Cannes
CANNES 2017: WIND RIVER, JUST TO BE SURE, NAPALM
By Mónica Delgado
A brief report on these three films in diverse sections, measuring the pulse half way in this 70th edition of Cannes
2017.05.22
Film Festival Reports
Cannes
CANNES 2017: JEANNETTE L’ENFANCE DE JEANNE D’ARC BY BRUNO DUMONT
By Mónica Delgado
Divided en three parts, Jeannette, L’Enfance de Jeanne d’Arc is an absolutely unusual musical, but at the same time it is a very “Dumontian” film. His style is clearly recognizable in the actors’ direction, in its “medieval” physiognomies, in the austerity of his mise in scene and also in the clear familiarity with the absurdist comedy he’s been working in in the last years. A free and creative work, that presents an iconoclastic and renewed Dumont.
2017.05.22
Cannes
CANNES 2017: THE SQUARE BY RUBEN ÖSTLUND
By Mónica Delgado
The Square poses a special relationship between art and men. Is art any good nowadays to transform society or people? -the dream of the old vanguards.
2017.05.22
Cannes
CANNES 2017: L’AMANT D’UN JOUR BY PHILIPPE GARREL
By Mónica Delgado
Garrel returns to his previous ghosts: variations on the topic of love, its transformation, but never its denial. Through a porous black and white, the French filmmaker applies all of his measured sentimentality and proposes an ambivalent character to remember, the one played by Louise Chevillote, showed in a kind of Nouvelle Vague-splendor.
2017.05.22
Cannes
CANNES 2017: VISAGE VILLAGES, BY JR AND AGNÉS VARDA
By Mónica Delgado
It’s impossible to remain unmoved by such an affectionate film, not only because of the sympathy that Varda transmits, but because it’s a film that it’s constantly speaking and showing characters who share experiences, and are surprised by the result of the collaboration between the two filmmakers.
2017.05.22
Cannes
CANNES 2017: SICILIAN GHOST STORY BY FABIO GRASSADONIA AND ANTONIO PIAZZA
By Mónica Delgado
If in Salvo, Grassadonia and Piazza’s previous film, the filmmakers returned to some motifs proper of “mafia films” to then place them in a dark setting, like in a sophisticated and austere film noir, in Sicilian Love Story they seem to be inspired by the same issues, but this time with a fantastic and coming-of-age kind of view. And there lies the originality of this film, which starts like Romeo and Juliet, in a town far away from this insular Italy, where two adolescents in school have a relationship which is not approved by a castrating ghostly mother.
2017.05.19
Cannes
CANNES 2017: WESTERN BY VALESKA GRISEBACH
By Mónica Delgado
The border between Bulgaria and Greece serves as scenario of an intense drama, something which comes as different from Valeska Grisebach’s measured style. A German worker and his confrontation and latter acceptance from a rural community due to the language and local customs, that’s the argument of this Austrian film that opened with big expectations in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.
2017.05.19
Cannes
CANNES 2017: BRIGHT SUNSHINE IN (UN BEAU SOLEIL INTÉRIEUR) BY CLAIRE DENIS
By Mónica Delgado
Un Beau Soleil Intérieur seems to be a fragile, even superficial film, however Denis towers above that and achieves a sublime work about a drifting woman, with a brilliant and unique performance by Juliette Binoche, a sort of reverse Bettie Blue, twenty years after.
2017.05.18
Cannes
CANNES 2017: LOVELESS BY ANDREI ZVYAGINTSEV
By Mónica Delgado
As in his previous Works, Andrei Zvyagintsev proposes a new moral allegory to speak about the social crisis in current Russia, but this time, he does so from the devastated core of a middle class home going through a divorce process. If in Leviathan the fight against corruption was impeded of being banished because of the different criteria of the Orthodox Church in a small conservative town, or, if in Elena, a mother offered herself in sacrifice to protect his alcoholic son in a vicious circle of money and other transactions, in Loveless Zvyagintsev chooses a child as an expiatory goat of a society in decadence, reflected here in the institution of family, broken and enemy of solidarity and emotion.
2017.05.18
Cannes
CANNES 2017: ISMAEL’S GHOSTS BY ARNAUD DESPLECHIN
By Mónica Delgado
Opening Cannes with an Arnaud Desplechin film was an outstanding debt, especially because two years ago, his film Trois souveniers de ma jeunesse was presented in the Quinzaine of Realisateurs and ignored by the official selection, an act which was seen as a disservice to one of the most ludic and talented filmmakers of France.
2017.05.17