On the side “it’s the frenzy on La Croisette”, the American actor Harrison Ford received a whole welcoming committee Thursday in front of his chic Carlton Hotel, the star being honored for his career. Horde of fans in madness, clamor echoing his name to the Palais des Festivals.
The star comes out of competition to accompany the long-awaited preview ofIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny directed by James Mangold after the first four parts of the saga signed Spielberg. This will be the last lap of the octogenarian as a risk-all adventurer-archaeologist, already here in 2008 for a previous episode.
The excitement is great and the tumult deafening. The star received an honorary Palme d’or here. When Ford walked the red carpet, it was necessary to avoid the outskirts of La Croisette under the onslaught of onlookers flocking to zyeuter the idol. I won’t be able to see the film until tomorrow, as the official screening was so popular, crowded, sealed. To be continued.
Otherwise, we see films in competition. First, a work by Frenchman Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, winner in 2008 of Un certain regard for his johnny mad dog. Black Flies This year earned him his debut in the palm race. It is an independent film, shot in the frenzy of New York, in 28 days, in the heart of a violent and ruthless universe emerging from the streets and sordid apartments of Manhattan.
The film recreates the daily life of an apprentice paramedic, played by Ty Sheridan alongside none other than Sean Penn, a formidable all-terrain emergency physician. The horror of the depths of the Big Apple serves as adrenaline to drive away his malaise. This role was made for his face as a humanist mobster who has run around too much.
The aesthetics of the film in tight shots, the mobile camera marry the nocturnal route of the streets, hospitals and slums of Manhattan where the worst happens in blows and injuries, distress and confrontations.
Nothing to do with the fake side of Hollywood action productions. Almost every sequence places the viewer close to the worst, under the insults of rival gangs, drug addicts, homeless people, suicidal people of all ancestries in the cacophony of New York. And if some sentimental violins, especially at the end, sometimes break the mobile and maddening rhythm, we remain struck by the apocalyptic charge of this urban hell exploding before our eyes.
As for the documentary Youth (Spring) Chinese Wang Bing, it welcomes in Cannes competition a master of the genre whose The gap had been presented in Venice in 2010. Already the length of the film: 3 h 22, can make you tremble. However, this is only the first part of a trilogy on the Yangtze River. Vast ambition.
I was only able to see part of this UFO, due to scheduling conflicts. But the film fascinates as much as it intoxicates. Make way for a human termite mound, one of those textile factories equipped with dormitories where young people who are paid by the piece are piled up. We see them working like animals, on their sewing machines in a tiny space, assembling Santa Claus hats and other trinkets for Western destination.
But they also live, laugh, flirt, have children to abort or not. Their youth flourishes in these impossible conditions. Some workers take center stage. They seek each other, ask themselves. The boys bicker, the girls dress up. The camera follows them for a maddening immersion through the cogs of blind globalization in these buildings as far as the eye can see, on the edge of the disturbing Yangtze.
It’s not every day the party on the screens of Cannes, as you can see…
Odile Tremblay is the guest of the Cannes Film Festival.