Cannes at Home: Day 5 – A Tale of Two Victors

by Cláudio Alves

The fourth day of Main Competition screenings saw the premiere of two films by former Palme d'Or winners. First up, Swedish auteur Ruben Östlund returned to the Croisette after taking the festival's top honor with The Square. Triangle of Sadness is the director's first film since then, perchance indicating a newfound obsession with geometrical titling. Reactions have skewed positive, though there are dissenting voices. Then, it was time for Cristian Mungiu to present R.M.N, this year's first major Palme contender as far as critical reception is concerned (Elisa's review). It should be noted that this is the fourth time Mungiu has presented a film in the Main Competition – all three previous projects won prizes, setting a good precedent for the Romanian master. 

Logically, when discussing these laurelled artists, the mind drifts to their victorious flicks. Today's Cannes at Home selections are The Square and 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days…

THE SQUARE (2017)

In her Triangle of Sadness review, Elisa Giudici perfectly articulated my general thoughts on Ruben Östlund. She wrote "he perceives himself as a real Agent Provocateur, able to whip audiences into a frenzy with caustic contemporary commentary about our shallow society." I couldn't have put it better, though my words might have come out more clumsily cutting. As provocations go, I tend to find Östlund's movies just as superficial as the people they criticize, and the institutions they ridicule. Though I've felt that about multiple projects, The Square is the most flagrant example.

A morality play set in the prestigious world of museums and art galleries, 2017's Palme d'Or champion is a piece of vigorous righteousness as philtered through the subjectivity of a smug satirist. In other words, there's a greasy quality to its script that's off-putting and hard to ignore, blunting every attempt at cutting observation. Nonetheless, to say its flaws override its qualities would be a lie. The Square might not be more than the sum of its parts, but it does contain beautiful parts. On a purely visual level, not enough praise can be thrown Josefin Åsberg's way. Her set designs often surpass the textual critique of modern art, plunging deeper into its absurdities and perilous relationship with commerce. 

Nevertheless, no matter how pristine it all looks, Östlund's greatest strength as a director has always been his work with actors, and this film's no different. Even in shorts where every player is no more than a distant scribble in a vast mural, the way people move through space and around each other is as important as any piece of dialogue. Not that The Square is ever as distant as that. Instead, it often looms close to its band of sorry souls, detailing how they negotiate the vacuity of existence through social acting. How they manipulate their perceived projections and even use their bodies as vehicles for spectacle. Claes Bang is especially sensational, delivering a tour de force that should have landed him on all of the season's Best Actor lineups.

The Square is streaming on many platforms, including Hulu and MUBI. You can also rent it on most services.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (2007)

The New Romanian Cinema is likely the most essential cinematic movement of the 21st century. After the tenets of modern European realism were codified by the jump from documentary to fiction filmmaking, many Romanian filmmakers reshaped those paradigms into a new Neorealism with an eastern twist. Through careful quasi-Bazinian staging of long scenes often captured in uninterrupted long takes, these films differed from the handheld norm of its continental brethren, finding a rigorous alternative to dramatized reality. The camera is not a fly on the wall but a patient observer, studiously peeling back layers of banality to reveal the hidden tensions underneath – whether political or personal.

Though, of course, those two are one and the same. If nothing else, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is proof that the personal is political, using the question of abortion as a jumping point to portray life under totalitarianism. In 1987 Romania, two college students look to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, risking everything in the process. The tableaux would be cold if they weren't so tense, dripping with ragged suspense to the point where they verge on horror. From troubles at the hotel reception to a desperate night flight with a dead fetus in tow, the film details a nightmarish day that couldn't end soon enough.

Indeed, in good miserabilist fashion, everything that could go wrong does, short of a gruesome death or two. Put another director behind the camera, and it could all go sideways, falling headfirst into a pool of contrived misanthropy. However, Mungiu keeps it balanced and human, lucid both in terms of historical thesis and character drama. Anamaria Marinca's Otilia is a fascinating creation, a prime candidate for best character in the entirety of the New Romanian Cinema. Begrudgingly helpful, she's as pragmatic as the script is precise, doing everything in her power to get her friend to the end of this laborious ordeal but never especially happy about it. Her annoyance is blinding, her panic lucid, serving as the personality within whom the quotidian terrors of Ceaușescu's regime collapse and coalesce. 

You can find 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days streaming on AMC+, the Criterion Channel, and Direct TV.

Comments

[thevoid99]

I just saw The Square this weekend and I thought it was good but didn't deserve the Palme d'Or. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days on the other hand did deserve the Palme d'Or.

[Dan H]

I think Östlund is terrific, that his film are far more complex than Giudici or Alves credit him. People used to say James Ivory was as stuffy and pretentious as the characters in ROOM WITH A VIEW or HOWARDS END, and I suspect that as with him, as time goes by, Östlund's reputation will improve. Some of THE SQUARE was almost Buñuelian in its deceptive "simplicity," but to really see his talent, you have to watch some of his earlier films, like INVOLUNTARY, which is truly world-class cinema, as smart and complex and incisive a look at society as anything by Bela Tarr, Roy Andersson, or Michael Haneke.