(Cannes) Every day, The Press presents films seen on the Croisette.
Last summerby Catherine Breillat: closer to the intimate
After 10 years of absence (his last film is Abuse of weaknessmade in 2013), Catherine Breillat is back with a feature film inspired by Queen of Hearts, a Danish film directed by May el-Toukhy in 2019 (winner at the time of an audience award at the Sundance festival). Starring Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher (Paul’s brother, revealed in The high school studentmaking his film debut here), Last summer recounts how Anne, a more mature woman, goes about safeguarding her family life after being seduced by Théo, a 17-year-old young man, son of her spouse. Renowned as a provocateur, the director of Romance again tackles a delicate subject, but this time taking a more calm approach. Eliminating from the outset the moral question raised by this affair which the young man had the initiative, the filmmaker focuses instead on the means that Anne uses to try to save face when the affair comes to light. Often filming the faces of her characters in close-up with an amorous camera (magnificent work by Jeanne Lapoirie in the direction of photography), Catherine Breillat thus digs into the intimacy of her protagonists, without ever falling into shamelessness or complacency. Léa Drucker and Samuel Kircher are credible and offer magnificent performances. Last summer marks the beautiful return of a filmmaker afflicted by the disease to the point of having a lost time the desire to make cinema.
Pick upby Marco Bellocchio: like paintings by great masters
PHOTO PROVIDED BY AD VITAM
Image taken from Rapito (Pick up), a film by Marco Bellocchio
In official competition at Cannes for the first time 43 years ago (The leap into the void had then earned interpretation prizes for Anouk Aimée and Michel Piccoli), the Italian master Marco Bellocchio, 83, is this year in the running for the Palme d’Or for the eighth time. Classically made, Pick up echoes a real historical event, which occurred in Bologna in 1858. That year, the Pope’s soldiers burst into a Jewish family to extricate one of the children, aged 7, who, as a baby, would have been baptized in secret by a nurse. Now, the pontifical law is indisputable. A baptized child must receive a Catholic education. Pick up thus describes the efforts made by the parents to recover their son in the face of the intransigence of Pope Pius IX, the political impact that results from this affair (the family is supported by liberal Italy and the international Jewish community), as well as than the effects of this new indoctrination on the little boy. Thanks to staging of incredible meticulousness, supported by remarkable images often resembling paintings by old masters, Marco Bellocchio offers a film of very high quality. Don’t be surprised if this most recent work by the veteran is on the charts on Saturday.