(Cannes) The competition of 77e Cannes Film Festival is drawing to a close and I can’t say it’s memorable yet; 16 films were presented out of the 22 selected and for the moment, my favorites can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Or to be more precise, on two fingers.
The rather conventional critic that I am once again seems to agree with the majority of my colleagues. The star tables published by various specialist publications so far give an advance either to Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard (according to French criticism surveyed by The French film), or at The Substance by Coralie Fargeat (according to the smaller sample of international journalists from the British magazine Screen).
It remains to be hoped that the famous “uppercut” that Festival management traditionally places on Thursdays, when festival-goers are on the cables, will have its effect. In the sports department, on Tuesday, we had more for the passage on the red carpet of the Olympic flame of the Paris Games than for the competition films.
I was hoping for a lot of Porthenopethe seventh selection in Cannes competition by Paolo Sorrentino, Jury Prize for He dives (2008) and Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for The great beauty (2014). This new love letter from the Italian filmmaker to his hometown of Naples, after God’s hand (2021), unfortunately falls flat.
We certainly find the suave, sumptuous and elegant style of Sorrentino, but we end up getting bored looking for the codes of this film inspired by the creative myth of Naples, embodied by a mermaid, a tutelary figure who here takes on the features of a woman born in 1950, which we mainly follow in young adulthood of unspeakable loves.
“Parthenope, you are a goddess,” several men tell her, who admire her beauty (often in a bikini or low-cut dress). Of course, Celeste Dalla Porta, who plays her, is beautiful, as are Naples, Capri and the Amalfi Coast. But it is missing Parthenope an extra bit of soul to make it more than a pretty succession of nostalgic paintings and ironic aphorisms.
Paolo Sorrentino gives the impression of drawing from his bag of proven but repetitive tricks: eccentric characters, pretty, scantily clad young women, improbable sex scenes, a camera that swirls around the characters and a number of witticisms ( notably of the American author character played briefly by Gary Oldman).
The pieces of this fresco fit together with difficulty and you lose the thread, unless perhaps you are better versed than I am in matters of mythology and Greek deities. I better understood the reference to another Neapolitan divinity, Diego Armando Maradona, during the end credits which shows the celebrations surrounding in 2023 the coronation of an organization as important in Italy as the Church: the SSC Napoli, champion of scudetto (the national soccer championship).
Pretty Woman… or not
Red Rocket by Sean Baker had competed for the Palme d’Or in 2021. The American independent filmmaker is back in competition at Cannes with Anorawhich again features sex workers.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE CANNES FESTIVAL
Still from the film Anora
The wedding in Las Vegas of a Brooklyn escort, Anora (Mikey Madison, revealed in Cannes in Once Upon A Time…in Hollywood by Tarantino), with Vanya (Yuri Borissov), the son of a Russian oligarch, turns sour when the latter’s parents learn the news. They will do everything in their power to have the union annulled as quickly as possible.
Vanya is a 21-year-old party-loving daddy’s boy who looks like Prince Charming. Anora, fierce and suspicious by nature, doesn’t believe her luck at having come across a boy who promises her an existence of luxury and carefree. If Sean Baker initially suggests that this is a Cinderella tale in the style of Pretty Womanwe quickly understand that this will not be the case.
After an introduction where sex is omnipresent – in the most traditional male gaze (male gauze) – triggers a series of adventures with trusted men and thugs hired by Vanya’s parents. It goes in circles, the plot goes in vain, and even if Sean Baker always succeeds in creating seductive atmospheres, we wonder how this filmmaker whom we had so appreciated The Florida Project (2017), presented in Cannes at the Directors’ Fortnight, could have gone astray this time.
The hosting costs for this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, which had no say over it.