by Elisa Giudici
This (unconscious?) cosplay of Jesse Buckley doing Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man during the Q&A session for Men made my day! After the jump some surreal comedy, a horror oddity, a terrifying thriller that might contend for awards, and a directorial debut...
FUMER FAIT TOUSSER (SMOKING MAKES YOU COUGH) by Quentin Dupieux
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
For years Quentin Dupieux has been delivering a singular mix of surreal comedy, brutal violence, and social commentary without finding a real balance; his movies stop a few steps short of being a big deal. Then Mandibles arrived and it was clear he understood how to make his style work on the silver screen. It is kind of disappointing then that he still just wants to have fun in little, humourous movies like Fumer fait tousser right when he seems able to make any delirious idea that crosses his mind work onscreen. This is a movie about a team of Power Rangers like Avengers who fight 1990s foam rubber aliens with the power of cancer (yes, you read that correctly), combining the side effects of smoking nicotine, ammonia, and such to kill the villain of the day. This absurd take is not the actual plot of the movie, which is instead a sort of Decameron of bizarre, scary stories they tell one another during a retreat with their mouse puppet boss (always leaking a gross, green substance from his mouth while speaking). They've been sent their for team cohesion and spirit. Yes, this new film is insane and also absurdly funny. The best scary story is told by a barracuda that's being grilled for dinner.
MARCEL! by Jasmine Trinca
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Trinca is another young, beloved actress making her directorial debut in Cannes. The good news is that Marcel! hasimpressive qualities and mise en scene. The bad news is that it's so thin in terms of story that it would have made an amazing short film. There is simply not enough story for a feature. The movie is about a young girl raised by her street performer mother who madly loves her dog (the titular character). There is also a grandmother lost in memories of her dead son. Marcel! is all about Art as the real meaning of life and Grief as a dark force that makes us unable to fully live our lives. Unfortunately Marcel! ends up romanticizing a situation in which social services are desperately needed. Trinca is really good at capturing that particular boredom children fight against when they're growing up around adults who are lost in their own feelings. The young Maayane Conti and Alba Rohrwacher as her mother deliver in even the most challenging cenes. The problem is that Trinca has tried to make a great art film when she should have prioritized the narrative depth and richness of her first short (Being My Mom, 2020). It is an interesting debut, but the results don't match her ambitions.
HOLY SPIDER by Ali Abbasi
COMPETITION FILM
Consider this a serious candidate for Palme d'Or. It smells like a revelation and will surely be one of the best-remembered movies of the festival. Holy Spider is a rock-solid and brutal Zodiac-like thriller based on the real story of a serial killer targeting prostitutes in the holy Iranian city of Mashhad in 2001. The narrative frame is very conventional: a stubborn allegic-to-the-rules female journalist, who mistrusts both religious authorities and the police, risks her own life in order to catch the killer.
There is nothing exactly surprising in the development of a feature film depicting the deep misogyny running at every level, in every house of Iran, even among women. So, what makes Holy Spider so special? First of all the directness of the storytelling. It would be a strong movie from a Hollywood director, considering how little it shies away from showing the violent deaths of the suffocated victim, and the casual verbal and physical violence survivors face. It is astonishing to see all of this in a movie acted in Farsi about Iranian society. A context in which showing the mere presence of women’s bodies can be challenging. Abbasi makes simple yet super effective choices. With Asgard Farhadi in the jury, it is not that improbable to imagine his most likely heir with the Palme d’Or in his hands.
MEN by Alex Garland
SPECIAL SCREENINGS (ALSO JUST OPENED IN US THEATERS)
I spent the last 30 minutes of the screening hiding behind my notepad, a testament to Garland's ability to create tension. Unfortunately, Men did not work for me at all, especially in its visionary, gory, and highly symbolic finale. I felt sorry for the poor Rory Kinnear, an always underused and underestimated actor. In fact, he explained that the last sequence of the movie required him to be on the set, almost naked covered in glue and prosthetics for more than a week, being both extremely uncomfortable and cold. He was a real charmer during the final Q&A after the screening, making the audience laugh while explaining how he developed the several men he plays in the movie. Everyone's favorite was of course Geoffrey, a villa owner that the protagonist of the movie describes as a “peculiar character: very, very, very…country”. The level of weird Britishness in Men is off the charts, but audience reaction is a good indicator of how movies sometimes miss the right tone; People laughed a lot out of embarrassment in highly symbolic scenes in which you are supposed to be shocked, or in awe, or just deeply inside the story. Though the title, trailer, and promotions suggest otherwise, Men is a fairly straightforward horror movie though weird supernatural stuff is going to happen and people online will try to explain the sense of it! I sort of wish Garland had embraced a lighter less serious and more ironic take on this story.
more tomorrow
Day 1 Opening Night, Coupez!
Day 2 Tom Cruise, The Eight Mountains, Scarlet
Day 3 Armageddon Time, EO, Tchaivosky's Wife
Day 4 Corsage, Brother and Sister, When You Finish Saving the World
Day 5 3000 Years of Longing, RMN, Triangle of Sadness, Boy From Heaven
Day 6 Holy Spider, Men, Smoking Makes You Cough, Marcel!
Day 7 Decision to Leave, Crimes of the Future, Forever Young
Day 8 Silent Twins, Tori and Lokita, Nostalgia