With only two films missing – The Seed of the Sacred Fig by Mohammad Rasoulof and La plus précieuse des marchandises by Michel Hazanavicius – and the unknown Francis Ford Coppola, the TotoPalma of this 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival could include : Emilia Perez by Jacques Audiard, The Substance by Coralie Fargeat (the most voted by international critics), Caught by the Tides by Jia Zhang-Ke, Bird by Andrea Arnold and our Paolo Sorrentino with Parthenope.
Meanwhile, let’s start with Coppola and his divisive Megalopolis.
There are those who hated it and those who loved it, but beyond any aesthetic consideration it seems impossible that a jury could ignore the director of Apocalypse Now who at 85 years of age accepted the challenge of the competition with a self-financed film and in any case very modern in its being a sort of action painting movie.
That is, a brilliantly rambling film with an idea of the future and a pretty good parallel between two empires in decline: the Roman one and the US one.
Emilia Perez by Audiard, among the shortlisted films, is the one that everyone, French and international critics, agreed upon. The story of this Mexican cartel boss who wants to become a woman is a brilliant oxymoron as is the transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón who plays him. It’s difficult to imagine an Palmares without this film.
Then there is The Substance by Coralie Fargeat: apart from the favor it might garner from a majority female jury, it is a film which, despite some baroqueness, tells a revisiting of the Fountain of Eternal Youth, the dream of returning young to any cost. Rejuvenating is then a courageous Demi Moore who is almost always naked on the screen, showing an almost invisible decadence.
Caught by the Tides by Jia Zhang-Ke is pure poetry, a melancholy journey into contemporary China as capable of the Middle Ages as it is of robotics. Approximately twenty-two years in the making, the first elements of the film have been filmed since 2001.
Bird by Andrea Arnold, a three-time British director awarded by the jury who looks to Ken Loach, tells of the last, of kids on the margins with no future, forced to grow up before their time. And this in the south of England.
Parthenope by Paolo Sorrentino bizarrely follows the same fate as Megalopolis, as it is a kaleidoscope of splendid images that tell the story of the mysterious Naples through a woman. It is perhaps difficult, as in the case of Coppola, to grasp the subtle thread that ties everything together, but the beauty and its fascination are still beyond any story, they have a life of their own that could rightly fascinate those who are far from Neapolitan culture.
Among the possible surprises, pay attention to Wild Diamond, the first work by Agathe Riedinger, which tells the first steps of an influencer. This is Liane, nineteen, a girl from the south of France who is always in the mirror. Playing her is Malou Khebizi, an extraordinary actress present in every frame with her heavy makeup and extra-large nails.
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