Main Competition: Two Palme d’Or films – “Withered Grass” and “Land of Interest”
First of all, let’s look at the main competition unit. Saturday’s film reviews were first ignited by the films of two international directors. Sword’s British director Jonathan Glazer directed “Land of Interest,” the former about a young single teacher who completes volunteer service in a remote village in Anatolia and hopes to be assigned to Istanbul. Instead, he loses all hope of escaping his current troubled life, but when he meets a female teacher like himself, Mort, his gloomy life takes a turn for the worse. Ceylon won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2014 with “Hibernation”. His films are delicate and profound, and he is good at depicting the characters’ hearts with slow and calm shots, showing his deep thinking on human nature, society and cultural issues. “Withered Grass” lasts three hours At 17 minutes, the length of the film is close to three hours and 32 minutes of Wang Bing’s documentary youth in the main competition unit. The second film, “A Place of Interest,” is an adaptation of the World War II Holocaust novel of the same name, which tells the story of an Auschwitz commander and his wife struggling to run a dream-like story for their family in a garden next to the concentration camp. This is director Glazer’s first work ten years after “Under the Skin”, so it is highly anticipated. On Saturday, the two masterpieces did not lose their standard, and they refreshed the rankings of the international show magazines, making movie fans not only speculate whether this year’s Palme d’Or will be born among these two.
American director Todd Haynes’ “May and December”, which premiered on Sunday, received similar reviews as the previous two Palme d’Or films. The film tells the story of Hollywood actress Elizabeth trying to play her new role. The character came to the home of Gracie, who she will play, and her husband Joe, who is 23 years younger than her. The arrival of Elizabeth broke the balance of the family, and a delicate relationship began to develop between the two women. Starring two Oscar-winning actresses, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, the film also caused a sensation on the red carpet at its premiere on Sunday.
Martin Scorsese’s comeback in 37 years “Killers of the Flower Moon” hits Cannes
The biggest hit of this weekend’s film festival is the new film “Killers of the Flower Moon” by the famous American director Martin Scorsese, which was selected as an out-of-competition unit. In fact, it caused a sensation when Cannes first revealed that Killer of the Flower Moon would be shortlisted for this year’s Cannes. This is the director’s return to Cannes after 37 years. He won the Palme d’Or for his film Taxi Driver in 1976. Has become an absolute classic in film history. At the premiere of “Killers of the Flower Moon”, the 80-year-old Scorsese and the star-studded creator received nearly ten minutes of warm applause; the film is adapted from the best-selling book of the same name by American journalist David Grann, which tells the story of A little-known true story in American history; in Oklahoma, USA in the 1920s, people gradually began to die in the Osage Indian tribe. As the death toll mounts, the newly formed FBI investigates the case, unraveling a horrific conspiracy that is one of the most horrific crimes in American history: White people are killing Native Americans for profit.
In this new film, Scorsese is working with two generations of his queen actors, Robert DeLoni and Leonardo DiCaprio, for the first time. The film received a lot of positive reviews, with critics citing it as one of Scorsese’s best works, exceeding expectations, and a landmark film. There were also sharp critics, except for the nearly unanimous criticism of the film’s excessively long 3.5 hours. In addition, critics also pointed out that the film’s dialogue scenes are excessive, which affects the action, and the story’s unbalanced structure. Leonardo’s performance was generally praised, and the heroine Lily Gladstone was not inferior in front of the big names, but because the film was not in competition, she was unfortunately not eligible for the performance award.
Two Chinese-language films premiered in Un Certain Regard
The two Chinese-language films shortlisted for Un Certain Regard both premiered over the weekend.Chinese director Wei Shujun’s new film “The Mistake by the River” first premiered to the public on Saturday, let’s listen to the introduction of the film and the director by Wang Muyan, a Chinese film critic and director’s fortnight selection director living in Paris
Wang Muyan:Director Wei Shujun is one I particularly admire. Among the young directors who have started to create in the past 3 or 4 years, he is very talented, capable of working and thinking. This is the fourth time he has been nominated for the Cannes Film Festival, and it is also the third time that his feature film has been nominated for the Cannes Film Festival. From “The Mane of the Wild Horse” in 2020 to “The Story of Yong’an Town” in 2021, and then to “The Mistake by the River” this year. What I admire most about Wei Shujun is that his three feature films are of completely different genres. For a young creative, I think this is very meaningful and interesting, because he uses different styles of films to train and finds his own director style in different styles. I think this is actually a very meaningful attempt and training. And his filming speed is that three feature films have been released within 3 years, and there may be other feature films waiting to be shot and completed. So such a speed is also very exciting to me. His “Mistakes by the River” is adapted from a very short novel of the same name by Yu Hua in 1988. Originally, the novel was actually a crime story written under a very stylized narrative. Then, Wei Shujun adapted this This short story in 1988 added some of his thoughts and judgments about the society he grew up and observed, and he completed a very stylized creation of a genre film, and the whole story is written in film shot. In fact, for a person who did not (in the era of film shooting), when he became a director, film shooting has become a very rare thing, so he has such a passion and interest, so he used film I think it is a very interesting thing to complete the filming of this movie.
The film was well received, with The Hollywood Reporter commenting that the film is not so much a suspense film as it is a puzzle-solving tribute to the film noir genre itself.
Singaporean director Chen Zheyi’s Burning Winter, another Chinese-language film shortlisted for Un Certain Regard, also premiered this weekend, the festival’s Shao said. “Won the Special Award for Best Short Film that year. The feature film “Parents Are Not Home” won the Golden Camera Award in 2013. “Burning Winter” is Chen Zheyi’s first story about China. The girl Nana and two friends met by chance in Yanbian, a border city in the northeast. A journey in a heartbeat. The film uses mainland actor Zhou Dongyu, Liu Haoran and Qu Chuxiao, so it has also attracted the attention and expectations of Chinese movie fans. Chen Zheyi said in a previous interview that the original intention of making “Ran Dong” came from the desire to break the old filmmaking methods and hope to get out of his comfort zone. Force yourself to shoot a film in an unfamiliar country, place and climate. After the premiere of the film, our Vietnamese-speaking Cannes reporter interviewed the director Chen Zheyi and the lead actor Zhou Dongyu. We will broadcast relevant content in subsequent programs, so please pay attention and listen.