We can already hear the end clap on this Croisette. The Market closed its doors two days ago. On Friday we were shown the last films of the race. Place to wait for the winners, the unveiling of Saturday. Several festival-goers drive with their suitcases to mysterious destinations. The good weather sucks the resistance fighters of the last hour onto the sunny terraces. No, the demonstrators of all persuasions did not smash the walls of the Palace. Yes, a shower of stars has swept over all-dressed red carpets. Many American filmmakers and headliners were more radiant on this Côte d’Azur than in their Hollywood paralyzed by the screenwriters’ strike. In dark rooms, the cuvée will have proved, with a few caveats, to be of high quality. The cinema, in the midst of turbulence, burst into Cannes as in its finest days. Here, the illusion brings to life…
In the race for the Palme d’Or, The Old Oak (The old oak tree), of Ken Loach, was expected with feverish haste, during the last sprint on Friday. Double webbed here, in 2006 with The Wind That Shakes the Barley and ten years later with I, Daniel Blake, the British filmmaker has, as they say in France, his napkin ring. Cannes will have presented 18 of his works in half a century, including 15 in the Official Selection. To see him arrive at the Palace is to bow to a man of convictions, always with his fist raised. Modest, refusing to sit on her laurels, with her round glasses, her legendary courtesy, her constant commitment to the damned of the earth, this tutelary figure, coupled with an excellent director of actors, imposes.
Still, at 86, the leftist of the first hour could launch his swan song. A third Palme on the horizon for the dean of this competition? One thing is certain, no one has yet realized such a fantasy.
The Old Oak, work on solidarity that he co-scripted with his old accomplice Paul Laverty, moved several festival-goers to tears with his cry of hope on a troubled planet. Alas! Loach supports his message in grease pencil, even if it means sometimes falling into otherworldliness. His story lacks nuance. In a dying village of former miners, he tackles the issue of the arrival of Syrian refugees, a subject of irritation in the cottages, where the population drags the devil by the tail. Hateful prejudices flourish among the regulars of The Old Oak pub, run by a former activist who has had a lot of it (Dave Turner, formidable). A young Syrian photographer wins his friendship. Little by little, links are woven between these humans with different cradles, under the sneers of the bad guys on duty crying out for revenge.
Can two communities in distress with opposing cultures remake the world on the bed of evil and misfortune? Loach will answer yes, until his last breath. These beings in clashes or in sharing go through dark tunnels, but the many scenes of solidarity trumpet the arrival of the sun.Ken Loach delivers a testamentary work less complex than through his last films, which illuminates a path of light beyond the chaos of current polarizations. The Old Oak could be rewarded as such on the list or as a crowning achievement. Who knows ? Nevertheless, we have already known him as committed, although more delicate in the knitting of his intrigues.
The witch of the seventh art
It was in a poor and isolated Italian community that the Italian Alice Rohrwacher camped the chimera, with his usual virtuosity, his quest for the bizarre and his taste for unusual figures. Already awarded here for Wonders And Happy as Lazaroshe is aiming again, at barely 36 years old, for the Palme d’Or.
Through the aesthetics of light and brilliance of her staging, the filmmaker captures the life of a group of Etruscan grave robbers led by a young Briton (Josh O’Connor, seen in the series The Crown). This man with a troubled past has the gift of finding the sites covering burials using a dowsing rod. The filmmaker tracks down the fears and illusions of her characters in scenes full of life and verve, poetizing the action to the archaic songs of a troubadour. The daily life of cunning or charming peasants becomes lyrical. As for the secret springs of the stranger with an ambiguous profile, without god or master, they sink into mystery. The tombs and their treasures become, by candlelight, magical mazes, haunted, magical as well as fatal. Alice Rohrwacher, fairy or witch of the seventh art, too little known to the general public, is a major filmmaker who will certainly reap here one day the supreme reward, which hangs from her, by her immense talent, at the end of her nose.
Ghost track record
Composing a ghost list is a thankless exercise, inevitably contradicted by the jury. How to play the oracles? Impossible. The only other option, to offer you my own selection, and sail the ship… So here it is:
Palme d’Or : Perfect Daysby Wim Wenders
Grand Jury Prize: The Zone of Interest, by Jonathan Glazer
Best Director: Justine Triet for Anatomy of a fall
Jury Prize: Dead leavesby Aki Kaurismaki
Screenplay Prize: Alice Rohrwacher for the chimera
Best Actor Award: Kōji Yakusho in Perfect Daysby Wim Wenders
Best Actress Award: Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a fallby Justine Triet
See you tomorrow then, for the unveiling of the winners. Hoping that you will be able to see on the big screen several excellent films of which we make our honey here.