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 Post subject: Cannes NOTES - 4 - day 8
PostPosted: Wed May 25, 2022 6:59 pm 
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JURY GRID CURRENT SUMMARY:
Quote:
3.2 DECISION TO LEAVE - Park Chan-wook
2.8 ARMAGEDDON TIME - James Gray
2.7 EO - Jerzy Skolomowski
2.5 CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (David Cronenberg)
2.5 TRIANGLE OF SADNESS - Ruben Östlund
2.5 R.M.N. - Christian Mungiu
2.3 BOY FROM HEAVEN - Tarik Saleh
2.2 TCHAIKOVSKY'S WIFE - Kirill Serebrennikov
2.1 THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS - Felix Van Groeningen
2.1 BROTHER AND SISTER - Arnaud Desplechin
2.1 HOLY SPIDER - Ali Abassi
1.8 FOREVER YOUNG - Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

An updated Screen Daily article about their Jury Gird shows Park Chan-wook's DECISION TO LEAVE has jumped to the top, pushing down James Gray's ARMAGEDDON TIME one; Cronenberg's CRIMES OF THE FUTURE has lodged down with the 2.5's, below the top 3.

MAY 24. ITALIAN COMPETITION FILM

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FRANCESCO DI LEVA, PIERFRANCESCO FAVINO IN NOSTALGIA

NOSTALGIA (Mario Martone)
Cannes, In Competition. An Italian film! We get so few of them here. This adaptation of Ermanno Rea’s novel is about coming home to a specific quarter of Naples, the impoverished, crime-ridden Rione Sanità, at 55 after being gone since the age of 15, and deciding to stay. The protagonist, played by Pierfrancesco Favino, has settled in Cairo, switched to mainly speaking Arabic, married (someone), and may even have converted to Islam, yet wants to connect with his youthful "brother" (Tommaso Ragno), who is now head of an evil gang everyone warns him against. Departing from the director's sumptuous period pieces that became uninvolving, this is a very watchable, "straightforward, thriller-esque drama," writes Hollywood Reporter's Lovia Gyarkye , who finds it will play well outside Italy. She thinks the nostalgia theme is pushed too hard, but Lee Marshall in Screen Daily calls the film a "passionate contemporary ghost story." Favino is known to us as Mafia informer Tommaso Buscetta in Marco Bellocchio’s epicThe Traitor/Il traditore (NYFF 2019), but the critics see flaws, one being that Favino's character's adult past remains too mysterious so in the "ghost story," he is a ghost. But Deborah Young in The Verdict calls it "one of Martone's most accessible works" and is enthusiastic about the film's depth of acting, polished editing and "astonishing locations."

CANNES MAY 24: TWO DOCUMENTARIES

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STRILL FROM MOONAGE DREAM

MOONAGE DAYDREAM (Brett Morgan)
Cannes. Out of Competition. This lengthy, kalaidescopic new documentary by Brett Morgan, who previously did ones on Curt Cobain and the Rolling Stones, is a "glorious, shapeshifting eulogy to David Bowie," writes the Guardian's Bradshaw, who gives it his third 5/5 stars top rating at 2022 Cannes. It's about his public personas, creativity, and art, and does not touch on his private life. Bradshaw says on YouTube it sent him into "an extended two-and-a-half-hour swoon"and is "absolutely brilliant." David Rooney in Hollywood Reporter admires this film's "incredible wraparound sound treatment," but finds a huge gap between that and Bowie's interviews, which are mere "blather." Fionnuala Halligan in Screen Daily finds the doc "dizzying" and "a sensory voyage." IndieWire says it's an unapologetic sound and light show, influenced by avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, with special big-screen presentations essential.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION (Sergei Loznitsa)
Cannes, Premiere Section. Taking its title from a 1999 book by German writer W.G. Sebald. The Ukrainian feature filmmaker (MY JOY, IN THE FOG) uses an "unprecedented trove of archival footage" to "re-examine the strategic bombing campaign of Allied forces in Germany during the Second World War," a campaign aimed to destroy both war resources and morale. Loznitsa, whose BABA YAR, CONTEXT doc won a Special Jury Prize at Cannes last year, considers whether the use of the civilian population in war is morally defensible, Variety explains. Bradshaw (3/5 stars) says this topic could not be more "brutally relevant" in the wake of Russia's current war on Ukraine. This history is "not natural," and that's the point, says Bradshaw.

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STILL FROM THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION

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