An overdose of great or great movies. This is what we risk again this year after the already excellent 2019 edition of the Cannes festival. Canceled the 2020 edition due to the pandemic, La Croisette reopened this year, not in May but in July. It may seem strange, but in truth, the new titles are joined by several others that have been kept blocked by their respective productions because the Cannes catwalk brings greater benefits. And this is true for small but also large jobs, as in the case of Benedetta, the new film by Paul Verhoeven, produced like the previous one It from the French Saïd Ben Saïd, and of Memory, by the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a director almost unknown in Italy but actually a leading author and already winner of the Palme d’Or with It uncle Boonmee that and remember previous lives, which we find here on a trip to Colombia in the company of Tilda Swinton.
So much so that the sections Competition, Un certain regard, Cannes classics, the Special Screenings and the Out of Competition – where Todd Haynes is among others with Velvet undergound – were joined by new others such as Cannes première which, in addition to our Marco Bellocchio with Marx can wait, welcomes authors such as the great South Korean director Hong Sang-soo, with In front of your face, and the British Andrea Arnold with Cow, a director we love very much but unfortunately still too little known despite being launched by the Venice Film Festival and despite having presented in competition at Cannes in 2016 American honey, a saraband full of rhythm and empathy towards poor youth America, as vital as it is marginalized. And this just to stay with the titles and sections of the official selection, that is without counting parallel sections such as the Quinzaine des réalisateurs, for the second year directed by the Italian Paolo Moretti, the Semaine de la critique, the Acid, the most recent section but increasingly fierce.
On the catwalk
And then the usual parade of directors, including Bong Jong Hoo winner of the Palme d’Or in the previous edition with Parasite – the first time for a South Korean film -, which will meet the audience, as well as Oliver Stone who will present the documentary JFK revisited: through the looking glass on the recently declassified documents concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, or Jodie Foster, actress and director still too little appreciated and awarded with the Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, several Italian films are expected: in addition to Nanni Moretti, the only Italian in competition with Three floors, and at the aforementioned Bellocchio film-confession, the Quinzaine will present Future, the documentary on Italian teenagers signed in threes by Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher, A Chiara, the expected female closing of the trilogy on Gioia Tauro by Jonas Carpignano, e King crab by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis who make their debut in fiction. Finally, the Critics’ Week presents Small body at Laura Samani.
Great titles or intriguing titles then, at least on paper.
The opening ceremony was the mirror of the jury, which has a black president, Spike Lee, many more women among actresses and directors, and a Brazilian director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, already co-author with Juliano Dornelles of the extraordinary Bacurau, presented in competition and also awarded in the last edition, but unfortunately it remained unpublished in Italy.
If in the long run there may be the risk that such a composition, which has become structural, will prove to be limiting (if there is a great director or a white actor, not belonging to minority ethnic groups, straight but of recognized talent, there is no reason other than be part of a jury) at the same time it is equally desirable that this imprint is not only temporary, still the daughter of the era of Trump, the murder of George Floyd and the Me too movement, but that it is largely confirmed also in the future. Good moments during the opening ceremony were when Jodie Foster, introduced by Pedro Almodóvar, gave her speech in perfect French and quoted his wife sitting in the audience, and finally the final greeting on stage by Spike Lee, from the Foster, Almodóvar and Bong Jong Hoo.
Canons subverted
The opening film, Annette, marks the return of an almost extraterrestrial director on the international film scene, the Frenchman Leos Carax, with a production that aspires to be international due to the presence of two stars such as the American Adam Driver and the French Marion Cotillard but also because it is a film more or less musical sung in English. Despite the lurking danger of a pimp work, none of this appears to the eye. Rather a dreamlike work of pure visual and sound poetry that displaces everyone and subverts every canon and that can also please those who do not like musicals but instead have love for those films that seem to come from another dimension, just as it was for 8½ by Federico Fellini e Lost roads O Mulholland drive by David Lynch. Since, unfortunately, Lynch is held firm by the blindness of the producers, one can only be happy that there is at least Carax’s anarchic madness to make up for, although the director is not exactly synonymous with prolificacy.
However, the former critic of the Cahiers du Cinéma makes his best film here together with the unforgettable Blood red (1986). The best is compared to the troubled Pont-Neuf lovers (1991) both with respect to the excellent Holy Motors (2012), the title above Annette. It is a melancholy and serene film, romantic and iconoclastic, dark and light, operatic musically but also rock, made of contrasts with the murderous self-centeredness of the artist and with the tout-court male self-centeredness that can be so obsessive as to verge on madness .
But it is also a fairy tale about stolen childhood, in this case that of little Annette, a small extraterrestrial monster and a small ancient angel, an enfant singing prodigy exploited by those who generated her as if she were a puppet, a puppet that is beautifully animated for the film by wise puppeteers . His passage to maturity, to the human, will be brutal: a bit Pinocchio reversed to the feminine, this black fairy tale about childhood and human relationships is often sung in a celestial way and shot with a sense of space that at times takes away the viewer’s ground under your feet. A dream film that contains images of great poetry, unique: those about loneliness in the stormy night of a child-puppet who suffers in silence, Annette, sequences that magnificently open this 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, with real cinema, some great cinema.
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