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 Post subject: Cannes NOTES 7 - Day 11
PostPosted: Fri May 27, 2022 9:28 pm 
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CANNES DAY 10 MAY 26: LOUIS GARREL'S 'INNOCENT'

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GARREL, ZEM, AND MERLANT IN THE INNOCENT

THE INNOCENT/L'INNOCENT (Louis Garrel).
Cannes. Out of Competition. A "delicate blend of fraught family comedy, parodic heist flick and meta thesp commentary" an earlier Phil Hoad Guardian interview piece reported, and it's "flat out entertaining and full of droll irony and belly laughs." This is Garrel's fourth outing as feature film director. I haven't seen his 3rd, The Crusade, and it's hard to come by. Tim Grierson in Screen Daily calls L'Innocent "a contrived charmer full of fizzy pleasures" and "filled with goofy good cheer." We may need that. The plot line concerns a protective son (Garrel) who objects to his mother (Anouk Grinberg) marrying a career criminal (Roschdy Zem), then decides "an occasional heist" might not be a bad idea, "bring some spice to his [own] life." Garrel is his alter ego Abel again, and this time he has a "zesty rapport" with his 'best friend,' Clémence (Noémie Merlant), with whom he's working things out. It's all fun, but Garrel tends to "overdo the story’s playful ludicrousness" a bit, undercutting the real emotions, Grierson says. The Playlist calls THE INNOCENT "breezy, elegant, and fun." Valerie Complex in her Deadline review calls it "flat-out entertaining.

CANNES MAY 27, DAY 11, LAST TWO COMPETITION FILMS

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AHMED SYLLA IN UN PETIT FRÈRE

MOTHER AND SON/UN PETIT FRÈRE (Léonor Serraille)
Cannes. Competition. Bradshaw gives it 4/5 stars in his Guardian review, mainly for the excellent acting, especially Annabelle Lengronne as the mother, Rose, who is praised by everybody. A meditative recollection, ranging from 1989 to 2005, of a son who emigrated to France with his older brother and "wayward mother" from Ivory Coast in the nineties. Léonor Serraille won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2017 for her debut film about a ditsy lady, JEUNE FEMME/MONTPARNASSE BIENVENUE (which I saw twice, and found skillful but implausible, unworthy of the Caméra d'Or). This seems something more solid. The common thread is the messy, irresponsible woman, this time the recollected mother whose children do well in spite of her promiscuity and irresponsible behavior while working as a hotel cleaner. Stephanie Bunbury in Deadline thinks the film seems too researched at times, "a dossier of the immigrant experience." This film is about African immigrant experience by a young white woman; Serraille has degrees in comparative literature from the Sorbonne and in scenario writing from La Fémis, the state film school. Fabien Mercier in Cineropa calls LE PETIT FRÈRE "a subtly crafted work" and singles out its "sophisticated screenplay" for manipulating a complex timeline and three POV's. After JEUNE FEMME I'm dubious, but this would clearly merit a watch.

MAY 27, CANNES DAY 11: KELLY REICHARDT'S FOURTH COLLABORATION WITH MICHELLE WILLIAMS

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MICHELLE WILLIAMS IN SHOWING UP

SHOWING UP (Kelly Reichardt)
Cannes. In Competition. Features Michelle Williams as a sculptor assembling a gallery show in the "outsidery-y" artistic community of contemporary Portland, Oregon in what Rodrigo Perez in The Playlist thinks "one of Reichardt’s most playful, warm, sweet, and funny works," and another of her oblique statements about political and emotional survival in America. Variety points to this as the best with Williams since WENDY AND LUCY (of four collaborations). In The Guardian, Bradshaw is not so entranced (3/5 stars) and finds SHOWING UP "downbeat but diverting" and sees the action as "torpid," the dialogue as "murmured." He finds this film "a bit studied and passionless" especially compared with the previous one, the (I think) very subtle and touching FIRST COW. David Rooney in Hollywood Reporter would disagree: he calls this "a gorgeous reflection on making art," an " unpolished jewel of a film." The warmth of FIRST COW has lingered, and I'll want to see this new movie, whose milieu sounds close to home.

DAY 11 JURY GRID UPDATE

PACIFICTION landed mid-pack with 2.6; Kore-eda's BROKER tanked at 1.9; and CLOSE fell below Serra's film with 2.4. Kelly Reichardt's SHOWING UP and Leonor Serraille's MOTHER AND SON remain to be graded by the poll.

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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
2.7 TORI AND LOKITA - Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
2.6 CRIMES OF THE FUTURE - David Cronenberg
2.6 PACIFICTION - Albert Serra
2.5 TRIANGLE OF SADNESS - Ruben Östlund
2.5 R.M.N. - Christian Mungiu
2.5 NOSTALGIA - Mario Martone
2.4 CLOSE - Lukas Dhont
2.3 BOY FROM HEAVEN - Tarik Saleh
2.2 TCHAIKOVSKY'S WIFE - Kirill Serebrennikov
2.0 THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS - Felix Van Groeningen
2.0 HOLY SPIDER - Ali Abassi
2.0 BROTHER AND SISTER - Arnaud Desplechin
1.9 STARS AT NOON (Claire Denis)
1.9 BROKER - Hirakazu Kore-eda
1.8 FOREVER YOUNG - Valeria Bruni Tedeschi


MORE ON THE LAST DAY: A GAY TALE FROM MOROCCO

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LUBNA AZABAL AND SALEH BAKRI IN THE BLUE CAFTAN

THE BLUE CAFTAN/LE BLEU DU CAFTAN (Maryam Touzani)
Cannes. Un Certain Regard. The Moroccan director is back in Un Certain Regard after being reviewed favorably by Deborah Young in Hollywood Reporter for her 2019 debut there, ADAM, about a small bakery owner who rescues an unwed pregnant woman. This time her subject is the triangle of a gay tailor, his assistant, and his accepting wife in a Salé medina shop where the man must hide his true sexuality. Jonathan Romney showers this film with praise in Screen Daily, calling it "beautifully textured," "an elegant artisanal film" and a "superbly acted and emotionally resonant offering." In his Hollywood Reporter review, David Rooney calls it "a film of exquisite sensuality and sadness."

UN CERTAIN REGARD AWARDS TO THE WORST ONES, JOYLAND, CORSAGE

At the awards Jury President Valeria Golino gave a little mentioned French film called LES PIRES/THE WORST ONES by Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret the top prize. THE WORST ONES is "a playful film-within-a-film about the challenges and perils of street casting." It's more about how using non-actors culled from a poor "cité" can be more exploitive than beneficial, a review in A Moveable Feast explains. This may mean THE WORST ONES is in line for the prize for best first film, the Caméra d'Or. The runner up was the Pakistani film JOYLAND, which was a popular favorite. The acting prize went to another favorite, praised by critics like Variety's Jessica Kiang: Vicky Krieps for her performance as the Hapsburg Empress Elisabeth in Austria in Marie Kreuzer's CORSAGE, a Variety article explains.

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TIMEO MAHAUT IN THE WORST ONES

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