On this awards day of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, we take stock of this edition, with Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci who will be live on - for the ceremony from 6:40 p.m.
-: 22 films were in competition and several can claim the Palme d’Or, notably The seeds of the wild fig tree by Mohammad Rasoulof…
Thierry Fiorile and Matteu Maestracci: The filmmaker escaped from Iran, shortly before the start of the festival, his film was screened on the last day of the competition, Mohammad Rasoulof upsets the predictions. The seeds of the wild fig tree is a relentless work, it is difficult to see how the Palme d’Or could escape it.
Sentenced by the mullahs’ regime once again, to 8 years in prison, on appeal, Mohammad Rasoulof, signs his most frontal, most political film, which takes nothing away from its artistic qualities. It is a fiction anchored in the events of 2022, the movement “Women, life, freedom”.
Rasoulof personifies this divide in Iranian society, between young people in search of freedom, and their parents who hold a conservative status quo, magnificently in a family, the father is an investigator soon to be a judge, and hands down sentences against the rioters. The mother is torn between him, who sees in the demonstrations the plot of an “enemy” and their two teenage daughters who do not pick up amateur videos of blunders on their phones and support these young people.
“I am convinced that the new generation, thanks to their access to media, information and awareness, they really have communication in their hands, and therefore will bring about enormous changes.”
Iranian filmmaker convicted in his country, Mohammad Rasoulofat -
Another feature film to have left its mark yesterday, for the last day of screening of the festival, the French animated film directed by Michel Hazanavicius, The most precious of goods, adaptation of the tale of the same name by Jean-Claude Grumberg. The father of an infant on a train, on his way to the extermination camps, drops him in the snow to save him. The newborn will be taken in and raised by an old woodcutter. Michel Hazanavicius, from two Jewish families, Polish and Lithuanian, obviously asked himself the question of the representation of the Shoah.
“Showing reality already poses two problems. First, the horror. And if you don’t do that, you are unable to lie. If you don’t show what happened, and you show something else, you make it seem like something else happened, but that’s what happened. So the voice is that of suggestion, and the animation allows you to do that…”
Michel Hazanaviciusat -
The film will be released in November, know that we have the joy of hearing the voice of Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died on June 17, 2022.
Unequal competition this year, but some nice surprises…
Long favorite, Jacques Audiard amazed us, and we are not the only ones, with Emilia Perez, a film opera more than a musical, of sublime craftsmanship. The gender conversion of a Mexican drug trafficker, poetic, melodious, funny and wonderfully sung and danced. Why not a prize for best actress, for Karla Sofia Gascon, a Spanish transgender woman, so happy to be in Cannes.
It was less brilliant among the male performers, let us still mention three American actors: Richard Gere in Paul Schrader’s film Oh, CanadaSebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice by Ali Abbasi, and Jesse Plemons, with Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, in Kinds of Kindness.
First Indian woman in competition at Cannes, director Payal Kapadia could be on the list of winners with All We Imagine as Light. Film in two parts which marks its transition from documentary to fiction, the beginning is so realistic. In Mumbai, three women without husbands work in a hospital. The second part of the film takes place calmly, by the sea, where they meet again. Poetic scenes, appearance of a ghost, sisterhood of characters, Payal Kapadia makes a beautiful entry into fiction, to evoke the condition of women in India.
“As an Indian woman, we can be independent, but family and social constraints prevent us from having the autonomy that our financial and financial freedom should grant us. And this concerns all classes, in India.”
Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadiaat -
The Chinese Jia Zhang-Ke surprised the festival with Caught by the Tides, a film made largely with rushes and essays from his numerous previous feature films. His wife, the actress Zhao Tao, covers 25 years of China’s evolution, her mute character seems to tell us through her silence, all the melancholy of an exhausted population.
Love phew by Gilles Lelouche was mostly disappointing: the love story that began during the adolescence of a good kid, Adèle Exarchopoulos and a small-time striker who will go to prison, François Civil, overflows on all sides: too much noise, blood, testosterone, clichés and even solar eclipses!
Speaking of noise and blood, it is possible, on the other hand, that the crazy and very, very gory The Substancesecond feature film – certainly Hollywood – by Frenchwoman Coralie Fargeat, also finds its place in this distribution of trophies this evening, knowing that this story of an actress ‘has been’ replaced by a more beautiful and younger avatar, has electrified audiences and journalists, particularly international ones, and this rather ill-mannered feminine genre can undoubtedly seduce the President of this festival, Greta Gerwig, and her jurors.
Finally some very nice things in the parallel sections?
We can cite in bulk the new films by Thierry de Peretti, Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, Alain Guiraudie, the documentary The Beauty of Gaza by Yolande Zauberman, Twenty Gods by Louise Courvoisier, and The Trial of the Dog by Laetitia Dosch who won the “Palm dog” which honors the best dog in Cannes films.
At the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, a beautiful vintage which rewards the late Sophie Fillières, SACD prize for My life my facewith Agnès Jaoui, the very talented Spaniard Jonas Trueba, wins the Europa Cinemas Label for September without waitingwhich will logically be released on August 28, the Fortnight ended with a bang, with the troublemaker Jean-Christophe Meurisse and his hilarious Plastic gunsfreely inspired by the Dupont de Ligonnès affair, in theaters on June 26.
