9.6.15

a few cannes 2015 vibes...



Cannes 2015…


…It is quite a paradoxe to call a film Youth, and then embark the spectator on a trip
to a luxury hotel
that looks quite like a geriatric retreat
in Switzerland…


But this is where the irony
and the ferocious humour
of the film of  Paolo Sorrentino lays.

His two septuagenary characters
are Fred Balinger (Michael Caine)
and Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel).

One is a conductor who refuses to ever play again.

The other one is a famous filmmaker,
about to achieve the screenplay
of his last mortuary film.


During a few days together
they talk about their life…
their complicity explodes…
they tell each other about their prostate
and stare at a voluptuous Miss Universe…

Not a big drama here...

In this summery chronicle of life,

it’s all about the small instants of happiness

that one should seize at all costs…

about friendship…

about familly…

and love…

with savory and funny dialogues...


And yet, there is no drama at all...


No other than questionning oneself
about what is left,
when we got at the end
of our existence on Earth …

…At UN CERTAIN REGARD I saw
the new thai opus
of  Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
 

Strongly poetical, organic and political,

Cemetery of Splendour  is also human,

usefull and unique in its very soft way

of installing a certain climate,

in approaching its charceters.


Touched by a mysterious malady of sleep,
some soldiers sleep in an old school transformed into a hospital.

That place is calming,
bathed by a reassuring light
and protected by luxurious vegetation.

Not far from here, the constant noise of a machinery.

Nobody knows what it’s being prepared there.

A new hospital ? A new mall ?

Bizarrely enough,
it will be easier to pierce these soldiers’ dreams,
than this noisy matter..


 As there is a young medium, Keng,
able  to communicate with them
and localize them in their dreams.

And then there is that directing
that awakens all senses !

Never demonstrative, always enlightening the heart…

Apichatpong explores his favorite themes, those that enchanted us already
in Tropical Malady and in Oncle Boomee…

...maladies, healing, dreams,
the presence of the invisible in a wind blow,

…waves and thoughts…

…the cycles of life…

…the kindness of animals and vegetation,  
who are all in fact merely observing us…

The frame and the variations of the light,

composed with the fabulous artist Diego Garcia,

are purely magical !

Is this cinema for our healing ?

Without any doubt.

But also for keeping us alert.

Because beyond the infinite softness
that bathes this film,
there are real dangers suggested…


(Cemetery of splendour , Dir :  Apichatpong Weerasethakul with Jenjira Pongpas, Banlop Lomnoi, Jarinpattra Rueangram).

 
Dégradé, with Hiam Abbass and 10 other palestinian actresses,
is a thrilling huis-clos
that goes from softness to Hell
in a moment of an intra-pleastinian conflict…


It is happening in  a beauty parlour,
but not in a cosy one like in Caramel.

This is heavy artillery.

12 actrices in a story
that goes in a challenging crescendo
until total cacophony and asphixia,
talking about the condition of the Gaza people…

…terrible, impossible, and absurd…


How else could it be for a film
made in a enclosed territory
by the twin brothers Tarzan and Arab Nasser,
having studied Beaux Arts before entering Cinema
with the meigre means they had?


Dégradé underlines from its beggining
some heavy silences…
some tired faces…
..One woman looks like on very heavy drugs…
…another one dates a crazy guy
that has a lion as a pet…
And then, politics invades all conversations…
And then war enters all.


It talks about that moment in 2007
when the Hamas intervened
in order to liberate a…lion…
that a wealthy familly from Gaza had stolen
at the local ZOO


just to exhibit its power !...

Valley of Love, is a huis clos in the desert,


a story around the death of a child…

It is the story of a son
who had comitted suicide a few months before.

He had previously convoked his divorced parrents in the Valley of Death,
ensuring them he will visit when they will be there…


It is also the story of Gérard Depardieu
and Isabelle Huppert,
35 years after their encounter for Loulou of Pialat.

Two huge presences of the big screen,
in a  mise en abyme of their life,
of their origins,
of something quite intrinsic
that defines them…

Under the unearthly light of the californian desert,  
Guillaume Nicloux arranges for a crepuscular meeting…
… he pretends having been haunted by a sort of an interior child
and by this impossible closure one has
when children pass away
before their parrents do…

One should then just understand
to which extent this screenplay
tells about Depardieu,
about his scars for having lost his son Guillaume,
about his fundamental kindness,
about his enormity that he never tries to hyde,
walking around with his huge belley,
his sweat, his lines, his relationship to life,
and especially to the present !...

We are therefore fascinated « to death » by the pain of these two actors-characters,


by their friendship, their complicity.



 ...


… Last night I attended the midnight premiere of Gaspar Noé's "Love."
Well…nothing had prepared me for so much…dialogue.
Hardcore movies are not exactly known
for their verbal excellence,
but the movie's endless chatter
and voiceover
inspire not so much arousal
as a desire to plug your ears…


 Whether the characters are pretentiously showing off their ‘culture” ("You've never seen '2001'?")
or speaking with a bizarre cadence ("Did You Ever. Try Sex. On Opium? It's very. Chill"),
there's nothing about "Love" that wouldn't have to be improved…
The scene in which the American protagonist
attempts to explain his victimization to a French cop
brought down the house.


Oh, and yes, the movie has lots and lots of arty sex,
centering on the relationship between an aspiring filmmaker, Murphy (Karl Glusman),
and an artist,
the named Electra (Aomi Muyock),
as well as their menage à trois
with a third woman (Klara Kristin)…


Like "Last Tango in Paris," the film is haunted
by the specter of a suicide.
Noé signals his incendiary ambitions
by littering his frames
with posters for "Salò"
But "Love" is one film in which
performance
decidedly does not measure
up to ambition.
… “Love” triggered the most walkouts
of any film in the festival so far…
Gaspar Noe, auteur of films
including “Enter the Void” and “Irreversible”,
is a diehard provocateur,
but with “Love” he succeeds in proving
that there is hardly anything more boring
than watching other people have sex
for more than two hours.




 
…I was expecting a chinese film with flying daggers

in the dark of the Medieval times.

I had instead a moment of perplexity.


 « The Assassin », by Hou Hsia-Hsien,
is a medieval tale
quite uncomprehensive for the common people…
In the China of the 9th century,
Nie is a young girl
educated by a nun in the spirit of the martial arts.

She goes back home one day
and becomes a local hero,
until she receives the mission to assassinate
the man she was going to marry…


The story starts with a few black and white scenes
and continues with colourfull bright frames.


In this hyper aesthetics,
all frames are thought as paintings,
as pictures or as postcards.


The red of the  lacquer,
the forrest,
the costumes,
the bright set design,
all this décorum invades the screen
and we cannot find any reason for it all !


A film like a beautifull book of exotic images..


Giulia Dobre