The Cannes Film Festival will be political on Monday with a highly anticipated film about Donald Trump, one of the 22 feature films in the race for the Palme d’Or, which enters its second half and is dominated for the moment by the musical “Emilia Perez” by Jacques Audiard.
The jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, discovers Monday “The Apprentice”, a highly anticipated biopic six months before the American presidential election.
It depicts the early years of Donald Trump, then a real estate entrepreneur, and his relationship with his confidant and political mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn, a man who was closely associated with McCarthyism and the New York mafia.
In the role of the former president of the United States, and current presidential candidate, Sebastian Stan (“Captain America”) and in that of the lawyer, Jeremy Strong (“Succession”). The film is by a Danish-Iranian, Ali Abbasi, who is taking his first steps in Hollywood after films noticed on the Croisette (“Border” then “Les nuits de Mashhad”).
Also in competition Monday, “Les Shrouds”, by veteran David Cronenberg, 81, director of “Crash” or “eXistenZ”.
Faithful to his themes, this time he is filming with Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger a story about a machine allowing the living to connect to their deceased loved ones. Thrill guaranteed.
Will these films shake up the competition? The games remain open to succeed “Anatomy of a Fall”, by Justine Triet, awarded last year.
“Emilia Perez” holds the rope after having capsized the hearts of many festival-goers. Some even imagine that it could earn its director Jacques Audiard a second Palme d’Or after “Deephan” (2015).
The musical is also a genre that speaks to Greta Gerwig, who took over the world box office with “Barbie”.
“A Palme is already very good,” jokes the director. But giving a prize to transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón, “it would be strong, it would be intelligent!”, he added, during a meeting with journalists.
The Spanish actress, who began her gender transition at 46, is the revelation of the film in which she plays the main role, that of Emilia Perez and the one she was before, a drug trafficker named Manitas.
– The Coppola disappointment –
Among the other films praised by critics, the very cinephile “Caught by the Tides”, by Chinese Jia Zhang-Ke, which brings together 25 years of images, or “Kinds of Kindness”, a sketch film with Emma Stone by Yorgos Lanthimos, Greek filmmaker who became a Hollywood darling (“Poor Creatures”). The film is not unanimously acclaimed but the performance of actor Jesse Plemons impressed.
Conversely, “Megalopolis”, the pharaonic and testamentary project of Francis Ford Coppola, was deeply disappointing, even if some American critics want to save the film.
The idea of a third Palme d’Or, unprecedented, now seems hypothetical. Unless: in 1979, he obtained his second Palme for “Apocalypse Now”, which was critically panned.
Above all, the jury still has 11 films left to see between now and the awards ceremony on May 25. Some arouse great curiosity, like “L’amour ouf”, by Gilles Lellouche, with the couple Adèle Exarchopoulos/François Civil, the new film on Naples by Paolo Sorrentino or that of the Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof.
The latter is scheduled for the last day of the competition, Friday. The Festival and those close to it dream of seeing the director, who has just clandestinely fled Iran, climb the steps.
A great voice of Iranian cinema, in the sights of the mullahs’ regime for years, the 51-year-old director was recently sentenced on appeal to eight years in prison, five of which are applicable.
At the end of a journey that he describes as “exhausting and very dangerous”, he was able to find refuge in Germany. “The chances that he will be able to be present in Cannes are therefore greater,” his press secretary told AFP.
Outside of the Competition, the 77th Cannes Film Festival will reward Studio Ghibli on Monday, and the master of animation Hayao Miyazaki, who is not making the trip and will be represented by his son Gorō.
