(Cannes) Quebec filmmaker Matthew Rankin arrived Friday afternoon at the SODEC pavilion, on the seafront, directly on the beach of the bay of Cannes, with a slight delay. He had underestimated the time it would take to get through the security perimeter. The Cannes Film Festival is a fortress guarded by dozens of police officers.
It’s also my fault. In 2017, I met Rankin in exactly the same place, for the presentation of his short film Tesla: World Light at Critics’ Week. I found the wink nice. Two months before the Paris Olympic Games, with the whole of France under police surveillance, it was not the idea of the century.
Matthew Rankin returns seven years later to the Croisette in the other major parallel section of the Cannes Festival, the Filmmakers’ Fortnight. This Saturday morning and Saturday evening he will present his second feature film, the absolutely charming, comic and poetic A universal language.
“The film came from our collective joy and we wanted to relive this joy in Cannes,” says the 43-year-old filmmaker, who is on site with several members of his team (co-writers, actors, etc.).
A universal language is an absurd comedy that draws its inspiration from the life of Matthew Rankin, who plays an alter ego of the same name. An anecdote told by his grandmother is at the origin of the initial idea for the screenplay, co-written during the pandemic, after a stay in his hometown of Winnipeg, with his friends Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, two Quebecers from Iranian origin.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Still from the film A universal language
It’s the story of two elementary school students, Negin and Nazgol, who find a bank note stuck in ice. They will seek help from Massoud, a tourist guide from Winnipeg, a city where everyone speaks… Farsi. For his part, Matthew Rankin (the character) abandons his job as a civil servant in the Quebec government – just like the filmmaker – and undertakes a mysterious journey to visit his mother in the Manitoba capital, where the second language is not spoken. English, but the French bequeathed by Louis Riel.
“My mother died while I was presenting The twentieth century [son précédent film] at the Berlin Festival, February 29, 2020. I stayed in Winnipeg for a while during the lockdown as I was his executor. The city was particularly empty. I was in total solitude. It inspired me. »
Tribute to Iranian and Quebec cinema
A universal language, set in a reinvented 2000s, is an enigmatic work that bears the unique visual signature and singular humor of Matthew Rankin. A man runs a tissue box store, students play curling in the playground, street vendors look like they’re in Iran. Rankin filmed his characters mainly in fixed shots in front of beige or gray brick walls in Winnipeg.
The students, whose teacher is played by Mani Soleymanlou, as a deliciously exasperated cynic, study at the Winnipeg Children’s Institute, a nod to Kanoon Studios, where many Iranian filmmakers, including Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami, made their debut. In The white ball by Panahi, based on a script by Kiarostami, a child also tries to recover a stuck banknote.
“Iran is a corner of the world that has interested me for a long time. 20 years ago, I went there hoping to study cinema, but it was too complicated,” says Rankin, who speaks, reads and writes Farsi. When we met, he was carrying a bag with the image of the poet Forough Farrokhzad, who directed one of his favorite films, over his shoulder. The house is black (1962).
PHOTO MARYSE BOYCE, PROVIDED BY MAISON 4:3
Members of the teamA universal language during the filming of the film
The idea of making the film in Farsi is a very Quebec idea, in my mind. Every cinematographic gesture that we make in a language other than English is an expression of Quebec culture. It’s a value that I really appreciate. I said to myself afterwards The twentieth century that I no longer wanted to make films in English. We’ll see.
Matthew Rankin
A universal languagewhich goes from comical to dreamlike, is of course a tribute to Iranian cinema, but also to Quebec and Winnipeg cinemas (the end credits song is These Eyes of the Guess Who).
“I was inspired by Quebec gray cinema for my solitary character who returns home. It’s very Quebecois. The absurd and surreal humor is very Winnipegger and Iranian metarealism is the other language of the film. The idea was to create a mix between the three,” explains Matthew Rankin, who planned to go to Cannes to see the new film by Winnipegger Guy Maddin, Rumorswith Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and Roy Dupuis.
A particularly comical scene fromA universal language takes place in a sinister Quebec government office where a large portrait of François Legault adorns the wall and an employee cries constantly in a cubicle. Danielle Fichaud plays a senior civil servant who worries what Matthew will say elsewhere in Canada about his work experience.
If you didn’t like it, I encourage you to remain neutral, his boss advises him. “It was by far the most neutral experience of my life,” he replies. The humor ofA universal language is, I’m looking for the word… universal. And should undoubtedly seduce the Cannes public this weekend.
The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say over it.