On the third day of the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, moviegoers were able to discover the most recent films by Paul Schrader and Yorgos Lanthimos, namely Oh, Canada And Kinds of Kindness, respectively. Due to the stature of their authors, these were highly anticipated titles. Neither disappointed, but neither completely wowed either. Though Oh, Canadawhere Schrader takes a sharp and (self)critical look at the idea of the man behind the artist, comes a step above and is among the fine late works of the venerable screenwriter of Taxi Driver and director of First Reformed (Dialogue with God in French).
Adapted from Russell Banks’ penultimate novel, Oh, Canada marks the second time that Paul Schrader brings to the screen a work by the writer who died in 2023, after Afflictionreleased in 1997, about a man who flees his responsibilities and his traumas by anesthetizing himself with alcohol.
Filmed partly in Quebec, like this previous film, Oh, Canada also tells the story of a man on the run – of past lives, of himself… His name is Leonard Fife, and he was once a celebrated documentary filmmaker as well as an emblematic figure of the left after having emigrated clandestinely to Canada in order to avoid going to fight in Vietnam.
In 2023, in the comfort of a mansion with nothing proletarian about it, “Leo” is dying, and he intends to confide in former students who have in turn become renowned documentarians. Leo wants to make his final confession on camera, as a kind of extreme anointing through cinema.
The result is a non-linear flow of reminiscences where Leo debunks his own myth.
Reconnecting with its formalist impulses of the 1980s (we think of Cat People/The feline and especially to Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters/Mishima. A life in four chapters), which he combines with the analysis of his latest films (First Reformed, The Card Counter, Master Gardener), Schrader gives each era or type of memory its own image ratio (1.33:1, 2.39:1…) and its own palette (naturalistic, desaturated with sepia filter, black and white).
And who better to play this dying antihero than Richard Gere, star of one of the director’s biggest hits during the 1980s: American Gigolo (The American gigolo). The actor is masterful (Jacob Elordi, the hunk of Saltburnis perfect as Leo in his early twenties).
Poignant dimension
Through this character of a respected director who is determined to expose his flaws, his turpitudes and other lies as death comes, Schrader appears to do the same behind the camera. It must be said that he himself almost died during the pandemic. Soon after, his longtime wife, actress Mary Beth Hurt, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Knowing this, we can say that this entire project built around the themes of memory, death and religion (recurring in Schrader) takes on a poignant dimension.
However, even ignoring these personal considerations, Oh, Canada fascinates. There are certainly construction defects, such as the dull narration of Leo’s son, whose point of view the film adopts at one point, abandoning for a single and inexplicable time the perspective of the protagonist. Some flashbacks, where actors in the present play themselves in the past, work in theory, but not in practice.
Whatever the case, in what could be his swan song, Paul Schrader indulges himself, summoning his master Robert Bresson in the austerity of the present, but also his dear Carl Theodor Dreyer, when Leo addresses the documentary camera in very close-up, without forgetting a tribute to Orson Welles, for the final words…
The stories of Lanthimos
Unlike Gere and Elordi who exchange the same role in Oh, Canadathe stars of Kinds of Kindnessthey multiply the characters in what turns out to be a sketch film, crazy as it should be, since co-written and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
The director of films as captivating as they are disturbing The Lobster (Lobster) And The Killing of the Sacred Deer (The killing of the sacred deer) in this case turned Kinds of Kindness in the greatest secrecy just after her fabulous Poor Things (Poor creatures). The leading figure of this previous film, Emma Stone, reunites for a third time with the eccentric Greek filmmaker (see also The Favorite/The favorite).
The two-time Academy Award winner for Best Actress is typically brilliant, unpredictable and fearless.
Each story is autonomous, but a subliminal connection exists, not only because the same performers reappear in different scores, but also through common themes and subthemes.
Fearless Emma Stone
True to form, Lanthimos enjoys testing the limits of good taste, decorum and morality, with a boldness that Pier Paolo Pasolini would not have denied. It is notably a question of sexual fluidity, cannibalism, resurrection…
Among other things, Kinds of Kindness deals with various forms of sadomasochistic relationships or control – employer, marital, sectarian -, but the exercise is first of all a pretext for a succession of unusual, fanciful, provocative, even shocking scenes, into which the filmmaker infuses this humor in turn dark and absurd turn which is his.
So soon after Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness suffers from comparison. Furthermore, as is often the case with sketch films, not all segments are of equal interest or quality. In this case, the first part remains the best.
Although expertly produced (the filmmaker’s use of the architecture of a given location, even banal, is always remarkable), the whole thing lacks the rigor of previous films. In short, on the eve of the fourth day of the official competition, the path remains open for great honors.
François Lévesque is in Cannes at the invitation of the festival and thanks to the support of Telefilm Canada