Posted at 7:00 a.m.
(Cannes) All About My Mother
Ernest arrived in France from the Ivory Coast at a very young age, with his older brother Jean and his mother, Rose. It is from his point of view that Léonor Serraille (Caméra d’or in 2017 for Young woman) tells this story of immigration, its small joys and its great difficulties, in A little brother, added at the last moment to the competition. This film in three chapters (Rose, Jean, Ernest), which extends from 1989 to around 2010, explores the relationship with the mother as well as her expectations, her desires, for her and her children. “I clung to its light,” said Ernest of his mother straight away, speaking of their arrival in France. “You never know where to fuck with you,” the mother of one of his friends told him, when he confided in her that he found Rose intrusive. A little brother is a particularly charming film, with poetic, delicate and inventive directing ideas, with an engaging rhythm, about a mother in search of freedom who pulls the devil by the tail. And of sons on whom all hopes are focused, and who end up losing their footing. It is also a critical look at a society that advocates equality, but which is anything but egalitarian.
PHOTO ALLYSON RIGGS, A24, FROM CANNES FILM FESTIVAL WEBSITE
Show-Up
clay pigeon
American Kelly Reichardt (Meek’s Cutoff) featured Show-Up, his fourth collaboration with actress Michelle Williams, in competition on Friday. Member of the jury for the feature film competition at Cannes in 2019, Reichardt had presented his previous film, the brilliant First Cowat the Berlinale in 2020. Show-Up, his first film in competition at Cannes, is more minimalist, but just as charming. It’s a bittersweet look at the art world in the United States, through the slice of life of a melancholy sculptor, Lizzie, who is preparing an exhibition for a gallery in Portland. She lives in the shadow of her neighbor and landlady, an artist who went to the same school, but who is more successful than her. This film with a slow rhythm and an offbeat and ironic tone, typical of American independent cinema usually bearing the seal of Sundance, is more akin, in the filmography of Kelly Reichardt, to Certain Women what to First Cow (even though John Magaro is part of the cast). The soundtrack is by André Benjamin, alias André 3000, who also has a small role in the film. But it’s a pigeon with a broken wing, a pretext for many metaphors, that steals the show…