The market has been closed for three days, several journalists have withdrawn, having already gone home with arms and luggage. The Croisette is mostly overrun with tourists emerging in shorts from their cruise ships. And we marathon runners have seen every film of a not-so-exceptional race, all things considered. It feels like the end here. Cannes looks like a holiday. And we’ll see on the winners on Saturday evening, what the members of the jury will come out of their hats. But they will have crimped their buns, that’s for sure.
If they want to mark the occasion with a strong work, powerfully referenced, with audacious cinematographic biases, they could award the prize to Pacifiction — Torment on the Isles by Catalan Albert Serra, without a doubt the strongest proposal in the competition.
But, the emotional crush goes to Close of the Flemish Lukas Dhont, for his sensitivity and his grace. Otherwise, Hi Han by Polish Jerzy Skolimowski, a road movie about a donkey, should go very high. Also Tchaikovsky’s wife of the Russian passed to the West Kirill Serebrennikov. The political card will play either in favor of this dissident filmmaker in these times of invasion, or against him when several Ukrainians are indignant at his selection.
American James Gray, with a Armageddon Time yet academic, is tipped as a winner by many, but it hardly deserves this award. Vincent Lindon, who likes committed cinema, should be a president of the jury strong enough to impose his choices on others. And he prefers humanist cinema.
Writing a ghost list remains difficult, because everything will depend on the compromises, the struggles for influence that will take place behind closed doors within the jury. No new prizes are foreseen for the former winners of the past.
I’m giving you my own picks, set to be foiled on Saturday.
Palme d’Or : Pacifiction — Torment on the Isles by Albert Serra
Grand Jury Prize : Close by Lukas Dhont
Jury Prize : Hi-Han (EO) by Jerzy Skolimowski
Staging Award : Kirill Serebrennikov for Tchaikovsky’s wifeI
Script Award : Cut! By Michel Hazanavicius
Best Actress Award : Annabelle Lengronne in A little brother by Leonor Serraille
Best Actor Award : Benoît Magimel in Pacifiction — Torment on the Isles by Albert Serra
ladies day
The last two films in competition were directed by women. In this race, throughout, none of the directors offered the great crush that carries us away. But neither has signed a bad film either. What does the prize list have in store for them? Mystery !
A little brother by the Frenchwoman Léonor Serraille (Caméra d’or for Young woman in 2017) is very good, lively, well played especially the character of the brave mother to which Annabelle Lengronne brings a punch of hell.
In this family chronicle that takes place from 1980 to the present day, a single Ivorian mother between Paris and Rouen raises her two sons with the ambition of an exile. The filmmaker takes a sensitive, tender and humorous look. It is the jostled, recomposed, sometimes broken family unit that offers the film its guiding thread, without falling into social denunciation, but touching on racism, jihadism, in a work steeped in love and joie de vivre.
The seductive mother has several successive lovers, tossing the clan from one city to another, until disorienting the eldest who sinks into delinquency. But Léonor Serraille has the touch. His film is sensual and steeped in hope, the dialogues all in finesse, the camera flexible and beautiful. On the charts? Why not ?
American Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy) entered the competition at Cannes with Show-Upwhich deals with artistic creation, a subject that has received little attention this year.
The result turns out to be a little thin but often charming, with a solid distribution. Still, the heroine Lizzy, sculptor of very inspiring female characters sees herself embodied by Michelle Williams hunched over, on a sluggish note. She sulks all the time, without inspiring sympathy. At his side: his eccentric parents (Judd Hirsch, very funny and Amanda Plummer), his unstable brother (John Magaro), his friend artist owner (Hong Chau).
On this life of studio and exhibitions, where the works hold the star, register the vicissitudes of penniless everyday life. A wounded and rescued pigeon brings a touch of lightness and humor, carried everywhere in its box with its broken wing. It is through him that poetry invites us into Show-Up. Otherwise this gently acerbic film, with its good lines and its spleen, very “artsy” New York, does not grow “Oh! » And « Ah! with unbridled enthusiasm.
See you tomorrow, for the prize list!
Odile Tremblay is the guest of the Cannes Film Festival.