The End

The Cannes Film Festival slowly finishes and it is already time to draw an outcome of these ten intense days of cinema. I will first remember some films: Je veux voir (I Want To See) by Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Ils mourront tous sauf moi (They Will All Die But Me) by the young Russian director (20 years) Valeira Gaï Guermanika, the two excellent interpretations of Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Le voyage aux Pyrenees (The Journey to the Pyrenees) and Les grandes personnes (Grown Ups)), Les bureaux de Dieu (God's Offices) by Claire Simon.

I will have seen here (yes even if one is not especially looking for seeing the “people”, we are here for that as well) Louis and Philippe Garrel, Luc Dardenne, Jonathan Zaccaï, Stefano Cassetti, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Gayet, Maradona, Cécile de France, Bouli Lanners, Emmanuelle Devos and Chiara Mastroianni, Joachim Lafosse, Charles Berling, Guillaume Depardieu, Jérémy Rénier, Monica Belluci, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Emir Kusturica…

And then, there are all the images off: queues (yes, I always come back to that), the icy reception of Frontier of Dawn by Philippe Garrel, Cannes’ stiff evenings, these women who parade on the Croisette, these people who wait for hours the walking up the steps… and the Cannes inhabitants which play bowls two footsteps away from the Palace.

Cannes is a weird world in itself, disconnected from reality and true life… It is stuffed of stereotypes and clichés, which make that the Cannes Film Festival would not be what it is without them. One will never be able to really apprehend what happens there but by seeing it with his own eyes. I go back to Belgium exhausted (the Festival is far from being holidays!) but satisfied with this first experience in Cannes.

Aurélie

Cannes’ disproportion

Thursday May 22nd, 4PM, Grand Théâtre Lumière: this is the end of the screening of Frontier of Dawn (La Frontière de l'aube) directed by Philippe Garrel taking part in the Official Competition. The audience’s reception is cold, icy even. It hoots, it whistles in the theatre… (without mentioning the ceaseless movements of all these exasperated spectators running out of the theatre).

The following day, the cinema critics broke out in the press. Frontier of Dawn is attacked in the majority of the daily newspapers: plastically too beautiful (a very contrasted black and white), close to ridiculous in the second part of the film with the “fantastic reminiscences”, with dialogues leading to nothing, a flat film, without real interest,…

Although adhering partly to this opinion (in particular concerning the fantastic treatment that one supposes to be a clumsiness of the director), I still found in Frontier of Dawn what I had so much appreciated in Regular Lovers (Les amants criminels): a touching love story. In this new film, François (Louis Garrel) realizes too late how much he loved a passed away friend (Laura Smet). Then, would the romanticism have gone out of fashion?

In the fire of the action and as the Festival goes on and films come one after the other, criticisms break out more savagely. Cannes is the kingdom of disproportion. The opinions are hyper distinct: one adores or one destroys. Distance is unquestionably missed; the time necessary to digest a film does not exist here… and it is sometimes such a pity!

Aurélie

Last minute

Oh yes, I forgot to tell you: in a previous post I talked about an interview on the roof of a luxury hotel in Cannes. The interview has been cancelled because the woman I had to meet was “too hungry” and “too restless” to offer me just 10 minutes of her time. So no comments…