OfValerio Cappelli
«Anora», a comedy, triumphed at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival: no recognition for Sorrentino nor for the imposing work of Francis Ford Coppola
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CANNES _ The Palme d’Or of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival goes, decidedly surprisingly, to «Anora» by the American Sean Baker. The movie is kind of «Pretty Woman» all to laugh at (with two great young protagonists), the recognition you don’t expect in the competition, given the zero tolerance towards comedies at festivals. Mikey Madison is a sex worker, she finds herself in front of Mark Eidelstein, a young client, crazy and spoiled with music, coke and alcohol, son of a Russian oligarch; when the two get married in a flash wedding in Las Vegas, trouble begins.
Grand Jury Prize (chaired by Greta Gerwig and with our Pierfrancesco Favino) to India, in competition after thirty years, with the magical realism of «All we Imagine as Light» by director Payal Kapadia, a female film about nurses in Mumbai, soft colours, extended time frames, few words, idols and sacredness, in the belly of a dreamy narrative flow.
The great favorite Jacques Audiard wins (only) the jury prizethird in importance, for its musical melodrama «Emilia Pérez»about the Mexican drug trafficking boss who dreams of becoming a woman, with the transgender actress who changed from Carlos to Karla Sofia Guascon, and is moved and cries desperately while speaking in Spanish, her favorite language, for the award for best actress who with her takes on a broader meaning: she is the first trans woman to win it.
Best Actor Jesse Plemons for «Kind of Kindness» by Lanthimos.
Special prize, created for the occasion because he couldn’t go away empty-handed, to «The Seed of the Sacred Fig», symbol of freedom of the fresh exile Mohammad Rasoulofis a spotlight on how people live today in Iran, an indoctrinated and violent country suffocated by conspiracy theories and paranoid suspicion.
Best director is the Portuguese Miguel Gomes for the Burmese dream journey of Grand Tour.
«The Substance» is feminist body horror by Coralie Fargeat who wins as screenwriter: ; the film is the condemnation to eternal youth imposed by men, marks the return of Demi Moorea forgotten diva left to laze on the sofa by Hollywood, at 61 years old she shows herself naked throughout the film, in the role of a former actress who now hosts an aerobics program on TV, is fired because the years pass and has the possibility of moving on in a younger body.
Nothing to do for «Parthenope» by Paolo Sorrentinobut also for Francis Ford Coppola with his epic «Megalopolis, larger than life», who goes on stage just to give the Lifetime Achievement Award to his old friend George Lucas.
Au revoir, Cannes ’24. The documentary “The Invasion by Sergei Leonitsa” was moving, dry as a rush, about how Ukrainian civilians live after Putin’s invasion, where the smell of death hangs in the air and the days are scheduled between a raid and the other, between funerals and weddings, rehabilitation of the disabled and Russian books (including Dostoevsky) being pulped. The director tells of a terrifying madness. And he was moved by Stefania Sandrelli’s poetic expression when she said that on her first time in Cannes she was 15 years old, for «Italian Divorce” by Pietro Germi. The iconic line of the festival is in «The Apprentice» about the unscrupulous Donald Trump. The queen of Cannes remains, with 22 appearances, Isabelle Huppert: in ’24, however, only the red carpet for her.
May 25, 2024 (modified May 25, 2024 | 8:27 pm)
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