Cannes 2021 selections; notes

[Chris Knipp]

Festival de Cannes 2021 (édition n°74) du 06 juillet 2021 au 17 juillet 2021
Cannes 2021 lists of films

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WES ANDERSON'S THE FRENCH DISPATCH GOT A STANDING OVATION From left, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Wes Anderson, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Benicio Del Toro at the premiere of The French Dispatch.Credit...Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images [NYTIMES]

Cannes 2021 Competition Films

Ahed's Knee/הַבֶּרֶךְ‎‎ (Habereḵ) (Nadav Lapid) Israel, France
Annette (opening film) (Leos Carax) France, Germany, Belgium
Benedetta (QP)/Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven) France, Netherlands
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve) Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico
Casablanca Beats/Haut et fort (Nabil Ayouch) Morocco, France
Compartment No. 6 (QP)/Hytti nro 6 (Juho Kuosmanen) Russia, Finland
The Divide (QP)/La Fracture (Catherine Corsini) France
Drive My Car/ドライブ・マイ・カー (Doraibu mai kā) (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) Japan
Everything Went Fine/Tout s'est bien passé (François Ozon) France
Flag Day (Sean Penn) United States
France Par un demi clair matin (Bruno Dumont) France, Italy, Germany, Belgium
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson) United States
A Hero/قهرمان (Ghahreman) (Asghar Farhadi) Iran
Lingui (Mahamat Saleh Haroun) Belgium, Chad, France, Germany
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, Thailand, United Kingdom
Nitram (Justin Kurzel) Australia, United Kingdom
Paris, 13th District/Les Olympiades (Jacques Audiard) France
Petrov's Flu/Петровы в гриппе (Petrоvy v grippe) (Kirill Serebrennikov) France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland
Red Rocket (Sean Baker) United States
The Restless/Les Intranquilles (Joachim Lafosse) Belgium, France
The Story of My Wife/A feleségem története (Ildikó Enyedi) Hungary, France, Germany, Italy
Three Floors/Tre piani (Nanni Moretti) Italy, France
Titane (QP) (Julia Ducournau) Belgium, France
The Worst Person in the World/Verdens verste menneske (Joachim Trier) Norway, Sweden, France
________________
(QP) indicates film in competition for the Queer Palm.


Un Certain Regard

After Yang (Kogonada) United States
Blue Bayou (Justin Chon) United States
Bonne mère (Hafsia Herzi) France
Commitment Hasan/Bağlılık Hasan (Semih Kaplanoğlu) Turkey
Freda (CdO) (Gessica Généus) Haiti
Gaey Wa'r (CdO) (Jiazuo Na) China
Great Freedom (QP)/Große Freiheit (Sebastian Meise) Austria
House Arrest/Дело (Delo) (Aleksey German, Jr.) Russia
The Innocents/De uskyldige (Eskil Vogt) Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, United States
La Civil (CdO) (Teodora Mihai) Belgium, Mexico, Romania
Lamb (CdO)/Dýrið (Valdimar Jóhannsson) Iceland, Poland, Sweden
Let There Be Morning/תן לזה להיות בוקר (Eran Kolirin) Israel
Moneyboys (CdO, QP) (C.B. Yi) Austria, Belgium, France, Taiwan
My Brothers and I (CdO)/Mes frères et moi (Yohan Manca) France
Onoda, 10 000 Nights in the Jungle (opening film)/Onoda, 10 000 nuits dans la jungle (Arthur Harari) France, Germany, Belgium, Italy
Prayers for the Stolen/Noche de fuego (Tatiana Huezo) Mexico
Rehana Maryam Noor/রেহানা মরিয়ম নূর (Abdullah Mohammad Saad) Bangladesh
Playground (CdO)/Un monde (Laura Wandel) Belgium
Unclenching the Fists/Разжимая кулаки (Razzhimaja kulaki)(dir. Kira Kovalenko) Russia
Women Do Cry (QP)/Жените плачат (Zhenite plachat) (dir. Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva) Bulgaria, France
__________
(CdO) indicates film eligible for the Caméra d'Or as a feature directorial debut.
(QP) indicates film in competition for the Queer Palm.


Out of Competition

Aline, the Voice of Love/Aline (Valérie Lemercier) Canada, France
BAC Nord (Cédric Jimenez) France
Emergency Declaration/비상선언 (Bisangseongeon) Han Jae-rim South Korea
In His Lifetime/De son vivant Emmanuelle Bercot France
OSS 117: From Africa with Love (closing film)/OSS 117 : Alerte rouge en Afrique noire (Nicolas Bedos) France
Stillwater (Tom McCarthy) United States
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) United States
Where Is Anne Frank (Ari Folman) Israel


Midnight screenings

Bloody Oranges/Oranges sanguines (Jean-Christophe Meurisse) France
Suprêmes (Audrey Estrougo) France
Tralala (Arnaud Larrieu, Jean-Marie Larrieu) France

Cannes Premiere section

Belle/Belle: Ryū to Sobakasu no Hime (竜とそばかすの姫) (Mamoru Hosoda) Japan
Cow (Andrea Arnold) United Kingdom)
Deception/Tromperie (Arnaud Desplechin France
Evolution/Evolúció (Kornél Mundruczó) Hungary
Hold Me Tight/Serre-moi fort (Mathieu Amalric) France
In Front of Your Face/당신의 얼굴 앞에서 (Hong Sang-soo) South Korea
Jane by Charlotte (CdO)/Jane par Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) France
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (Oliver Stone) United States
Love Songs for Tough Guys/Cette musique ne joue pour personne (Samuel Benchetrit) France
Marx Can Wait/Marx può aspettare (Marco Bellocchio) Italy
Mothering Sunday (Eva Husson) United Kingdom
Val (Ting Poo, Leo Scott) United States
Vortex (Gaspar Noé) Argentina, Italy

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES 2021 REMOTE NOTES.

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LÉA SEYDOUX APPEARS IN FOUR FILMS FEATURED AT CANNES 2021

Not promising to 'cover' Cannes remotely (it's already half over anyway), but the previews are appealing. Jonathan Romney calls this the Cannes "that had critics salivating." Excerpts from Romney's "blog" intro to Cannes from Film Comment (https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cannes-2021-the-first-days/):

Opening film: Annette, by Leos Carax "Carax was presumably aiming for than a simple rock opera (to use an archaic term), and one with marginally less narrative complexity than Ken Russell’s Tommy (1975). It didn’t bring out the best in either Marion Cotillard or a morose, stormy-browed Adam Driver—although the overture number 'So May We Start' was a buoyant saving grace." -Romney, Film Comment (https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/cannes-2021-the-first-days/)

Mark Cousins’s The Story of Film: A New Generation, an update of his encyclopedic TV series. His new chapters simply propose that this century, cinema has seen as many artists expanding or breaking rules as it ever has: beginning with the odd juxtaposition of Joker and Frozen, via Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Claire Denis, Tsai Ming-Liang’s VR, the Spider-Verse, and all points beyond. "a free-associative expression of faith in the continuing validity of the very thing that brought us to Cannes."

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II, "continuing her 2019 semi-autobiographical drama about pain, passion, and the problems of becoming a filmmaker when you’re posh and a young woman" - as well as coping with the death of the difficult addict boyfriend who dominated Part I. Has a fantasy ending unique to this director that's a fitting end to this "superb diptych."

Emmanuel Carrère’s Between Two Worlds, with Juliette Binoche launching a very Loachian investigation into unemployment in Northern France.

François Ozon’s Everything Went Fine, "based on Emmanuèle Bernheim’s book about her father’s choice of assisted suicide. It dealt subtly and intelligently with questions of life, death, and ethics, and while lead Sophie Marceau didn’t quite have the range of nuance that the Bernheim role called for, veteran great André Dussollier was masterly as a man exerting his will despite a debilitating stroke. But the film felt slightly… if not academic, then well-behaved, even studious, which is not Ozon’s natural mode."

Arthur Harari’s Onoda. New French director's 2n d feature "was a drama in Japanese about Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who famously held out after the end of World War II, refusing to believe that the conflict was over, and hiding out on an island in the Philippines..." "magnificent and crazy... captures war as derangement, and heroism as delusion, to troubling and even moving effect. . . extraordinary, Herzogian...but it's somewhat excessive 166-minute length kept Romney, he says, from seeing it all the way through.

-----------------
[B]LÉA RULES

Not mentioned by Jonathan Romney (Yet) but Deadline (https://deadline.com/2021/07/lea-seydoux-interview-cannes-french-dispatch-deception-story-of-my-wife-france-1234784736/) has a piece, "With Four Films In Cannes, Léa Seydoux Will Rule The Croisette – Interview." Léa comes with almost suspiciously "royal" movie lieange, being directly descended on both sides from the two most powerful film producing families in France (her grandfather is the chairman of Pathé, her granduncle is the chairman of Gaumont). But since she came on the scene and started working prolifically 15 or 16 years ago, she has over and over shown that she can carry her own weight as a hard-working, versatile, and yes, glamorous actress. She's most known for Kéchiche's sexually bold lesbian love affair film La Vie d'Adèle aka Blue Is the Warmest Color, but she is associated with many other as good or better titles.

She has been in Bond movies, in Robin Hood (Ridley Scott) and Mission Impossible (J.J.Abrams). But like Robert Pattinson she is a glamorous star who seeks to work with the most interesting directors - sometimes in very small roles. (She may be ahead of Pattinson in that.) She has worked with, besides Kéchiche, among others, Raoul Ruiz, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, Yorgos Lanthimos, Catherine Breillat, Wes Anderson (twice), Bertrand Bonello, Benoît Jacquot (twice), Christophe Honoré, Ursula Meier, Xavier Dolan, and Arnaud Desplechin (now twice) and Bruno Dumont (now for the first time). She has wrapped or is completing films with David Cronenberg, Arnaud des Pallières, Mia Hansen-Løve, and her second performance as Dr. Madeleine Swann in a Bond film, this time with Cary Fukunaga; the first time was with Sam Mendes.

In this Cannes Léa Seydoux "will be reunited with directors Wes Anderson and Arnaud Desplechin, with whom she’s worked before, for The French Dispatch and Deception, respectively. France marks her first collaboration with Bruno Dumont, while Hungarian woman director Ildikó Enyedi directs Seydoux in The Story of My Wife."
"It’s crazy," Seydoux says of the flurry of activity. And she’s excited about what the work represents. "I’ve done one American film, a European film and two French films, and they are all so different. It’s exciting they’ve all been chosen by Cannes."
She has had to skip the Cannes premieres because she has tested positive for COVID-19 and she is isolating at home in Paris.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

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VICKY KRIEPS, TIM ROTH IN BERGMAN ISLAND

Mia Hansen-Løve: BERGMAN ISLAND (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6910282/reference). In Competition. The French filmmaker's 7th film explores a couple, both filmmakers, as they spend time on Faro, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived, writing screenplays. Variety;s headline is "Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth Look for Love, and the Ghost of Ingmar, in Mia Hansen-Løve’s Beguiling Cinephile Shell Game." Telegraph gives it 5 out of 5 stars. If you like Hansen-Løve, and I definitely do, and you like Bergman, and what cinephile can discount him? - this flick's for you - though it not be for every everyday moviegoer. Also with Mia Wasikowska. Obviously partly related to Hansen-Løve's relationship from 2002 to 2017 with French director Olivier Assayas. (Opened in French cinemas today; it will coming to the US via IFC.)

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CAST & DIRECTOR (2ND FROM RT.) AT CANNES OPENING

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILM.

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PODALYDÈS AND SEYDOUX IN DECEPTION

Arnaud Desplechin's TROMPERIE/DECEPTION. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13613056/reference) It features Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux, Anouk Grinberg, Emmanuelle Devos, Rebecca Marder, Madalina Constantin. I fear Deadline's Anna Smith says it's "a self-indulgent Philip Roth adaptation that’s only marginally better than 2017’s derided Ismael’s Ghosts. " And I hated Ismael's Ghosts (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4375-New-York-Film-Festival-2017&p=36273#post36273) (NYFF 2017). Nonetheless it stars Léa Seydoux, featured above for being in no less than four Cannes films this season. Tellingly the film isn't in Competition but in the Cannes Premieres section. It appears a rather glum version of Léa. I don't blame her with Podalydès as her lover. There are many film adaptations of Philip Roth's many novels; they never quite succeed. I always like watching Emmanuelle Devos, though. And I'd like to see wha Léa does with this lead.

[Chris Knipp]

THE CANNES JURIES: COMPETITION AND UN CERTAIN REGARD

Spike Lee, who won big Cannes cred by receiving the Grand Prix three years ago for BLACKKKLANSMAN, is going to make a strong impression this year: he's head of the most prominent Cannes Competition jury. The girls outnumber the boys on the jury, and with Tahar Rahim, a French Arab actor, a South Korean actor, and NEIGHBORING SOUNDS Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho a the other boys, a conventional mainstream viewpoint is likely to be avoided. Girls outnumber boys in the Un Certain Regard jury too. And there are two directors I greatly admire included: England's Andrea Arnold (FISH TANK, AMERICAN HONEY) and the creator of THE CLIMB, my favorite American movie of last year, Michael Angelo Covino. Cool aggregations indeed.

Main competition
Spike Lee, American director, Jury President
Mati Diop, French-Senegalese director and actress
Mylène Farmer, Canadian-French singer and songwriter
Maggie Gyllenhaal, American actress, director, and producer
Jessica Hausner, Austrian director and screenwriter
Mélanie Laurent, French actress and director
Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazilian director, film programmer, and critic
Tahar Rahim, French actor
Song Kang-ho, South Korean actor


Un Certain Regard
Andrea Arnold, British director, Jury President
Daniel Burman, Argentine director
Michael Angelo Covino, American director and actor
Mounia Meddour, Algerian director
Elsa Zylberstein, French actress

[Chris Knipp]

OTHER CANNES FILMS.

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AGATHE ROUSSELLE AS ALEXIA IN TITANE

Julia Ducournau's TITANE (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10944760/reference)follows her 2016 debut RAW (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3624&p=3644#p3644) and reportedly is just as demented - perhaps less successfully, but still with name actors and beautiful images. There are many reviews. I liked David Erlich's for IndieWire (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/titane-review-julia-ducournau-1234650972/), which made it a "Critic's Pick." The focus is on a woman serial killer and "car model" who has sex with her car, and turns up at the house of firefighter Vincent Lindon, who spent several years working out to build muscle mass for the role. She poses as his long lost son, who disappeared as a boy years earlier. See also Erlich's interview (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/vincent-lindon-worked-out-titane-1234651181/)with Vincent Lindon, who will appear soon in Claire Denis's new film, FIRE, a love story. "Titane," titanium, refers to a plate in the girl's head, an important part of her backstory.Director Bertrand Bonello plays the girls's irresponsible father. Peter Bradshaw gives this 2/5 stars in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/14/titane-review-julia-ducournau) and says it's "a car crash." In Competition. See the trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5_w2W5G9OM&t=5s).

This film was a sensation on the Croissette, but did not score high on the SCREEN DAILY CRITICS GRID. Leos Carax's ANNETTE did welll but Hamaguchi's DRIVE MY CAR did better. Verhoeven's BENEDETTA dis pretty well; other interesting looking films (including Hansen-Love's) fared disappointingly. At the halfway point in the GRID scores were on average lower than the equivalent point in 2019. Ten titles into 2019’s 21 film-strong GRID the average score was 2.5, but this year 12 titles in the average score was just 2.1. Different critics and different films; but this hints that reactions are less enthusiastic at this year's Competition.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES, continued.

SCREEN DAILY CRITICS GRID (July 14)

At this point Hamaguchi's DRIVE MY CAR rans highest, pushing Carax's musical ANNETTE aside. Sean Penn's film has the lowest rating so far. (The descriptions of the films at the bottom of the grid represents films not rated yet.) More than half the Competition films had been seen and rated by this point. Farhadi's HERO did rather well, though there are several films above it on the grid. Juho Kuosmanen'S Moscow-to-Murmansk Russian train journey film COMPARTMENT NO. 6 is a contender. Eight films remain to be watched and graded.

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/GRID3.jpg

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

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SEIDI HAARLA IN COMPARTMENT NO. 6

Juho Kuosmanen'S COMPARTMENT NO. 6 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10262648/reference), about the Moscow-to-Murmansk Russian train journey to the Arctic Circle some time post-fall of communism but before cell phones, sat well with critics and may be a serious contender among the Cannes Competition films. This is the Finnish director's first feature since THE HAPPIEST DAY IN THE LIFE OF OLLI MAKI, which won the top prize in the Cannes' 2016 Un Certain Regard section. The main character (Seidi Haarla) is a student interested in archaeology who is going up north to look at petroglyphs, who was to go with her landlady/lover but winds up going alone and connecting gradually with a Russian miner (Yuriy Borisov) on the long, slow journey. A special relationship of a subtle, unexpected kind develops. Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney sums this up as "a strange, scrappy film, in its own way quite beguiling." On the SCREEN DAILY GRID it socred the same as Farhadi's A HERO (2.6), a notch below Verhoeven's BENEDETTA.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

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Ryûsuke Hamaguchi'S DRIVE MY CAR (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14039582/reference)/ドライブ・マイ・カー(Doraibu mai kā), which has become the highest ranking film on the GRUD, is adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami. It is "a forensic anatomy of love, grief and survivor's guilt" in which stars Nishijima and Miura both give impressively internalized performances." It now has the highest score, 3.5, on the SCREEN DAILY CRITICS GRID, which is considered a good predictor of how the awards will go. This film is simple but slow-moving, three hours out of 40 pages of material, according to Guy Lodge in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/drive-my-car-review-1235016509/), but he says it doesn't seem pushed. It "packs an awful lot into its lean sentences," and combines "a grief-stricken marriage story" with a "corrupted friendship study," both related via the "tale of odd-couple companionship." He says it may be Hamaguchi's best yet and in a class with the best Murakami film adaptations along with Lee Chang-dong's great BURNING (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4556-New-York-Film-Festival-2018&p=37135#post37135) (NYFF 2018). This film is so complex in its "simplicity," that even Peter Bradshaw's GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/14/drive-my-car-review-hamaguchi-murakami) plot summary seems convoluted.

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[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

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DAPHNE PATAKIA AND VIRGINIE EFIRA IN BENEDETTA

Paul Verhoeven's BENEDETTA (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6823148/reference) is a nominee for both the Palme d'Or and the Queer Palm. I wonder if its high SCREEN DAILY GRID rating of 2.7 is really right. Not evidently in everyone's view. Peter Debruge's VARIETY review (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/benedetta-review-paul-verhoeven-1235015529/) is headed "A Guilty-Pleasure Nunsploitation Movie From the Director of BASIC INSTINCT." It is about a nun. While Verhoeven reteamed with ELLE screenwriter David Burke to adapt Judith C. Brown’s "rigorously researched" Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Verhoeven plays it for arousal - ours, Debruge says, thus "satisfying the most basic definition of pornography." Nonetheless while the Anglophone critics on the GRID rated it low, the others didn't, so it scored 2.7/5, higher than DRIVE MY CAR and ANNETTE. To be continued.

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SALEH KARIMAI AND AMIR JADIDI IN A HERO

Ashar Farhadi's A HERO (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11777738/reference) (Persian: قهرمان‎, romanized: Ghahreman) was one of the two films below BENEDETTA, with COMPARTMENT NO. 6, that got a 2.6 on the GRID, so far. This is about a man in prison for debt let out to redeem himself, who finds gold coins, but choosing to return them to their owner rather than use them to pay back what he owes, he becomes a media darling as an example of a good Samaritan. Farhadi is notable for his real-seeming films full of specific detail, but Owen Gleiberman of VARIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/a-hero-review-asghar-farhadi-1235018386/)thinks this time it all gets too complicated and diffuse in the telling and speaks to mind too much and heart not enough. David Erlich of INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/a-hero-review-asghar-farhadi-1234650510/) on the contrary thinks it's Farhadi's best film since A SEPARATION. My experience of Farhadi suggests one may need the patience to watch the film more than once before arriving at a decision. It took me a second viewing of A SEPARATION to see how good it was.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

What's still to come? Work from these directors:

JACQUES AUDIARD: I'm a big fan of this top French director and so I'm excited to learn what PARIS, 13th DISTRICT will be like. From the focus on four young people in a neighborhood, I'd say the new film reflects a desire Audiard has expressed in the past to stop tackling epic productions like A PROPHET every time and focus on more modest work. [As of Wed. night, this film has shown and been reviewed. See below.]

APICHACHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL l: "Joe" for short has won big at Cannes in the past, and his great fans will be very curious what his very multi-National opus MEMORIA will bring.

BRUNO DUMONT: IT would be surprising indeed if the arresting but weird French director becomes an award contender, but his film FRANCE's topic, "A celebrity journalist, juggling her busy career and personal life, has her life over-turned by a freak car accident," and the star role for the omnipresent but alas absent Léa Seydoux represent what would appear to be a quite new direction, so that's interesting to see.

SEAN BAKER: His comedy RED ROCKET about a washed-up porn star returning home to no welcome doesn't sound like big award material, but what he does is always interesting.

ILDIKÓ ENYEDI is a Hungarian woman director who has won accolades but I'm not familiar with her work. Again this is an opportunity to observe the variety of Léa Seydoux, for in Enyedi's Competition film at Cannes this year ,THE STORY OF MY WIFE[/B, Seydoux plays the lead as the woman a sea captain marries on a bet.

[B]JOACHIM FOSSE: You'll find three reviews I've written of earlier films by this French director at this LINK (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3727). I'm not thus far a fan. The focus in his new one, THE RESTLESS, on the impact of mental illness on a family however is one there's a lot of interest in lately.

NABIL AYOUCH: I lived in Morocco once, so I'm interested to see a film from there. CASABLANCA BEATS depicts ghetto youths in a music workshop.

JUSTIN KURZEL is an Australian director. I have reviewed his MACBETH, and his TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG. I had quite a bit of time for the latter, and he is a vivid director. His star this time is Caleb Landry Jones, the American actor who performed impressively last year in THE OUTPOST, standing out most in a field of name actors and name actors' sons. As a lone gunman in NITRAM, depicting events leading up to a mass shooting, he has a powerful role here.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS, continued.

Audiard.

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LUCIE ZHANG AND MAKITA SAMBA IN LES OLYMPIADES

Jacques Adiard's PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT/LES OLYMPIADES, PARIS 13E adapts three graphic novels by the American Adrian Tomine into French in black and white with help from writers Léa Mysius the now known to be exccelent Céline Sciamma. The result is very sexy and up-to-date in the time of Tinder and other such hookup apps, which make life a matter of fuck first and get to know each other later. The setting of all the action is a block of tall buildings in southeastern Paris that no tourists associate with the city. VAIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/paris-13th-district-review-les-olympiades-1235019899/) says this is "a Fresh Take on the Moody B&W French Relationship Movie, and INDIEWARE says it's "shallow." Jonathan Romney in SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/paris-13th-district-cannes-review/5161605.article) says Audiard "reinvents his own cinema" here. I think this is a direction I will like better than I did DHEEPAN or Adiard's US film THE SISTERS BROTHERS.

(PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT got a 2.5 on the SCREEN DAILY GRID.)

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AUDIARD, LEFT, AND LUCIE ZHANG, MIDDLE, AT CANNES OPENING OF LES OLYMPIDES, PARIS 13E

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS, previously

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STILL FROM PETROV'S FLU

Some catching up.

Mention by Jessica Kiang in the FILM COMMENT blog of PETROV'S FLU* (by Kirill Serebrennikov of LETO (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4211), which I reviewed, and THE STUDENT) reminds me that I have not mentioned six or seven Competition films that were shown and reviewed earlier. You will find them on the SCREEN DAILY CRITICS GRID reproduced above (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5002-Cannes-2021-selections-notes&p=39693#post39693). Alphabetically, here they are:

AHED'S KNEE (Nadav Lapid). "An Israeli filmmaker throws himself in the midst of two battles doomed to fail: one against the death of freedom, the other against the death of a mother." Metasccore 74%. Sounds worth watching. (Lapid seems a little too slick at times, but yet his films are about important enough things or clever enough so you want to see them.)

EVERYTHING WENT FINE (François Ozon). When André, 85, has a stroke, Emmanuelle hurries to her father's bedside. Sick and half-paralyzed in his hospital bed, he asks Emmanuelle to help him end his life. But how can you honor such a request when it's your own father? André Dusollier was praised as the dying man. The Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/everything-went-fine)rating is solid, 70%. Reports say not deeply emotionally engaging given the subject matter, but given the subject matter and Ozon, this would be a must-see for me.

LINGUI, THE SACRED BONDS (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) "A Powerful Abortion Drama Honors the Resilience of Chad’s Women." At 1.8 about the forth lowest score on the GRID. But it's Cannes Competition, man! MUBI has snapped it up for North American distribution. As DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2021/07/cannes-film-review-lingui-the-sacred-bonds-competition-1234791588/) says, "The topicality of this Cannes Film Festival competition entry should help it navigate to receptive specialized venues internationally."

THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Joachim Trier). "Chronicles four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is." And Triers previous star, "his Antone Doinel" someone said, the memorable Anders Danielsen Lie, was seen in BERGMAN ISLAND earlier. And he's in this too. Peter Bradshaw called this "an instant classic" and in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/08/the-worst-person-in-the-world-review-cannes-2021) gave it five out of five stars. Guy Lodge in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/the-worst-person-in-the-world-review-1235014608/) says this is Trier's "best since OSLO, AUGUST 31St," and that would be very good indeed. And indeed the Metascore (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-worst-person-in-the-world) is 87%. The GRID score of 2.4 doesn't seem quite right. (Generally the GRID is reflecting critical opinion at Cannes this year, though.) I want to see this!

THE DIVIDE (Catherine Corsini). "A traumatic trip to a Paris ER." "Two women on the verge of a breakup, in a hospital, are further stressed on the night of a big demonstration by the overwhelmed staff and by angry, injured protestors who land up besieging the building." "Leaves an indelible impression," wrote the VARIETY critic (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/the-divide-review-la-fracture-1235016222/) (bylines have disappeared again). No Metascore. Sounds seriously unfun.

FLAG DAY (Sean Penn) Tanked. "Summary: A father lives a double life as a counterfeiter, bank robber and con man in order to provide for his daughter." Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/flag-day) rating: 55% GRID score: 1.1, the lowest. Weird plot. Penn seems to have gone badly wrong as a director again here, not the first time he has tanked at Cannes.

THREE FLOORS/TRE PIANI (Nanni Moretti) Fell flat. The story of three families living in three apartments in the same bourgeois condominium. It has big Italian stars: Riccardo Scamarcio, Margherita Buy, Alba Rohrwacher. My guess is it suffers from the ill of much of Italian cinema today: terminal blandness. At 1.5 it's the third from the bottom on the GRID.

_______________________

All the above is pretty hasty, but sorry -- I just can't cover the whole of Cannes in two days! I have also not yet found any reports on other Cannes departments - Un Certain Regard and Directors Fortnight, especially. More details will follow the next few days in the leadup to the festival's conclusion at the weekend.

_______________
PETROV'S FLU got two out of five stars from Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (V) who however gives it a typically patient and informative review. Bradshaw's continuing tireless big-festival overage continues to impress me. Plot description: "A day in the life of a comic book artist and his family in post-Soviet Russia. While suffering from the flu, Petrov is carried by his friend Igor on a long walk, drifting in and out of fantasy and reality." [Serebrennikov is a big theater person in Russia who also is a stalwart dissident, which is why he consistently can't come to Cannes from Russia because he might get thrown in jail when he comes back. I reviewed his LETO (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4211) in 2019. PETROV'S FLU got the same score as THE FRENCH DESPATCH on the GRID, 2.3 - a realm of very respectable losers who may be higher ranking at Cannes than appears on any GRID.

[Chris Knipp]

CRITICS WEEK, EGYPTIAN FILM WINS.

Egyptian director Omar El Zohairy’s FEATHERS, a surreal tragicomedy, has scooped up the €15,000 Nespresso grand prize at the 60th edition of Cannes’ Critics’ Week. "Omar El Zohairy’s comedic drama about a woman forced to deal with the aftermath of a magic trick gone awry — it turns her good-for-nothing husband into a chicken — uses the surreal to peck away at deeper truths." (ALEX RITMAN, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/cannes-2021-hidden-gem-feathers-1234979117/).

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

JULY 15 Competition films. SCREEN DAILY reports: "The latest film from Jacques Audiard – a Palme d’Or winner in 2015 with Dheepan – came out on top of the new arrivals with a score of 2.5, placing it fifth on the grid - just behind Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero. Helping the average were scores of four (excellent) from Positif’s Michel Ciment and The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin and Tim Robey."

"Only five titles are left to take their place on the grid, with Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MEMORIA, Bruno Dumont’s FRANCE, and Nabil Ayouch’s CASABLANCA Beats up next."


Today's jury GRID below.

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[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS.

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TILDA SWINTON IN WEERESETHAKUL'S MEMORIA

More competition films have been shown: FRANCE by Bruno Dumont and MEMORIA by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Apichatpong Weeresethakul's MEMORIA is a metaphysical meditation staged in Colombia, his first film outside Thailand and first in English. In i ta Scottish woman (Tilda Swinton), while traveling, becomes obsessed with tracing a sound that invades her sleep, than comes to her when awake. David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/tilda-swinton-in-apichatpong-weerasethakuls-memoria-cannes-2021-1234982509/) finds the film partly entrancing, partly inscrutable, and true to form for the director. Peter Bradahaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/15/memoria-review-apichatpong-weerasethakul-tilda-swinton) finds Tilda and "Joe" a "dream team" and gives the film five out of five stars. It made him feel like he was 17 again.

Dumont's FRANCE is a dry indictment of public media focused on France de Moeurs, a TV celebrity journalist (Léa SEydoux), who manipulates the truth in everything she does, then has her life upended when she hots a poor person while driving her car. BFI's SIGHT AND SOUND (https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/france-bruno-dumont-media-satire-lea-seydoux) (Giovanni Marchini Camia) calls this film "a satire of the blackest kind" and says "In FRANCE, he doesn’t go for laughs; his withering and implicating critique of our hyper-mediated present exaggerates its absurdities but denies us the catharsis of laughter." SCREEN DAILY: Jonathan Romney (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/france-cannes-review/5161656.article) says this is a new turn for Dumont indeed, "flamboyantly lavish visually, and dramatically pitched on an epic scale," but that it makes its point "quickly and forcefullly" and then goes on to make it over and over, "with different modulations, for over two hours."


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LÉA SEYDOUX IN DUMONT'S FRANCE

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES: UN CERTAIN REGARD FILMS.

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From SCREEN DAILY these descriptions of the films.

After Yang (US)
Dir. Kogonada
Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith star in this drama about a family in the near future who face big existential questions after their AI helper unexpectedly breaks down. A24 holds global rights to the film from Korea-born director Kogonada, who made a splash with his 2017 debut feature Columbus starring John Cho. Theresa Park of Per Capita Productions, who produces with Cinereach, kickstarted the project after she bought the rights to Alexander Weinstein’s short story Saying Goodbye To Yang and attached Kogonada.
Contact: A24

Blue Bayou (US)
Dir. Justin Chon
Chon’s timely tale sees the filmmaker/actor star opposite Alicia Vikander as a Korean man in Louisiana struggling to make a better life for his family when he learns he could be deported. Focus Features snapped up the film at the virtual Cannes market last year and will release in the US on September 17. Charles D King’s Macro (Judas And The Black Messiah) and eOne financed the project. California-born Chon starred in the Twilight series and has been gaining stature as a director. His Los Angeles riots drama Gook won the audience Best of Next! award at Sundance in 2017.
Contact: Focus Features

La Civil (Bel-Rom-Mex)
Dir. Teodora Ana Mihai
Romania-born, Belgium-based Mihai travels to northern Mexico for her debut fiction feature. Inspired by true events and co-written with Mexican writer Habacuc Antonio De Rosario, La Civil follows a mother desperate to find her daughter who has been abducted by a drug cartel. Mihai previously directed documentary Waiting For August, which was nominated for a European Film Award in 2014. La Civil was developed at Cannes Cinefondation and TorinoFilmLab. Hans Everaert produces for Belgium’s Menuetto Film (Girl), and co-producers include the Dardenne brothers’ Les Films du Fleuve, Cristian Mungiu’s Mobra Films and Michel Franco’s Teorema.
Contact: Frédéric Corvez, Urban Distribution International

Commitment Hasan (Turkey)
Dir. Semih Kaplanoglu
The second in a planned trilogy of films exploring family bonds, Commitment Hasan — which follows 2019’s Commitment Asli — is the story of a man trying to make a living from his father’s fruit garden and taking a pilgrimage to Mecca. Kaplanoglu won the Berlinale’s Golden Bear in 2010 for Honey and Tokyo’s grand prix in 2017 for Grain. Commitment Hasan is produced by the director’s own Kaplan Film.
Contact: Films Boutique

Freda (Haiti)
Dir. Gessica Généus
Haitian actor/filmmaker Généus’s debut narrative feature tells of three working-class women who resolve to leave their town after a traumatic event. The film received backing from Doha Film Institute, and Généus shot it in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince in 2019 and 2020. Freda was produced by Ayizan Production, which the filmmaker established after she returned from acting school in Paris, and Merveilles Production.
Contact: Faissol Gnonlonfin, Merveilles Production

Great Freedom (Austria-Ger)
Dir. Sebastian Meise
Meise played San Sebastian and then Rotterdam with debut feature Still Life (2011), while in 2012 his documentary Outingscreened at Hot Docs in Canada and Zurich. Reuniting with Still Life co-writer Thomas Reider, the Austrian filmmaker presents a drama set in post-war Germany about a man (Undine’s Franz Rogowski) imprisoned for being gay, who forms an attachment to his convicted-murderer cellmate (Georg Friedrich). Austria’s FreibeuterFilm produces with Germany’s Rohfilm Productions. Filmladen Filmverleih releases in Austria and Piffl Medien in Germany.
Contact: The Match Factory

House Arrest (Rus-Ger-Can)
Dir. Aleksey German Jr
Following Venice bows for his first three features, and Berlin premieres for 2015’s Under Electric Clouds and 2018’s Dovlatov(winning a Silver Bear with the latter), Russia’s German Jr makes his Cannes debut with a drama about a professor who takes to social media to criticise his Russian city’s administration and soon finds himself accused of embezzlement and placed under house arrest. The film is produced by Artem Vasilyev’s Moscow-based Metrafilms with Germany’s LM Media and Canada’s Outrageous Film as co-producers.
Contact: mk2 Films

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THE INNOCENTS (CANNES)

The Innocents (Nor-Swe-Fin-Den-Fr)
Dir. Eskil Vogt
Vogt has a doubleheader at Cannes — he is also co-writer of his frequent collaborator Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person In The World, which is in Competition. The Norwegian filmmaker’s second feature as a director after 2014 Sundance award winner Blind is a supernatural thriller that sees the innocent play of four children turn into something else when they harness special powers. Maria Ekerhovd produces for MER Film, which will also release in Norway. Actress Ellen Dorrit Petersen (Blind) reteams with the director, and her daughter Rakel Lenora Flottum takes the lead role as nine-year-old Ida.
Contact: Protagonist Pictures

Lamb (Ice-Swe-Pol)
Dir. Valdimar Johannsson
This Icelandic supernatural drama stars Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snaer Gudnason as a couple living on a remote farm who adopt a mysterious newborn child — half-human, half-sheep — to raise as their own. First-time feature director Johannsson co-wrote the script with acclaimed Icelandic author and poet Sjón, who also worked with Robert Eggers on his upcoming The Northman. The film’s executive producers include Bela Tarr. New Europe has already sold Lamb to territories including France (The Jokers), Germany (Koch Films), Benelux (The Searchers) and Denmark (Camera Film).
Contact: Jan Naszewski, New Europe Film Sales

Let There Be Morning (Isr)
Dir. Eran Kolirin
Israeli filmmaker Kolirin returns to Un Certain Regard having previously screened his debut feature The Band’s Visit and third film Beyond The Mountains And Hills in the sidebar in 2007 and 2016 respectively. For his fourth feature, Kolirin adapts Palestinian writer and journalist Sayed Kashua’s 2006 novel Let It Be Morning. It follows a Palestinian man with Israeli citizenship who believes himself to be assimilated into Israeli society until he is caught up in an army blockade while attending a wedding in his native village. Kashua’s 2002 debut novel Dancing Arabs was likewise adapted for the big screen, by Eran Riklis in 2014
Contact: The Match Factory

Moneyboys (Austria-Fr-Tai-Bel)
Dir. CB Yi
China-born, Austria-based Yi makes his Cannes debut with a filmed-in-Taiwan LGBTQ+ drama about a young man working as a rent boy and torn between traditional values and rampant capitalism. The cast includes Kai Ko, Chloe Maayan and JC Lin. The project was backed by Arte France Cinema, Taipei Film Commission and La Cie Cinematographique with support from the Austrian National Film Fund and Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. Yi studied directing with Michael Haneke and photography with Christian Berger at the Vienna Film Academy.
Contact: Totem Films

My Brothers And I (Fr)
Dir. Yohan Manca
Short filmmaker Manca’s feature debut follows a 14-year-old boy who strikes up a friendship with a young opera singer during one stifling summer. Produced by France’s Single Man Productions, which also has Samuel Benchetrit’s Love Songs For Tough Guys playing in Cannes Premiere, My Brothers And I was supported by France’s National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image (CNC) via its Images de la diversité fund. Ad Vitam will distribute in France.
Contact: Jean-Félix Dealberto, Charades

Nora (Fr)
Dir. Hafsia Herzi
French actress/director Herzi’s second feature revolves around a cleaner in her 50s living in a housing estate in Marseille who stands by her son as he awaits trial on robbery charges. Herzi broke into cinema in Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2007 Couscous and now has around 50 acting credits to her name. Her directing debut You Deserve A Lover, in which she starred as a woman trying to get over a problematic relationship, premiered in Critics’ Week in 2019. Halima Benhamed makes her big-screen debut in the title role.
Contact: SBS International

Onoda — 10 000 Nights In The Jungle (Fr-It-Bel-Jap-Ger-Camb)
Dir. Arthur Harari
France’s Harari makes his Cannes debut with his second feature, following 2016’s Dark Inclusion, which netted a César nomination for best first film and Niels Schneider the César for most promising actor. Shot in Japanese, this international co-production tells the story of Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, who ignored news of Japan’s Second World War defeat and held out in the Philippines jungle until 1974. Harari co-writes with Vincent Poymiro (Dark Inclusion, French TV series En Thérapie). Nicolas Anthomé produces for his own Bathysphere Productions, alongside To Be Continued and in co-production with eight other partners.
Contact: Camille Neel, Le Pacte

Playground (Bel)
Dir. Laura Wandel
Seven years after bringing Foreign Bodies (Les Corps Etrangers) to Cannes’ shorts competition, Belgium’s Wandel now presents her debut feature. Playground follows new primary school student Nora who discovers her brother is a victim of bullying and is billed as “an immersive dive, at child’s height, into the world of school”. Titled Un Monde in French-speaking markets, Wandel’s film is produced by Dragon Films and co-produced by Lunanime.
Contact: Indie Sales

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Playground - Copyrights DRAGONS FILMS copy

SOURCE: DRAGON FILMS

PLAYGROUND

Prayers For The Stolen (Mex-Ger-Bra-Qat)
Dir. Tatiana Huezo
Mexico-based, El Salvador-born Huezo has established herself on the festival circuit mostly through documentary shorts as an unflinching chronicler of women’s response to violence in Latin America. She stepped up to features with her 2016 Berlinale documentary Tempestad (selected by Mexico as its 2018 foreign-language Oscar contender). Huezo now presents her narrative feature debut, which came through Morelia/Sundance Story Lab and portrays life in a town at war seen through the eyes of three pre-adolescent girls. Pimienta Films, run by Nicolas Celis (Roma), is lead producer.
Contact: The Match Factory

Rehana (Bang-Sing-Qatar)
Dir. Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Saad’s second film is the first from Bangladesh in Cannes’ official selection. The story follows the title character, an assistant professor who seeks justice for one of her medical students and her six-year-old daughter in a patriarchal society. The project was a recipient of Busan’s Asian Cinema Fund and Doha Film Institute’s post-production grant. Saad’s debut feature Live From Dhaka won best director and actor prizes at Singapore International Film Festival in 2016, and went on to screen at festivals including Rotterdam and Locarno.
Contact: Films Boutique

Streetwise (China)
Dir. Na Jiazuo
Executive produced by The Eight Hundred director Guan Hu, Na’s debut feature is set in the early 2000s revolving around a group of impoverished young men who stay behind in their small town, rather than following the usual path and moving to a big city for work. The project won prizes from both Shanghai Film Festival’s project market and Pingyao festival’s WiP lab. The film was first announced by the festival under the title Gaey Wa’r — seemingly a local dialect version of the Mandarin title Jiē wá er, which roughly translates as ‘street kids’.
Contact: Sebastien Chesneau, Cercamon

This was the winner of the Un Certain Regard top prize:

Unclenching The Fists (Rus)
Dir. Kira Kovalenko
Russia’s Kovalenko made her debut in 2016 with Tallinn Black Nights premiere Sofichka, and now presents her follow-up. The film follows traumatic events when a father moves his three children to the small North Ossetia mining town of Mizur, but his two elder offspring soon aim to escape his suffocating presence. Alexander Rodnyansky and Sergey Melkumov — who together produced Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena, Leviathan and Loveless, as well as Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole — produce.
Contact: Antoine Guilhem, Wild Bunch International

Women Do Cry (Bul-Fr)
Dirs. Mina Mileva, Vesela Kazakova
Continuing the collaboration between animator/filmmaker Mileva and actress/filmmaker Kazakova (an EFP Shooting Star at Berlin in 2006), Women Do Cry is the second feature the pair have co-directed, alongside several shorts and documentaries. Their film Cat In The Wall premiered in Locarno’s main competition in 2019. Women Do Cry, which is based on a true story, follows an unconventional family of women in Bulgaria at a time when the country is being shaken by anti-equality protests.
Contact: mk2 Films

Cannes profiles by Nikki Baughan, Charles Gant, Melanie Goodfellow, Elaine Guerini, Jeremy Kay, Lee Marshall, Wendy Mitchell, Jean Noh, Jonathan Romney, Michael Rosser, Silvia Wong

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS. Two more Competition films July 15.


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SIMON REX IN RED ROCKET

Sean Baker's RED ROCKET says Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/14/red-rocket-review-sean-baker-porn-star) is a "vivid portrait of a washed up porn star" (4/5 star. He and IndieWire see metaphorical links with Trump in =Simon Rex aka Mikey Saber's plan to reinstate himself as a star after his schtick being wiped out by events. THE WRAP finds this link too. All admire Baker's ease with his characters and Texas milieu and ability to get around staging problems economically. It woulds like Baker maintains is distinctive voice. David Erlich of INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/07/red-rocket-review-sean-baker-simon-rex-1234651067/) catchily says "RED ROCKET is so arresting because of how it keeps hope alive by rescuing devastation from the jaws of happiness." This is a movie, he says, "that wonders if America’s pathological narcissism will ever burn itself out." At the bottom end Peter Debruge of VARIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/red-rocket-review-simon-rex-1235019398/) finds t"Everything in RED ROCKET happens just a little too easily, which is one of the weaknesses of a self-indulgent regional satire that stretches its perhaps-80-minute plot over more than two hours. . ." But the Metascore of the film is a very healthy 78%.

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FROM CASABLANA BEATS


Nabil Ayouch's CASABLANCA BEATS: Wend Ide of SCREEN DAILY calls it "A vibrant musical from Nabil Ayouch, shot over two years at the cultural centre he founded. Ayouch enlivens a genre gone dull with his vibrant hiphop music from the Moroccan ghetto, says Deborah Young in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/casablanca-beats-review-cannes-2021-1234981770/) This is Ayouch's first film in Cannes competition, his third at Cannes (HORSES OF GOD played in Un Certain Regard, MUCH LOVEDin Directors’ Fortnight). This is a fitionalized version of his own experience. It's about the power of the music and the art form, not primarily about individual development.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES FILMS: final results


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CALEB LANDRY JONES IN NITRAM

Apichatpong Werrsethakul's MEMORIA (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8399288/reference) has shown and received 3.4 on the SCREEN DAILY JURY GRID, putting it second just below Hamaguchi's DRIVE MY CAR. (Some critical response to it I cited earlier, above.)

Justin Kurzel’s NITRAM (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13694628/reference/?mode=desktop&) as I'd expected features a fiery performance by Caleb Landry Jones in the role of the perpetrator of Australia's 1996 Port Arthur Massacre in a film that focuses on the years, days, and weeks leading up to the event in an effort to understand how it came about. The rave review in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/nitram-review-1235021461/) suggests this is a brilliant and sober entry into this "genre"" and Kurzel's best work yet in which "If NITRAM is ... born in flames, it’s in the nervy blue fire of Jones’ devastating, skittish performance, which is astonishing precisely because it does not invite us to share in the killer’s private thoughts and tortured motivations." Sounds like this extremely talented and go-for-broke actor has gotten his best role yer, enhanced by equally good performances by Judy Davis, Essie Davis, and Anthony LaPaglia. 4/5 stars from Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/16/nitram-review-mass-killer-martin-bryant-port-arthur-justin-kurzel) who calls this "a hypnotically disquieting movie."

Just watched it myself [June 14, 2022] and yes, it is a striking film with an arresting lead performance - and pretty depressing stuff.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES PREDICTIONS.

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WES ANDERSON'S THE FRENCH DISPATCH - SAORSE RONAN?, BILL MURRAY, ELIZABETH MOSS

Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN has some predictions of tomorrow's awards, as usual. And some fun, well-judged, and very diplomatic and openhearted "imaginary awards" of his own to add in addition.

Before that he has a comment on non-Competition favorites, English ones. "Perhaps the two most passionate films, and the films I responded to most," Bradshaw writes today, "were outside the competition, in the Director’s Fortnight strand: Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical THE SOUVENIR PART II was an engrossing self-portrait of the artist as a young woman. And Clio Barnard’s ALI & AVA was a wonderful love story in the manner of Ken Loach’s AE FOND KISS." Indeed Clio Barnard's THE ARBOR and THE SELFISH GIANT are very special, very moving work, and Joanna Hogg's THE SOUVENIR (PART I) introduced me to a wonderful director and I went back and watched her other films eagerly. These two may be the best directors working in the UK today. This is a reminder that there is a lot of important new cinema at Cannes I haven't had time to mention. Now for Bradshaw's predictions below. (I've added the directors' names.) Of course he's not in charge of the jury - Spike Lee is - and so we have no idea what will win.


Bradshaw: "Here are my predictions for this year’s Cannes prizes, and I have also included my imaginary prizes (AKA 'Braddies d’Or' for categories that are not officially rewarded).

Predictions
Palme d’Or: Drive My Car [Hamaguchi]
Grand Prix: Memoria [Weeresethakul]
Jury prize: The Worst Person in the World [Joachim Trier]
Best director: Sean Baker for Red Rocket [Sean Baker]
Best screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius for Paris, 13th District [Jacques Audiard]
Best actor: Amir Jadidi for A Hero [Asghar Farhadi]
Best actress: Achouackh Abakar for Lingui [Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, from Chad]

Imaginary Cannes awards – AKA Braddies d’Or
Best supporting actor: André Dussollier for Everything Went Fine [François Ozon]
Best supporting actress: Essie Davis and Judy Davis for Nitram [Justin Kurzel]
Best cinematography: Robert D Yeoman for The French Dispatch [Wes Anderson]
Best music: Ron and Russell Mael for Annette [Leos Caraz]
Best production design: Adam Stockhausen for The French Dispatch"
-Peter Bradshaw, the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jul/16/cannes-2021-who-will-win-the-palme-dor-and-who-should)

[Chris Knipp]

ACTUAL CANNES AWARDS

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AGATHE ROUSSELLE IN TITANE

Palme d’Or: TITANE (Julia Ducournau)
Grand Prix: (tie) A HERO (Asghar Farhadi) and COMPARTMENT NO. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)
Jury Prize: (tie): AHED'S KNEE (Nadav Lapid) and MEMORIA (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Best Actress: Renate Reinsve,THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Joachim Trier)
Best Actor: Caleb Landry Jones, NITRAM (Justin Kurzel)
Best Director: Leos Carax, ANNETTE
Best Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, DRIVE MY CAR
Camera d’Or: MURINA by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
Short Film Palme d’Or: TIAN XIA WU by Tang Yi
Special Jury Mention for Short Film: CEU DE AGOSTO by Jasmin Tenucci
Honorary Palme d’Or: Marco Bellocchio


I guess I say "actual Cannes awards" because they seem so different from how we imagined them. The JURY GRID led us to put all focus on the top two film awards. Well, DRIVE MY CAR only got the screenplay award. And MEMORIA, which came in 2nd on the GRID, is in the third rank, the Jury Prize, and both that and the Grand Prize are doubled with another film. I am glad to see Joachim Trier's film win an award; I love his films. It's nice that at least the GRID top rankers do at least appear in the awards.

The PALME D'OR win is a shock. Not a happy shock and, on top of that, Spike Lee goofed and mentioned this award meant to come at the end, right at the start of the ceremony, thus creating chaos and ruining the evening. Boo! A BBC review (https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210715-titane-the-most-shocking-film-of-2021) of TITANE said: "Julia Ducournau's new film is "a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting and pounding music". It seems unlikely that I'm going to like this, or consider it worthy of Cannes' top award. But it is described as being beautiful, well designed, clear. The Jury looks for something fresh, original, groundbreaking. This is what they found.

Julia Ducournau previously made a film called RAW that I didn't like very much. This one, with its main character a woman with a metal plate in her head who copulates with her car, goes for shocking, disgusting, and sensational again. There was a sensation when TITANE was shown at Cannes. But the jury seems to have taken that for originality, brilliance, freshness, etc. (And it costars Vincent Lindon, one of France's most respected screen actors and a Cannes Best Actor winner for THE MEASURE OF A MAN in 2015.) Ducournau now becomes only the second female winner of the Palme d’Or after Jane Campion, who won in 1993 for THE PIANO.

There are also three films at the lower end I didn't see any reviews or mentions of.

TITANE TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epoyDw8EU9I&t=101s)

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/spke.jpg
SPIKE LEE AT CANNES AWARDS CEREMONIES. LORD OF MISRULE?

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/LGMB.jpg
THE "MASTER" AT WORK: BENEDETTA

CHECKLIST OF CANNES 2021 COMPETITION FILMS.

My personal viewer's comments on those of these that I've caught up with:

Ahed's Knee (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4894&p=4914#p4914)/הַבֶּרֶךְ‎‎ (Habereḵ) (Nadav Lapid) Israel, France - I got something good out of this because it didn't seem that strong, which led me to go back and rewatch Lapid's memorable, oddball Synonyms, and looking up what else the star Tom Mercier has been in, I discovered the Luca Guadagnino HBO series "We Are Who We Are," and I loved it! (Ahed's Knee wasn't as angry as I was expecting it to be.)

Annette (opening film) (Leos Carax) France, Germany, Belgium

Benedetta (QP)/Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven) France, Netherlands. Variety (https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/benedetta-review-paul-verhoeven-1235015529/) puts it this way: "not a groundbreaking film, but just another entry in the tawdry nunsploitation genre." Huppert had the power to lift Elle into something better; Efira hasn't her level of authority.

Bergman Island (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4804)(Mia Hansen-Løve) Brazil, France, Germany, Mexico - This seemed a complete bore to me; I just don't get it. And I saw it in the big screen. And I have liked her other films very much. Is it a case of the damage done by transplanting from the filmmaker's native country?

Casablanca Beats/Haut et fort (Nabil Ayouch) Morocco, France

Compartment No. 6 (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4856)(QP)/Hytti nro 6 (Juho Kuosmanen) Russia, Finland - Loved this film and have watched it twice. Partakes of the romance of the long train trip without being a romance at all, really. And so it is fresh and memorable.

The Divide (QP)/La Fracture (Catherine Corsini) France

Drive My Car (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4848)/ドライブ・マイ・カー (Doraibu mai kā) (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) Japan - Another one that I finally just don't quite get; where his other film this year is very accessible.

Everything Went Fine/Tout s'est bien passé (François Ozon) France

Flag Day (Sean Penn) United States

France Par un demi clair matin (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4838) (Bruno Dumont) France, Italy, Germany, Belgium - Missed this title because I thought it was just called "France." This is a laborious film and shows Léa Seydoux at her most industrious. Dumont really does not know how to make this kind of genre of social commentary and satire. Only the sets and costumes stand out.

The French Dispatch (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4813) (Wes Anderson) United States - A friend says this is one of the Wes films he doesn't respond to. I liked it very much, went out of my way to see it early, and have seen it twice. Wes' films are so complicated and self-referential you can, you actually need to, watch them over and over. Unless you hate them or don't get them.

A Hero/قهرمان (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4849)(Ghahreman) (Asghar Farhadi) Iran - I like it and have reviewed it, but now it is ovdershadowed in my mind by Rasoulof's A Man of Integrity (overlapping titles?). The earnest moral social commentary film is something both Iranian filmmakers do very well but it's a little hard to tell the two directors apart by now.

Lingui (Mahamat Saleh Haroun) Belgium, Chad, France, Germany

Memoria (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4908)(Apiichatpong Weeresethekul) Colombia, France, Germany, Mexico, Thailand, United Kingdom - This is a beautiful film and I would like to see it again, but it cries out for the big screen. Be prepared for a meandering tale. You could say (as others have) that this is the most accessible "Joe" film yet.

Nitram (Justin Kurzel) Australia, United Kingdom - Watched this at home and was depressed the whole rest of the day. It's neutrality is impressive and Caleb Landry Jones is memorable (as you'd expect since he won the Best Actor award). But do you really have to make this grim kind of film?

Paris, 13th District/Les Olympiades (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4901) (Jacques Audiard) France - A bit of a disappointment coming from Jacques Audiard, who was the most exciting younger French director 15 years ago, but still enjoyable, even if you feel Audiard is trying a little hard to be young and multicultural now.

Petrov's Flu/Петровы в гриппе (Petrоvy v grippe) (Kirill Serebrennikov) France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland

Red Rocket (Sean Baker) United States

The Restless/Les Intranquilles (Joachim Lafosse) Belgium, France

The Story of My Wife/A feleségem története (Ildikó Enyedi) Hungary, France, Germany, Italy

Three Floors/Tre piani (Nanni Moretti) Italy, France

Titane (QP) (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4818) (Julia Ducournau) Belgium, France - Exactly as I expected, loud, glitzy, audacious, offensive, colorful, and, of course, with Vincent Lindon costarring in it, weirdly touching and human; and it's better than Raw, but I still don't like Ducournau, and she still knows how to provoke.

The Worst Person in the World (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4857)/Verdens verste menneske (Joachim Trier) Norway, Sweden, France - Trier is a director I love and this was not a disappointment, a film full of life and full of understanding and indulgence toward its young female protagonist; that's what's new: it's not a boy movie now but a girl movie.
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(QP) indicates film in competition for the Queer Palm.xx

[Chris Knipp]

Mike D'Angelo's Cannes 2021 favorites

June 17, 2023. D'Angelo has now finished watching the entire 2021 Cannes competition slate and compiled his rankings of them as follows:


1. Memoria
2. Red Rocket
3. Annette
4. Ahed's Knee
5. Paris, 13th District
6. A Hero
7. Compartment No. 6
8. Drive My Car
9. France
10. The French Dispatch
11. The Worst Person in the World
12. Everything Went Fine
13. Petrov's Flu
14. Lingui: The Sacred Bonds
15. Titane
16. Benedetta
17. The Story of My Wife
18. Three Floors
19. Bergman Island
20. Flag Day
21. Nitram
22. La Fracture
23. Casablanca Beats
24. The Restless

I'm not giving his numerical ratings of each which range from 90 for Memoria, and then Red Rocket at 73, down to 38 for The Restless. Even though they are ridiculously precise, some of them are duplicates so two should be at the same rank, you'd think. The whole idea that anything can be ranked this way is a bit silly, isn't it? But so it goes with rankings. I liked Memoria and now I think I ought to see Red Rocket and Annette. I just watched the trailer of Red Rocket and it looks like fun. I know Annette is a French director (Leos Carax) and a musical with Adam Driver and might be weird fun. Having just finished watching FLC's new Italian series, I wonder if I should see Three Floors, the only Italian film on the 2021 list. I'm glad at least Bergman Island rates low with Mike, since it bored me. Sorry about Casablanca Beats. I was (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5214-CASABLANCA-BEATS-(Nabil-Ayouch-2021)) enthusiastic about it, and it represents a downtrodden art form, rapping and a third world country, Morocco. I didn't think Ahed's Knee was so great.. I like Nos. 5 to 12 fine. I have not seen Petrov's Flu, Benedetta, The Story of My Wife, Three Floors, Flag Day, La Fracture, or The Restless. (So, though D'Angelo seems behind, I'm further so.) I can't explain all of these choices; some of them seem a bit a matter of prestige. But a lot of them make some kind of sense. He just finished watching The Restless anc complaining what a bore it was. I am hopeful enough to think there may be at least one of those I haven't seen that is a gem. In New York last week someone asked me if I'd seen Benedetta and I had to say no. So there's that: embarrassment, a sense of obligation. I had forgotten I'd seen Lingui: The Sacred Bonds. Reading my review, I was reminded that I thought the director's earlier film, Daratt, was better.