Film Festival Reports

Cannes

CANNES 2018: CLIMAX, APOCALYPSE AFTER, MANDY, CÓMPRAME UN REVÓLVER

By Mónica Delgado

A hysterical Young girl convulses in the hallways of a dance school and becomes an occasional Isabelle Adjani in Possession. Nicholas Cage portraying an avenger who deals with some beings from the afterlife taken from Hellraiser, or maybe a porn woman filmmaker that could’ve easily made a mix between Behind The Green Room under the influence of Kenneth Anger’s shorts. Cinema of references has the ability to achieve some creativity sparks from pastiche or parody, although the sensation of déjà vu is permanent. We find this particular quality in a group of films seen in the parallel sections of Critics’ Week and Quinzaine des réalisateurs.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT BY BI GAN

By Mónica Delgado

The conception and perception of time that the young filmmaker Bi Gan proposed in his first feature Kaili Blues, is prolonged in an oneiric state in his new work, presented in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. A disperse search of a woman becomes a treaty on memory and how is it conceived, as an illusion, nightmare or, as one of the characters says in a part of the film, as dreams that couldn’t come true. In long day’s journey into night, Bi Gan returns in a formidable way, to some motifs of his last feature: time and the unavoidable figure of the clock, interior that shelter ghost or stylized beings, and a character that returns to look for a being of the past from the uncomfortableness of that something which can’t be caught.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: HAPPY AS LAZZARO BY ALICE ROHRWARCHER

By Mónica Delgado

Like in Le Meraviglie, Young Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher chooses the fantastic tone for a social parable, but here as a critique of capitalist estates, represented by the hand of an old monarchy that turns farmers into slaves trapped in time. The view of this world of simulations and all shires in a century of changes in the work field, is written from the point of view of a young man, free of all evil, the Lazzaro of the title, that becomes the scapegoat of the being that will concatenate in an imaginative way two times and spaces in an arcade of alienation without utopias.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: THREE FACES BY JAFAR PANAHI

Por Mónica Delgado

In Three Faces, Jafar Panahi takes some motifs from Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema as a way of making an homage. Like in the themes of his colleague’s films, Panahi stablishes a clash or interrelation between social classes, in a confrontation of the illustrated world and the rural world, but here about conceptions and prejudices about the role of women and the possibilities of development and freedom in the current world. Regarding his mise in scéne, the winks to The Wind Will Carry us or Through the Olive Trees are inevitable, through some panoramic shots that allows us to explore the landscape, the roads and precarious highways, and the characters that walk from far away.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: LE LIVRE D’IMAGE BY JEAN-LUC GODARD

By Mónica Delgado

In Le Livre d’Image, Godard not only elaborates an essay on image and words about the inevitable repetition (as a key concept) and the role of memory in that matter, but he also gives an outstanding offer about materiality of cinema from the digital format, which dilates or exorcises it.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: COLD WAR, DIAMANTINO, EL ÁNGEL AND SORRY ANGEL

By Mónica Delgado

The journey of the last few days in Cannes has been an eclectic one, as in a film like Godard’s latest film essay or the remarkable film by Jia Zhang-ke have improved the panorama in this diversity. In this search, we give account of some films seen in the Official Selection, in Un Certain Regard and one of the Critic’s Week.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: ASH IS PUREST WHITE BY JIA ZHANG-KE

By Mónica Delgado

With outstanding moments, like the attack to Bin (Liao Fan), the trip to Qiao in ship and her transit through an unknown district, or those final shots where the technology (surveillance cameras) becomes the being where the human beings, observed, could find comfort, make Ash is purest white a film to consider for the Golden Palm, since its qualities affirm Zhang-ke as one of the most important Chinese filmmakers, with a particular and unique style we still celebrate.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: BORDER (GRÄNS) BY ALI ABBASI

By Mónica Delgado

Based on John Ajvide Lindquist’s novel, the same author of Let the Right One In, In, Gräns (Border), Ali Abbasi’s film, is a special experience. Lidquist portrays the story of a police woman with a bloated and deformed shape, who relates to the world through animal drives. The story takes from local myths and Nordic folklore, with echoes of tales of werewolves and other supernatural monsters.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: DONBASS BY SERGEI LOZNITSA

By Mónica Delgado

Donbass is the name of an Eastern Ucranian territory which is described and critiqued by Sergei Loznitsa, in a key of absurdist tale about the crisis of that country and Russia, its big opposition. The acid humor pours in thirteen episodes, whether in usual situations about politic negotiations and others due to quotidian life in wartime. Meetings from different politicians, public workers and civil society, and also weddings or hospital dates, are part of simulacra machinery (actors are paid to create news) that the filmmaker uses as a prologue and epilogue, to enclose the facts of war in the realm of falsehood or “post-truth”.

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Cannes

CANNES 2018: LETO BY KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV

By Mónica Delgado

Leto poses a lecture on the creative processes from a clean point of view, meaning that it doesn’t avoid the common sense of stormy romances but bets for a history of rockers and narrates it with atypical components, without any scandalous scenes of overdoses, suicides or violence.

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