’ top tier since François Ozon’s Double Lover two years ago." Having loved In Bed with Victoria, though my colleagues at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema din't seem to get much out of it, I can't wait to see Sibyl. Kohn says this is Exarchopoulos' "most involving turn" since Blue Is the Warmest Color," and the rest of the cast sounds tasty. It did not do fabulously on the Jury Grid though, ;winding up with 1.8, fourth from the bottom.

[Chris Knipp]

Awards runup predictions

The Palme d’Or ceremony for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival will take place at 8:15pm GMT on May 25.

Peter Bradshaw’s prize predictions (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/24/best-of-cannes-festival-almodovar-tarantino-malick-loach-celine-sciamma)
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Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw
Palme d’Or: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir Céline Sciamma)
Grand Prix: Parasite (dir Bong Joon-ho)
Jury prize: Atlantique (dir Mati Diop)
Best director: Quentin Tarantino for Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
Best screenplay: Xavier Dolan for Matthias & Maxime
Best actor: Antonio Banderas for Pain and Glory
Best actress: Debbie Honeywood for Sorry We Missed You
'Imaginary' Cannes awards – AKA Braddies d’Or
Best supporting actor: Alexis Manenti for Les Misérables
Best supporting actress: Sônia Braga for Bacurau
Best cinematography: Dong Jingsong for The Wild Goose Lake (dir Diao Yinan)
Best music: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Best production design: Andrea Castorina and Jutta Freyer for The Traitor (dir Marco Bellocchio)

A.A. Dowd of AV Club (https://film.avclub.com/guessing-the-winners-and-picking-our-own-at-the-end-o-1835011696) predicts:
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A.A. Dowd of AV Club
Palme d'Or: either Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Pain and Glory, more likely the former.
Grand Jury Prize: Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood - but he prefers Parasite
Best Director: Elia Suleiman - but he prefers Diao Yinan of The Wild Goose Lake
Best Actor: Antonio Banderas - but he prefers Leonardo DiCaprio
Best Actress: If Portrait of a Lady on Fire doesn't get the Palme, then Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel - if it does, Debbie Honeywood of Sorry We Missed You[ - but he prefers Emily Beecham of Little Joe
Jury Prize: Mati Diop's Atlantics - but he prefers Bacaru
Screenplay: Parasite - but he prefers The Whistlers

Eric Kohn of IndieWire makes a list

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Eric Kohn of IndieWire

Kohn simply lists all the Competition films in order of likelihoiod of winning a rize, with descriptions H E R E (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/cannes-2019-palme-dor-contenders-winners-prediction-1202141512/)
HIS TOP SIX ARE:
1. Pain and Glory
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
3. Parasite
4. Les Miserables
5. A Hidden Life
6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

[Chris Knipp]

Some Screen Daily headlines

- Brazil's 'The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão' wins Cannes Un Certain Regard
-'Alice And The Mayor', 'An Easy Girl' win Cannes Directors' Fortnight awards
-Abdellatif Kechiche’s 'Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo' lands bottom on Screen’s Cannes jury grid

"Abdellatif Kechiche’s sequel title Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo has failed to impress the critics on Screen’s Cannes jury grid, recording the lowest score so far this year of 1.5."

The Screen Daily Jury Grid (https://www.screendaily.com/news/abdellatif-kechiches-mektoub-my-love-intermezzo-lands-bottom-on-screens-cannes-jury-grid/5139903.article) referred to (omitting only Suleiman and Triet of the Competition titles) is below:

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[Chris Knipp]

Some films from earlier days.

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The Orphanage/Parwareshgah (Shahrbanoo Sadat). Directors' Fortnight. (May 18)

Jay Weissberg's Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-orphanage-review-1203222657/)notes this "episodic film" is about "an Afghan teen's time in a Kabul orphanage" (and attempt to survive on the street) just before the Russian withdrawal, and it has some "knowingly clumsy Bollywood recreations" that "add significant flavor." This number two of a planned five-part sequence is "something of a comedown from her 2016 debut," says Weissberg, but like it, mixes "folklore with realism." In her Screen Daily review (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-orphanage-cannes-review/5139561.article), Sarah Ward says that by "stepping back" three decades from current woes, the film offers "a rare but worthy viewpoint," and while "filtering the experiences of 15-year-old Qodratollah (Wolf and Sheep’s Qodratollah Qadiri) through his love for Indian cinema" may seem an odd choice, it's one that "proves as smart as it is bold." The "Bollywood-style dream sequences," Ward says, "are likely to resonate with audiences." "Not exactly a tightly wound narrative," says Jordan Mintzer in his Hollywood Reporter review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/orphanage-parwareshgah-review-1210441), but "a minor but moving coming-of-age drama set in a difficult time and place."

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The Cordillera of Dreams/La Cordillera de los Sueños" (Patricio Guzmán). Special Screenings. (May 17).

This is the completion of a "sublimely meditative, deeply persona trilogy" that tracks "a personal, political and philosophical journey" through "Chile's history and landscape," explains Jessica Kiang in her Variety review (https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-cordillera-of-dreams-review-1203223297/). Deborah Young explains in her Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/cordillera-dreams-1211948) review that throughout the trilogy Guzmán has sought to relate landscape to collective experience, comparing "the vastness, grandeur and indifference of nature" to "the human horrors that Chileans have lived through." But she feels that this completion to the trilogy, though "deeply felt," but "much less interesting than its predecessors." Guzmán has lived in France since the 1973 coup, and, returning, finds Santiágo, with its new skyscrapers nearly unrecognizable. Guzman’s "sad backwards glance, says young "will strike a universal chord." The earlier trilogies focused on desert and waterways; this one, on the Andes Cordillera mountains which, though impressive, are not as good a symbol of this country's irreparable damage. The film is also a tribute to documentarian Pablo Salas, who remained in Chile and recorded protests over the past 45 years. I reviewed Guzmán's previous film, The Pearl Button, (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4051-PARIS-MOVIE-JOURNAL-(Oct-Nov-2015)) in Paris in 2015.

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First Love/初恋 Hatsukoi (Takashi Miike). Directors' Fortnight. (May 17).

"A riotous rom-com with a high body count," says Stephen Dalton in Hollywood Reporter. The "pulp splatter-fest" is mild by Miike standards, with nothing much new, explains Dalton, but " the Tarantino-style rollercoaster ride is as effortlessly enjoyable as ever.' Likewise Kaleem Aftab's Cineropa review (https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/373269/) confirms that this is one of the ultra-prolific and frequently uneven Japanese pulpmeister's successes. Bradley Warren of The Playlist (https://theplaylist.net/first-love-takashi-miike-cannes-review-20190523/)says this "finds the filmmaker at his most engaged, playful and coherent." Another collaboration, notably, with British producer Jeremy Thomas and his Recorded Picture Company, which has led to such highly watchable Miike films as 13 Assassins, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai and Blade of the Immortal. This however is a modern-dress film. It focuses on one long night, and concerns a baby-faced gangster who "tries to double cross his bosses," setting up a "secret side deal" with "crooked cops to hijack an incoming drugs shipment," which of course goes awry, says Dalton. A young women wielding s sword is out seeking revenge for her yakuza boyfriend's murder. A "huge showdown" in a warehouse store involves "mobsters, police, one-armed bandits and elite Chinese assassins." It's all staged with "typically zippy, kinetic, brightly colored panache." In his IndieWire review (https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/first-love-review-takashi-miike-cannes-1202142564/) David Erlich calls the result a "hysterically violent absurdist comedy," a "hard-boiled piece of pulp fiction" that he finds "frequently sublime."

[Chris Knipp]

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Cannes 2019: The awards.

The full list of winners for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival is below. Links to review summaries from this thread.

Palme d’Or: Parasite (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37621#post37621), dir. Bong Joon-ho

Grand Prix: Atlantics (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37604#post37604), dir. Mati Diop

Jury Prize: Les Misérables (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37606#post37606), dir. Ladj Ly and Bacurau (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37603#post37603), dir Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, jointly

Best Actress: Emily Beecham, Little Joe (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37609#post37609)

Best Actor: Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory/Dolor y gloria (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37609#post37609)

Best Director: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, The Young Ahmed (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37614#post37614)

Best Screenplay: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37614#post37614), Céline Sciamma

Special Mention of the Jury: It Must Be Heaven (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37629#post37629), Elia Suleiman

Camera d’Or: Our Mothers, César Díaz

Short Film Palme d’Or: The Distance Between Us And The Sky, Vasilis Kekatos

Special Mention of the Jury: Monstruo Dios, Agustina San

Queer Palm (Feature): Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma

Queer Palm (Short): The Distance Between Us And The Sky, Vasilis Kekatos

Palm Dog: Brandy, The dog in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (that belongs to Brad Pitt's character Cliff Booth)

FIPRESCI awards.

The Lighthouse (dir. Robert Eggers), won the Cannes Film Festival critics’ award for best first or second features in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week. The award was announced Saturday by the Intl. Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci).

Fipresci also honored Elia Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven as the best film in competition and Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole as best film in the sidebar Un Certain Regard.

Terrence Malick’s Competition film Hidden Life won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.

[Chris Knipp]

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Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite/기생충, takes the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2019 [Photo Stéphane Mahé/Reuters]

Awards comments.

It's exciting that a Korean film at last won the Palme d'Or. Last year my favorite non-English language film was Lee Chang-dong's Burning. It's also great that newcomers outside the mainstream got top recognition, with the Grand Prix to Atlantics, debut feature directed by Mati Diop, an African woman, and the Jury Prize to Les Miseerables, directed by a black son of the banlieue, Ladj Ly (who said in the press conference he chooses still to live there). Bacurau's Kleber Mendonça Filho is no newcomer, but Brazil is another country whose superb filmmaking deserves more recognition, and this is a wild, crazy genre-piece of a film.

An interesting tweet;
Robbie Collin
(@robbiereviews)
Like this selection very much indeed. Portrait/Fire seems undervalued, but at least it got something. Maybe give Sciamma director and Tarantino screenplay and it would have been perfect. #Cannes2019Yes, good idea - nothing can make up for Tarantino's only winning the Palm Dog! But he seemed gracious and pleased to have won that, or the dog' a pitt bull called Brandy, to have. After all the talk about how much they loved Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the critical popularity of Pain and Glory, these were undervalued, especially considering that Almodóvar has been making movies for a long time and never won a top Cannes prize.

Another interesting tweet:
Donald Clarke
(@DonaldClarke63)
Two Asian films about families of eccentric con artists win the Palme in consecutive years. WHAT CAN IT MEAN? #CANNES2019

[Chris Knipp]

Awards Dissent.

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Alejandro González Iñárritu, center, president of Jury, and winners at Cannes: Ladj Ly to his right, Bong Joon-ho to his left

Did the Cannes Competition Jury led by Alejandro González Iñárritu go astray?

Apart from Tarantino - whose new movie was the hottest ticket at the festival - going home empty-handed (unless you count the Dog Palm), there were dissenters about the Competition Jury's choices. In France a prominent opinion piece in Le Figaro (http://www.lefigaro.fr/festival-de-cannes/a-l-exception-de-la-palme-d-or-le-jury-de-cannes-s-est-trompe-sur-toute-la-ligne-20190525?utm_source=CRM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=[20190526_NL_ACTUALITES]&een=82f17b4c1faea740315cb1f737c4eadf&seen=6&m_i=Ji6JaDrHiiuE7LGv4fCxERBRv_F9GPB4DApDY9OFtMW69N fJCYBCxuM2OLO7vEQXxTnOcZAR_ShI90ykaWY_iBSXEsTAqUyc JS) by Etienne Sorin and Florence Vierron says except for the Palme d'Or for Parasite and the Jury Prize for Les Misérables the Jury went wrong. The strong presence of directors (Pawel Pawlikoswski, Yorgos Lanthimos, Kelly Reichardt, Robin Campillo and Alice Rohrwacher) on the Jury, they say, helped them choose one of their own. Otherwise though the quality of the Competition selections was high, they say, the awards don't reflect it. They particularly take issue with the Best Actress to Emily Beecham in Little Joe the film of Jessica Hauser. They say she is "an actress they pulled out of the shadows from a film made with the cold eye of a fish." Little Joe, Hauser's film, scored 2.3, near the bottom of the Jury Grid.

Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson (https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/cannes-oscars-2019-tarantino-rocketman-antonio-banderas) talks about how Cannes reflects they way the Oscars will go. In particular, Banderas may have a great chance for Best Actor there too, despite his performance being in Spanish. Tarantino's Once Upon a time...in Hollywood will be big, and Eggers' The Lighthouse will have much weight at Oscar time especially in the acting categories, Lawson says. Admittedly, however worthy, most of the other top-award Cannes films are unlikely to be on the radar in the US

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The red carpet for Mad Max: Fury Road, Cannes 2015. Photo Tristan Fewings/French Select [Vox]

Cannes primer. Why all the fuss?

It's not too late to bone up on what the Cannes Festival is all about, why it's so important, and how it's organized. Vox's Alissa Wilkinson (https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/5/16/15508284/cannes-film-festival-2019-dates-pronounce-netflix-jury)has a little piece laying all that out in an up to date fashion, even how to pronounce "Cannes." It's important to note that Cannes isn't just the most prestigious festival but the biggest, most important film market, and that it's a press and industry event for which unlike Sundance, Toronto, or New York, etc., the public can't buy tickets, though they can ogle, and attend evening screenings down by the beach, and there are a limited number of cinephile badges.

[Chris Knipp]

The rightness of the dominance of Cannes.

"The French are very serious about film, and rightly so; the art of cinema owes much of its development to France. So it’s fitting that the country is the home for the world’s most prestigious film festival. And though their commitment to tradition sometimes runs afoul of progressive ideas about dress codes and film distribution, there’s little doubt that Cannes will retain its spot atop the festival hierarchy for years to come." - Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

I've never been to Cannes, but my annual visits to Paris in fall and sometimes spring have always reaffirmed a sense that cinema deeply matters in France and is uniquely honored and respected there.

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Alain Delon receiving special Palm at Cannes

The special Palme d'Or for Alain Delon

You may recall there was some controversy (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4625-CANNES-Festival-2019&p=37593#post37593) over Alain Delon's receiving an honorary Palm for his work as an actor since 1957 due to reports of his behavior and views and a petition signed by over 26,000 people opposing the award. But Festivalpresident Thierry Frémaux declared that this was not the Nobel Prize and the award would go ahead he got the award, and wept when he received it. See the thumbnail bio of Delon on IMDb (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001128/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm). See also Sheena Scott's Forbes article (https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheenascott/2019/05/20/alain-delon-in-tears-as-he-accepts-the-palme-dhonneur-at-cannes-film-festival/#6a0f8fc1b4bc)about Delon's career and the award. One can discuss this issue endlessly, but even if Delon has expressed reprehensible views they are not expressed in his work, which shines through his performances for some of the world's greatest directors. He was not Leni Riefenstahl. And even her Nazi propaganda has to be acknowledged for its impressive artistry. Sometimes one must recognize artistic work and not confuse it with the person who does it. The gender parity issue, however, is one that Cannes has to confront more effectively.

[Chris Knipp]

Last year's final Cannes Jury Grid.

I just saw David Robert Mitchell's Cannes 2018 Competition film Under the Silver Lake (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4643-UNDER-THE-SILVER-LAKE-(David-Robert-Mitchell-2018)&p=37638#post37638), which has been practically hushed up here; I never did get to see it in a theater and had to settle for streaming. Its Metascore is so terrible (59%) compared to an excellent AlloCiné press rating (3.9), evidence of critical love in France, I thought I'd check last year's final Cannes Screen Daily Jury Grid, (https://www.screendaily.com/news/burning-tops-screens-final-2018-cannes-jury-grid-with-record-score/5129519.article) which will simultaneously be a review of last year's Competition. And we can see how the Competition films ranked with that European cross section of critics. Under the Silver Lake didn't do that badly. In the field of 21, it's sixth from the bottom, in fact above Labaki's Capernaum, which got the Jury Prize. But of course the awards didn't strictly adhere to these ratings, or Lee Chang-dong's Burning (my personal favorite of all these), which got a record high score for the Jury Grid, of 3.8 - no film on the Grid had ever scored that high - would have gotten the top prize (it didn't get any Competition Jury award but did get the Competition FIPRESCI Prize, which is important but doesn't get as much publicity). Notice Spike Lee's BlacKKKlansman ranks ninth here, yet won the Grand Prix, lucky for Spike.

How many have I seen by now? Well, I've still missed six, but for not having been anywhere near Cannes ever that's not bad, and also reflects pretty good availability Stateside. I would like to see Nuri Bilge Ceylan's The Wild Pear Tree, obviously, and also Serebrennikov's Leto, maybe Dvortsevoy's Ayka. Late Godard leaves me cold. I could have lived without Knife + Heart or Girls of the Sun (both which I have seen). Youmeddine, though some thought it was premature to include in the prestigious Competition list (that goes for the two below it), actually has charm. (I caught it by seeing some films at the London Film Festival in the fall.) Burning is still my favorite, and I love Ash Is Purest White and Cold War, both of which I have re-watched with pleasure. I got a lot more out of Sorry Angel in a second viewing. I've seen Capernaum twice too (it's overlong and repetitious and sentimental but also amazing).

Here's the closing 2018 grid in order of rank. Below that is the actual Jury Grid as it appears in Screen Daily.

3.8 Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
3.2 Shoplifters (Koreeda)
3 The Image Book (Godard)
2.9 The Wild Pear Tree (Ceylan)
2.9 Happy As Lazzaro (Rohrwacher)
2.9 Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke)
2.9 Cold War (Pawlekowski)
2.6 Three Faces (Panahi)
2.5 BlacKKKlansman
2.4 Leto (Serebrennikov)
2.4 Asako I & II (Hamaguchi)
2.3 Sorry Angel (Honoré)
2.3 Dogman (Garrone)
2.1 Ayka (Dvortsevoy)
2.1 At War [En guerre] (Stéphane Brizé)
2. Under the Silver Lake (Mitchell)
1.9 Capernaum (Labaki)
1.8 Everybody Knows (Farhadi)
1.8 Yomeddine (Shawky)
1.6 Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez)
1.0 Girls of the Sun (Husson)

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[Chris Knipp]

This year's final Jury Grid.

The last one here was missing It Must Be Heaven (Suleiman) and Sibyl (Justine Triet). Here is the final one with all the ratings of the ten critics.

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