Reunion by fans and professionals with the most relevant event in the world cinematographic world. For any ordinary Spaniard, Walking through the facilities of the Cannes festival during this last edition was quite an experience. Although the use of masks was respected in movie theaters and common spaces, that thing about social distance, with which they beat us so much in our house, It seemed like when they tell you a joke that's not funny.. What are you talking about, caballero?, Anyone you appealed to about it would have answered you while you waited in the long entrance lines or took your seats in the crowded stalls.. The matter was more scandalous and disturbing in the open-air spaces where the distance between the thousands of human beings who crowded the streets as on the best days of Fallas, was very far from complying with a minimum protocol, Also the use of the clinical mask remained an anomaly. Reading the news that came to the mobile phone from our country, one thought that, inside the disaster, We weren't the only ones playing with fire. (in fact, a few days after closing the contest, Macron's government would impose more restrictive measures in terms of health security, expanding the obligation to present a complete vaccination certificate or having passed a PCR test even to enter a restaurant).
Cannes is Cannes. That is to say, the best showcase in the world for what is known as auteur cinema. However, for some time now, This contest has been sanctioned by different commentators who have reported that, after its brilliant programming, there is more window dressing than authorship. And looking at the list of the Official Section in this year's competition, one certifies few risks.. Too many well-known names for an edition that seemed more concerned with revitalizing its red carpet than with offering truly risky proposals. Message, in this sense, names already well established in the industry that, besides, They came to offer works that were nothing more than a confirmation or new twist to consolidated aesthetic premises., but those who perhaps lacked strength or some coherence or, simply, showed signs of a certain loss of direction in their careers.
In the first group we would place the proposals of filmmakers such as Paul Verhoeven, Wes Anderson or Leos Carax who, with his Annette, musical tinged with cinema denounces the society of spectacle, seemed to disappoint the expectations placed after the brilliant Holly Motors, your previous job. Cinema of extremes not always well balanced, as was also the case with Blessed, new proposal from the director of Basic instinct, with whom she may be related in some way, to tell us about the mystical-sexual-religious delusions of a nun in the 17th century. After the extreme, but contained Elle, It seems that Verhoeven has been left to his own devices and things have gotten out of hand. In another formal context, but showing off again that baroque style that has characterized his latest creations, was found The French Dispatch, new toy from director Wes Anderson (toy because his latest productions have that quality, to look like a box of dolls), one more excuse to bring together a casting that would make anyone drool and that undoubtedly came to liven up the show: Benicio del Toro, Frances McDormand, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Timothée Chalamet, Léa Seydoux, Owen Wilson o Bill Murray, were some of the stars who posed with the Texan director to the delirium of fans (especially by the young Timothée Chalamet, times change). Anderson presented a piece full of widely exploited resources and, as we said at the time, maybe a little worn: plans-vignette, symmetrical compositions with a great abundance of production details, and an omnipresent voice-over that really tells the story (Are images necessary??).
With a tone like a faded loom, that has lost color, We find here the latest proposal from the also veteran Mia Hansen-Løve. In Bergman Island, Hansen-Løve tells the story of an American couple who seek creative refuge on the island of Fårö, in sweden, place where the director Igmar Bergman spent part of his life. He (Tim Roth) write a script for your next movie. Ella (Vicky Krieps) He is in the process of writing his new novel.. Both hope that the island that inspired the brilliant director of The seventh seal, can inspire them too (and do some tourism at the same time). Hansen-Løve's film develops, So, on several planes. The first of them affects the relationship between the two characters. Her situation of creative stagnation corresponds to a loss of vital direction.. What is more important, art or family? Is it legal or necessary to exchange one thing for the other?? What are the mechanisms that drive a work of art?? Reality and fiction mix in a work that, however, fails to articulate well a speech that, finally, is washed away. in the other hand, The French director tries to pay tribute to the figure of Bergman, converted into a mere object of consumption for tourists, according to the film. But the attempt remains equally lackluster., not very natural. The constant references to his cinema and his life remain in the mouths of the characters in a forced and, at times, pedantic reference without substance and with little overlap with the main line of the story they are telling us.
Another old acquaintance from Cannes, but it left a better taste in the mouth, It was the Italian director Nanni Moretti who carried under his arm the literary adaptation that gave his film its title.: Three floors. Set in contemporary Italy, The film tells the life of a three-story building where several families live together.. One day, the son of one of the residents runs over a woman with his car at the door of her house. The young man was drunk, which leads to his arrest and subsequent prosecution. Son, in turn, of a judge, The young man asks for his father's help, however, rejects it, fed up with his whims and that he does not respond to the responsibilities of an adult his age. On another floor, a woman faces her new motherhood, while her husband works outside the home on an oil platform, while, in another of the homes, A man suspects the intentions of an elderly man in whose care he has left his young daughter.. With these elements, Moretti gives us another intimate portrait that refers us to his famous and acclaimed son's room. like there, The facts are a mere excuse to investigate the turbulent emotions that bubble beneath appearances.. Three floors He approaches his characters with sensitivity, without formal stridencies, but with a clear personality. loneliness, love in marriage, motherhood and its fidelities, irrational fear of others, to the neighbor, selfishness in the face of responsibility for our actions are some of the issues addressed in this piece, which, although there are some twists and turns of the argument left over, His attempt to bring us closer to humanity with simplicity and without the fanfare of other, more “flashy” proposals was appreciated..
Among the relatively new firms that were going to orbit this post-pandemic Cannes festival (about for, or in progress, it is no longer known), there are some names to mention. This is the case of the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, that with Memory explore the corners of its magical universe with the help of Tilda Swinton, once again ready to give it her all. Here, a woman, orchid grower, visits his sick sister who lives in the Colombian city of Bogotá. During your stay, meets a French archaeologist and a musician. Both, The protagonist must deal with the noise of construction work that keeps her from sleeping.. But the least, in this case, is the argument. What is relevant in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinema is the tempo at which things happen, the gestures, the sounds, all of this united to propose a poetic reflection on the role of that memory which is reflected in the title of his film.. Next to this, highlight pieces like Drive my car de Ryüsuke Hamaguchi. Faithful to his career, Hamaguchi elaborates at ease in a work of 169 minutes long, as I did with the diptychs (what, In fact, they are the same movie) Happy hour o My work (parts I & II), to offer another piece of great sensitivity that builds with the excuse of the story of a playwright in the midst of a creative decline who is commissioned to create a new version of Tio Vania. Or the reappearance of Finnish Juho Kuosmanen, that after the international success he obtained with The happiest day in life de Olli Maki, offers us in Compartement No.6, another simple love story in a film that takes place entirely in a train compartment and with which it would win the Jury Prize.
Biggest surprise produced, definitely, this year's Palme d'Or, awarded to the film Titanium, by French director Julia Ducournau, one of those provocative awards that divides audiences and critics. Was she worthy of the Grand Prize?? Probably, no. However, the award, awarded by a jury headed by director Spike Lee, it sounded, at once, as appropriate as having an ice cream sorbet on a hot summer day. It is not the best for your health and you know it. It doesn't quench your thirst either., but sometimes it refreshes us and that relief is more than enough. Titanium It is such a peculiar and personal work in many ways., as, on the other hand, heir to many sources. Ducournau's film begins with the following sequence. A girl, Alexia, she is sitting in the back seat of a car. in front of her, behind the wheel, his father is found. The girl, naughty, not annoying, as if he wanted to test the limits of his parent's patience, who tries to abstract himself as best he can from her. And the baby insists so much on bothering its father that he ends up losing his nerve and, in an attempt to force her to put on the seat belt that he has removed just to provoke her, He loses control of the vehicle, which causes it to end up crashing into one of the dividing walls of the highway on which the father and daughter were traveling.. The father is unharmed, But the girl suffers a severe shock that forces the surgeons treating her to open her head and install a titanium piece that she will wear for the rest of her life.. time passes. The girl is now a woman who, surprise!, works as a dancer for car shows. His sensual dances on the hoods of tuned cars have earned him a long list of fans., But she doesn't seem interested in that kind of thing.. One day, after one of those dance sessions, one of her admirers violently approaches her in the parking lot of the place where she works and tries to kiss her against her wishes.. But, far from feeling helpless, Alexia sticks a hair clip in one of his ears, murdering him. He deserves it, We think. But the thing doesn't stop there. This is just one more in a series of crimes that has entertained the media and the police.. cornered (and after having sex with a car!), Alexia tries to hide by posing as her missing son, a few decades ago, from a man named Vincent, a mature and muscular fire chief. After self-harm to deform her face and hide her feminine figure behind bandages, Alexia manages to convince Vincent that he is her lost son and he, embarrassed, welcomes her. Little by little, Vincent and Alexia will begin a strange father-filial relationship and, after initial reluctance, It seems that both are beginning to achieve something resembling family happiness.. However, Everything gets complicated when Alexia discovers that she is pregnant (Yeah, from the car!), which prevents her from hiding her female body from Vincent's eyes any longer.. Fearing being discovered in her lie, tensions are increasing.
It is difficult to establish what a film counts as Titanium. Some chroniclers have wanted to see in it the echoes of the new trans activism or a crude revulsion against that dominant toxic masculinity so denounced by the new waves of feminism.. There may be something to all of this or, better, Maybe something from all of this inspires the crazy plot of this movie. I don't see it clearly. Rather, it seems to me that Julia Ducournau wanted to build an outrageous piece that tries to distance itself from any previous scheme.. In the background of this production, the influence of titles such as Crash, David Cronenberg's film, randomly, this year he turned 25 years since its release. There is some of it. Like in the Cronenberg tape, sex and metals (that is to say, cars) They are mixed in an apparently whimsical medley that focuses on the mechanization and squalor of a kind of hyper-doped parody of the contemporary world.. But I think we are not very wrong if we mention Tarantino as another of the references that Ducournau's film follows. Her heroine has many of the qualities of Tarantino's heroines., especially the character of The Bride, played by Uma Thurman in the first part of the now legendary Kill Bill. As it happened in this one, Alexia is a woman who feels comfortable (much more comfortable, we would say) in a world ruled by violence. Even the choice and characterization of the actress Agathe Rousselle, in his feature film debut, It has certain physical similarities with Thurman's. Also in that sense of humor, full of blood and violence, that the film distills in some of the sequences refers us to the witty scripts of the author of Reservoir Dogs.
But it will be in the second part of the film when things take a different turn.. This is where the field opens up to delicious confusion., well, According to Alexia, she is settling in at home and in Vincent's surroundings., will lose part of the protagonism to give it to him. In this sense, The surprising characterization of a great actor like Vincent Lindon in the role of Alexia's false father gains strength.. Lindon composes a character so rich in nuances, Her work is so free and carefree that it ends up devouring the screen, displacing Rousselle from the center of the story..
But, what counts Titanium? Honestly, I don't know very well. It doesn't matter much either.. In any case, if it can be made an allegation, it is in favor of ugliness, of the deformed, of the anomalous as a message, by himself, with your presence, against the postcard normalization to which the media and the consumer culture that surrounds us have accustomed us. That ugliness or deformity is in each of the elements that make up this film.. In its external appearance, we find it in Alexia's face and mutilated body, in the hypertrophied body of Vincent and his firefighters or in each of the sordid spaces where the actions take place. But the same thing happens in what appeals to the internal structure of the film.. The script by Julia Ducournau, although it is based on conventional premises (a woman trying to find herself), He soon jumps from one situation to another with a freedom that has not been enjoyed on a movie screen in a long time.. Taking as the only glue between sequences the problems that Alexia suffers from not being discovered by Vincent due to her growing pregnancy., Ducournau's camera and characters jump from one situation to another like in a sketch film, but without losing a certain internal coherence and a final meaning. So, more than a story, It is a collage of moments, each one more outrageous., wild and fun, although the rules of any causal relationship are frequently blatantly attacked, endangering, at times, the fine line of verisimilitude of what we are witnessing. In the end, we don't care. What do you want me to tell you?, I had a great time. GERARDO LEON
