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
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"
and "The Birth of a Nation" (!).
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
