From Paris, getting to Cannes by train was mission impossible on Monday. A convoy blocked in Toulon for long hours due to unexplained damage. Voices of employees imploring us to watch our luggage, because pickpockets started stealing suitcases. An Uber caught in trio to get to port: 90 kilometers on the coastal path. Bold the brave! Cannes deserves.
Upon arrival, the Croisette was bustling on the eve of its opening. The tribute poster The Truman Show (not very successful) multiplied on the pediment of the Palace, sky blue to better reflect itself in a radiant firmament. And the buzz of Cannes was already circulating in the streets, this Babelian mixture of French, English, Italian, German, interrupted by the horns of drivers grumbling at traffic jams. War seemed a long way off.
Ukraine, however, invites itself to the festivities of the rendezvous in the saddle from May 17 to 28, which celebrates its 75th anniversary, in a troubled climate. “We are going to make a big festival together, promised its general delegate Thierry Frémaux on Monday. We will think a lot about cinema, but without ever forgetting Ukraine. For its part, the pandemic seems to belong to a bygone era. Even wearing a mask in theaters is not compulsory. Nobody wears it. Plans to catch him…
Find your luster
It is all the less a cuvée stamped pandemic, as the festival was tired of undergoing the covidian assaults. A canceled 2020 vintage in situ, then last year this summer Cannes with our troops decimated, masked, tested until more thirsty. For such an institution, how to maintain its rank (the first) when everything is moving on a sick planet and when online platforms taunt the cinemas that we want to protect. Might as well solve the squaring of the circle…
35,000 accredited, a jury led by the French actor with committed roles Vincent Lindon, the festival is back in the saddle. At the opening of the ball, the hexagonal film Cut! by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), comedy with zombie red sauce, at least intends to cheer up the spirits.
The event dreams of regaining its former glory, even if the big competitive rival of the fall, in Venice, has gained ground in the last two years. Didn’t the Mostra brave the health turmoil without closing its competition to films from Netflix and company?
Should the rules of the game be changed at Cannes? Sacrificing achievements? To woo the rising forces (he decides to do this more and more), to give up sooner or later on favoring works intended for the big screen? 2022 marks the last year of festival president Pierre Lescure. To his succession, from next year the German Iris Knobloch, the former president of the Warner studio. In short, a new mistral is blowing over the Estérel mountains.
Glitter and cinema
Of course there will be the stars, Tom Cruise in a breeze, Julia Roberts, Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux, Marion Cotillard, Omar Sy and other beasts of the red carpet, to promote Cannes in evening wear under the crackling of photographers. The secret of Cannes’ success has always rested on the schizophrenia of the festival: glamor and cinephilia. Flashing light side: Top Gun: Maverick by Joseph Kosinsky, Elvis by Baz Luhrmann on the King (played by Austin Butler). A documentary about rocker Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind by Ethan Coen, another on David Bowie, Moonage Daydream by Brett Morgen, without forgetting the Palme d’honneur which will be awarded to Forest Whitaker (unforgettable actor of ghost dog). The United States still come to Cannes. It’s already taken.
There remains, in pearl in the oyster, a competition where confirmed authors like the Dardenne brothers covet a new Palme d’Or. Here they are back with Tori and Lokita, obstacle course of two young African migrants on Belgian soil. Also welcome veteran Jerzy Skolimowski, inspired byRandom balthazar by Robert Bresson, to deliver his memoirs of a donkey with Hi Han.
Several festival-goers sigh: “We always find the same regulars in competition! It’s true, but when their name is Cristian Mungiu (NMR), Arnaud Desplechin (Brother and sister), Hirokazu Kore-eda (broker), Claire Dennis (Stars at Noon), Park Chan-wook (Decision to Leave), we won’t complain. All these filmmakers take the pulse of their time, which loses measure. You might as well watch them examine their planet.
Will Torontonian David Cronenberg make the faint of heart swoon with Crimes of the Future ? There’s nothing like a scandal to excite the Croisette to hysteria. Here he finds the vein of his vivisections. But even on a scenario dating from 1998, his universe with genetic mutations constitutes an allegory of our future times.
Politics despite everything
The news colors the selection sometimes in spite of itself and the dissident Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, immigrated to Germany, is expected to compete as much for his biopic Madame Tchaikovsky only for his disputes with Vladimir Putin the warmonger. As for the American James Gray who approaches the birth of the Trump Empire in New York in the 80s through Armageddon Timehe should have something to say about the America of today so damaged by the former president.
In special screening, the documentary The Natural History of Destruction of the Ukrainian Sergeï Loznitsa could not better bear his name. It describes the massive bombardments of German cities and citizens by the Allies during World War II. Either way, war is an abomination. Ignore this year the invasion of Ukraine amid the gold and glitter of Cannes? Impossible, it is true. Everything will remind her.