(Cannes) Backfiring, bloody, without down time, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga by George Miller, presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, is an action film as we like them: entertaining, spectacular, and above all not taking itself too seriously.
This prequel to the series created by the Australian filmmaker in 1979 – with Mel Gibson and car stunts on country roads not at all evoking a postapocalyptic landscape – arrives after the critical and commercial mega-success of Fury Road (2015). The film starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy had set the bar high.
Despite expectations, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga does not disappoint. George Miller recounts the ordeals overcome by Furiosa, from childhood to adulthood, before becoming the armed right arm – his left arm is mechanical – of the terrifying Immortan Joe. She will have to fight in particular another warlord, the formidable Dementus (Chris Hemsworth).
Anya Taylor-Joy inherits the role that Charlize Theron defended in the previous film, but only appears on screen a third of the way through the film (and only has around thirty lines). If her impact is not the same as that of the South African – her character in Fury Road eclipsed that of Mad Max – his quiet strength and quiet determination are just as convincing.
Once again, most of the action takes place on a desert road around a tanker truck and modified cars (including an old Valiant like the one my father once owned). It’s as well filmed as it is effective, but also repetitive. This is not George Miller’s opinion, of course.
“There is a marked difference between Fury Roadwhich was sometimes filmed in real time, for a story of three days and two nights, and a saga which stretches over 18 years”, declared Thursday at a press conference the 79-year-old filmmaker, who did not initially believe make a second Mad Maxlet alone five.
My first climb up the steps of this 77e Cannes Film Festival took place in the company of George Miller and his actors on Wednesday evening. As nobody, the Festival staff encouraged me to zigzag on the red carpet so as not to interfere with the work of the photographers who were taking portraits of the models posing, who on the left, who on the right. A real obstacle course (unknown).
The good news is that my only suit (blue, out of fashion and a little wrinkled) still fits me, despite the excess weight inherited during the pandemic. I just have to refrain from fastening the button on the jacket: a detail.
I was a little afraid of being intercepted by the style police, after seeing a festival-goer being turned away because she was trying to sneak into the Grand Théâtre Lumière without an evening dress. She did not wear, like a star whose name escapes me, a long white dress matching the shoulder of a raised oval object which had all the appearance of a toilet seat. Unfortunately…or fortunately.
PHOTO PROVIDED CANNES FESTIVAL
Still from the film Bird
Bird: Magical and social realism
The British Andrea Arnold, who received the Golden Coach of the Filmmakers’ Fortnight in Cannes this week, is present in competition Birda coming-of-age story in the vein of social realism of his first two feature films, the excellent Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009).
Three times winner of the Jury Prize, for these two films as well asAmerican Honey (2016), first foray into the United States, the filmmaker returns to England to direct the story of a morose 12-year-old teenager, Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who lives with her delinquent father (Barry Keoghan) and her brother Hunter (Jason Buda) in a squat, in the heart of a deprived area of a small town in Kent. She meets Bird (Franz Rogowski), a candid young man in search of identity who shakes her out of her torpor.
Filmed with a hand-held camera for the most part, as close as possible to the characters, Bird is interested in the fate of those left behind in a gripping way, thanks to the acuity and sensitivity of Andrea Arnold. The music, always at the heart of his work, varies this time from rap to dad rock via techno and trip-hop, crystallizing so many different atmospheres.
For the first time, the author-filmmaker tries magical realism, in a sequence that made me think of Animal Kingdom by Thomas Cailley. The transplant doesn’t quite take, but doesn’t prevent Andrea Arnold from adding a new pretty gem to her filmography.
The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say in the matter.