As always there’s drama, a few crowd-pleasers, some esoteric subjects and actors that are a dream to watch in this year’s selection
Even as the COVID-19 pandemic goes on, the global film fraternity is all agog with the celebrations at the French Riviera's most celebrated event–the Festival De Cannes. The 75th edition of world’s glitziest, glamorous and, in some ways, the most serious cinema-centric event kicked off on 17 May with gusto. Among all the glamour and celebrity-spotting, Festival De Cannes pretty much sets the tone for the year’s cinema-viewing.
This year, American actor Forest Whitaker was the recipient of the honorary Palme d’or, which pays tribute to a sparkling artistic journey, a personality who has a discreet but a strong humanitarian commitment to key issues. Later, the festival went whole hog paying tribute to actor Tom Cruise who reiterated his commitment to cinema-goers to several standing ovations during a press interaction and screening of Top Gun: Maverick, scheduled to release later this month. In competition are about 18 films that vie for top honours at the Festival’s closing ceremony on 28 May. Here are some that cinephiles should not miss.
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Broker
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
From the Japanese director of Shoplifters and The Truth comes another story about family dynamics. Broker, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Korean-language debut, is a film about the “brokers of goodwill,” who connect unwanted babies with parents on the black market.
A baby boy is left at the orphanage one stormy night, and is whisked away by Sang-hyun and Dong-soo. Trouble ensues when the mum So-young unexpectedly returns, looking for her baby. She decides to bring in the police as she finds the explanation by Sang-hyun and Dong-soo implausible. But with nowhere left to go, she decides to join their mission to find new parents for her boy. Add to the mix a pair of police detectives and there’s a full drama in play.
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Showing Up
Director: Kelly Reichardt
The film is a sharply funny portrait of an artist played by the luminous Michelle Williams. Williams plays Lizzie, a sculptor whose life is about to be turned upside down by a new show. On the verge of a career-changing exhibition, she navigates family, friends and colleagues in the lead-up to her show, while the chaos of life becomes her inspiration for art. This is the fourth collaboration for Williams and Reichardt. Also starring are André 3000, Judd Hirsch and Amanda Plummer.
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Triangle of Sadness
Director: Ruben Ostlund
Although the film was received by a standing ovation at Cannes, it’s sure to make audiences squirm with its kookiness and symbolism. This is Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s first English-language feature and his first directorial credit since his Palme d’Or winner The Square in 2017. A provocative class satire made to make its audiences uncomfortable, Ostlund aims for the fashion world in this one–a young pair of celebrity influencers (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) are two of several passengers on a cruise on the verge of catastrophe that’s being captained by Woody Harrelson. A fun poke at capitalism ensues.
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Armageddon Time
Director: James Gray
A moral drama that deals with complex matters of race and class but a disclaimer comes here: it’s a white perspective at that. A young Jewish boy played by Michael Banks Repeta befriends a young African American classmate (Jaylin Webb) while dealing with parental expectations (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) as well as his immigrant grandfather (Anthony Hopkins). As an American director with European sensibilities, James Gray’s intimate family dramas have done well at Cannes even though the Palme d’Or has been elusive over the years.
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RMN
Director: Cristian Mungiu
In the past, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu has won the Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and since has maintained a steady output of Cannes successes. His 2012 drama Beyond the Hills was awarded Best Screenplay and 2016’s Graduation won him Best Director. His latest, RMN, is a grim and insightful look at rural life and uncomfortable power structures. It’s the story of a dyspeptic man who quits his job in Germany to return to his village in Transylvania. RMN initially focuses on his efforts to help his young child while developing a romance with a local woman, but eventually expands to look at the way the community reacts to the arrival of several immigrant workers.The peace of the community is disturbed, several underlying fears grip the adults, and frustrations, conflicts and passions erupt through the social veneer.
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Stars at Noon
Director: Claire Denis
Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn star as a journalist and businessman respectively in 1980s Nicaragua in a film that’s reminiscent of Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously. French great Claire Denis brings good drama to the festival with Stars at Noon adapted from a 1986 novel by American writer Denis Johnson. The story follows a journalist (Qualley) as she plays witness to Nicaragua’s 1984 revolution while falling in love with a mysterious Englishman (Joe Alwyn). Shot in Panama, it is Denis’s second Palme nominee.
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Decision to Leave
Director: Park Chan-wook
Korean auteur Park Chan-wook is back with a noir thriller about a detective who falls for a mysterious widow. What’s the problem? She’s also the prime suspect in a new murder investigation as he tries to find out why her husband fell off a mountain. It’s classic Hollywood formula femme fatale and compromised cop–with Chan-wook’s reinvention.
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One Fine Morning
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s new film sees No Time to Die star Léa Seydoux playing a single mother with a young daughter who is trying to cope with caregiving for her ill, elderly father. That’s when she meets an old friend (Melvil Poupaud) and strikes up a romance with him. Hansen-Løve’s work is wise, compassionate, insightful, well observed and has a shining star in Seydoux.
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Elvis
Director: Baz Luhrmann
This is one from out of the competition, but we couldn’t resist sneaking it in. Baz Luhrmann’s early Elvis biopic had its world premiere at the festival. Luhrmann has a history with the Cannes Festival having shown three of his earlier films there—Strictly Ballroom (1992), Moulin Rouge (2001) and The Great Gatsby (2013). Elvis fans are, of course, hoping that newcomer Austin Butler can nail the famous hip shake and curled lip, while Tom Hanks has everyone agog as his famous manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
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Corsage
Director: Marie Kreutzer
Phantom Thread star Vicky Krieps plays the Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was known for her beauty. Writer-director Kreutzer sets out to revise history. The film introduces Elise in the bath before she is seen attending to her children. It’s an attempt to portray a different kind of Elisabeth after more than a century of suffocated (and suffocatingly) helpless women.While Elisabeth’s role has been reduced to a purely performative one, it’s her hunger for knowledge and a zest for life that makes restless in Vienna.
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