My Cannes (sharp) 70: Stirring Seagulls at 220 BPM

One of the first things I saw upon arriving in Cannes

was a seagull eating a pigeon

on the main commercial drag…

No doubt a living metaphor

for the wilderness I was entering…

It’s fitting that the Cannes film festival

would choose to open
with a film

of shameless
self-reflexivity.

 Arnaud Desplechin’s  Ismael’s Ghosts

is a pure and saturated Desplechin .

Detailing a love triangle,  

set to its maker’s characteristic pan-pan rhythm,

it is overloaded with formal decoration:

time jumps, iris-ins, rear-projection montage,

direct address to camera, and so on.

A swamp of information that can be seen

as a depiction of

“all the women he could never touch.”

That quoted line, spoken by Ismael

(a film director played by Mathieu Amalric,
certified alter ego of Desplechin’s libido),

combines with other self-deprecating winks

(“You’re afraid of the film’s subject,”
“All you can do is direct!” etc.)

to make this a picture
that feels specific to Desplechin’s personal history.

A film that features more

than two dozen repetitions of the phrase

“I’m too old now…”..

 Ismael’s Ghosts shows the sense of anxiety

that a man might experience

when the final traces of his youth
finally evaporate.

Impossible reunions …
spontaneous hook-ups…

quixotically resurrecting past relationships and desires …

The narrative juxtaposes horror,  
rom-com

and espionage tropes,

against classic Hollywood  hat-tips

(“five films compressed into one,”
Desplechin dixit in the press kit).

The dissonance  is fresh and inviting.

But is only cathartic for its maker…

This is fine, because not all art

needs to appease an audience…

But these are bells

and whistles

that leave me cold...

On the other hand,

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s new film, Loveless,

is as unsentimental
as it is dim.

"Technically impressive” is about as close to a compliment

as I can give
to this misogynistic film

about a divorcing Russian couple’s missing 12-year old son.

Set at the end of 2012

and defined by its slow  push-ins,  

Zvyagintsev’s latest fills its mise en scène
with explicit references to Russia’s political climate,

with indications of the relationship with Ukraine, 
and the apocalyptic ethos

of  the end of the Mayan calendar.

The dramaturgy is marked by cliche representations
of marital life …
devoid of any sense of natural development…
despite having been modeled

after similar quarrels

seen in recent Romanian New Wave efforts…

…later on that night,
being bored over measure
on a taunting yacht party
around rocks and crystals,  

I assembled a small cabal who will not be named…

 Together we set about surrendering to the sea…

 On the shores of the party we all kissed adieu.  

Moments later

I was on another balcony at yet another party,

standing beneath a statue of a blue gorilla.

When a man with a bucket full of roses

down below

started throwing them up my way .

He wasn’t a very good arm,

so after several failed attempts, he found a friend to help.

The moment I caught the roses,

staring up at the starry night,

I watched as a seagull flew,

and smoked a Gitane...

…Last year, Rive Gauche icon Agnès Varda

and French photographer JR

went on a road trip through rural France,

documenting whatever locals they encountered .

“Faces/Places” is sweet and accessible,

like something of a redux for Varda’s documentary masterpiece The Gleaners and I (2000).

It chronicles their journey

and never misses an opportunity to turn inward.

The film is democratic even by Varda’s standards.

It generously accommodates any thought, detail,

or passerby, leaving space

for its makers

to analyze their own impulses.

Among the charms and anecdotes,  

there are Varda’s ruminations
on the  pleasures of photography: 
 the way the ephemeral of a print
mimics that of our bodies…

the sensations of seeing one’s own image…

how our portrait has the opportunity
to “see” things and places in the world
that we never will ...

Varda’s free-form 

accepts the inevitable finality of her life

— that moment when she will become,
as we all will,

an (exquisite) corpse…

Ruben Östlund’s bombastic new movie, The Square (Palme d'Or),

is composed of practically nothing but

moments and mannerisms.

It is obvious it tries very hard
to unify its myriad pieces

within a  critique of class.

Working through two parallel narratives —

one about a Swedish contemporary art museum’s efforts

to create a campaign for its latest acquisition,

an experience called “The Square,”

and the museum curator’s efforts

to retrieve some belongings he lost in a pickpocketing
— the film only really works

when it’s funny…

 …Though it’s rarely as funny as it thinks it is…

 Its shots at contemporary art are mostly clichés.

 And facile.

Indeed, the humour only really functions

when it’s doing something cute

with ambient sound or off-screen space.

 The frame is always intrusive.

It only keeps us off  the tension…

Elsewhere, another conceptual piece in the museum

— a simple white neon text  “YOU HAVE NOTHING”

— is also played for laughs, while a lecture is thrown
into chaos
by an attendee with Tourette...

I know Östlund likes to push buttons,

but come on, man!…

…And later on I hit the town

with Producer L and Acteur M

in search of the Magnum-branded beach club,

site of the A Ciambra afterparty…

What a morning that was.

Seagulls were flying high

and at tremendous speed.

On the beach we dropped down to our undies

and scoured the sand,

tits-deep dans la mer.

After about 20 minutes of blind hunting

I realized the purple in the sky was turning pink

and the pink to orange,

our nipples were about to mutiny.

Suddenly remembering we were indeed in France,

I sprant down the beach

baywatch clutching the sun,

while it was already penetrating the horizon…

Pure art!

…Speaking of art, I spent the morning with The Meyerwitz Stories, the new Baumbach.

 An opening scene of Adam Sandler  parking a Subaru

unfolds into an hour something of delightful variations

on the screaming same.

I must say of all the bards of male impotence,

Baumbach is probably my favorite…

 .........I spent much of the afternoon catching up on sleep,

then ate what was without a doubt

the best gnocchi of my life.

But I digress.

The evening’s activity was the Critic’s Week opening night party.

It felt a bit like a bar mitzvah I never went to.

Everyone was celebrating the fact

that we were all here in this place.

As the night slowly swung into the strange strip clubs,

I said my goodbyes and made for bed…

Early that morning I awoke

for an 8:30 screening of Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film

The Killing of a Sacred Deer.

The film was heroically boring.

Yorgos seems uniquely able

to align himself completely

with the mind of a torturing psychopath

and even delights in the game of his logic.

Perhaps is it a greek thing?

Call him a Haneke wannabe...

 Nothing to report on the seagulls today,

they seem to be minding their own for now…

Baumbach’s film was incredibly funny.

Why am I trying to hate Baumbach?

I love Baumbach.

Yorgos too.

Up at 7:00 for Coppola’s Beguiled.

Not a single brave or interesting choice in the whole damn movie !

Was it made for TV?

Or was she just asleep on the dolly?

Like Yorgos’ film,

 it also hosted the Kidman/Farrell lead team …

…do those two pair at discount?

I’m starting to think my filmic heroes are not leaving the retirement home much…

Whatever.

I know every generation is juiced to make it to the top,
but the olds are overdoing it
in so many arenas right now.

Give youngs a chance.

Let people who use the internet run the world for Christ’sake.

….Speaking of youngs.

 After another lunch,

I finally saw the shorts in Semaine de la Critique,

far superior to the half dozen Official Selection films.

Where the Palme d’Or competitors were conservative

and redundant,

la Semaine was raw and wild!!!

 New music unto the universe!

 So was Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Employee of the Month,

a visually  punk rock assault on capitalism,

all set at an unnamed gas station one fluorescent night.

As far as I’m concerned Manatad is the Philippines’ Godard!

Aleksandra Terpińska’s The Best Fireworks Ever
was a crushingly beautiful take
on the suicidally forces of Poland’s imaginary streetscape.
There’s more heart
and pain
and beauty
and conviction
in her 30 minutes
than all the features I’ve seen here!...

Watch those directors.

………Cannes  is largely devoted to a cinema that presents

subjects with whom we are meant to empathize to some degree.

Far outside these benchmarkers ,

Bruno Dumont’s new film, Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc 
is one of the true UFOs I have encountered in my 20 years of Cannes attendance!

So aberrant! 

So ruthless in its pursuit of new forms of poetry

and of madness that it can be!!!

Dumont offers here something silly,
metal,
and deviant,

but no less rapturous.

The music, composed by French breakcore band Igorrr
(a.k.a. Gautier Serre),

constitutes at least half of Jeannette.

Dumont opted to use live sound for the finished film,

leaving in all the mistakes, stray sounds,

and ambient noise usually eliminated in the post-production.

The result is a work that,
in addition to being singular

(even by the standards of late-lunacy Dumont),
is present before us!
It delivers the young Jeannette’s dreams of divinity

as close as it could.

Another American tale,
Josh & Benny Safdie’s Good Time,

stars Robert Pattinson (as Connie)

and Benny Safdie himself (Nick) as brothers.

The movie detonates with a botch bank robbery

and never looks back.

The action is intense,

weaving through the city’s streets and businesses…

one wrong step triggers another
and triggers another
again...

Connie embodies the low-life persona  
in American crime films,
diving into the most foolish schemes

for attaining a better life

for his mentally-challenged brother
and fed-up mother.

…on my last hours in Cannes,

I hit the 8:30 AM preview-screening of Twin Peaks .

Showtime delivered indeed : 25 years later.

The actors were old, the pace was old,
even the locations felt  old.

It was interesting how the visuals of new computing

had entered the Twin Peaks world,

but remained true to an early ’90s look ...

It seemed clear Lynch/Frost don’t use them much.

It made me reflect on this particular moment

in cultural history,

where those in power

have yet to hand down the torch to youngs…

I still love Lynch

and I am curious to see where the series goes.

Even if it felt a bit

like folk tales

from an old tattooed biker

in a greek bar…

Fingers crossed, the return of real Cooper

will have a journey into light.

I, for one, have seen enough darkness for a while.

Sailors say seagulls

are the souls

of great marines departed.

Sometimes

a film

can be

like a ritual …

unwinding powers

that are…

or were…

giulia d