Cannes 2011, an exceptional vintage. In addition to The Tree of Life , the Palme d'or by Terrence Malick, already at the limit of the publicity aesthetic for perfume that characterizes his following films (setting sun, wheat field and aerial camera), the selection impresses. A Woody Allen opening ( Midnight in Paris ), Melancholia by Lars von Trier, Polisse by Maïwenn, The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius, Pater by Alain Cavalier, Habemus papamby Nanni Moretti… In memory of festival-goers, we have rarely seen such a feast. Even the escapades of DSK in New York, in the middle of the fortnight, steal the show from the cinema only very briefly on the Croisette. We are nearing the end and the winners, the critics are full and begin to nose down in the projections, when Drive puts fuel back into the engine.
Nicolas Winding Refn (NWR) already has his fans. We owe the Danish director the Pusher trilogy , plunged into the dealers who makes Scorsese look like a choirboy. He is also the author of Bronson , with Tom Hardy as a psychopathic jailer, and of the Silent Warrior , with Mads Mikkelsen in one-eyed and stingy Viking. In short, we don't expect NWR to be a romantic comedy. But with Drive , an adaptation of a novel by James Sallis that the OCS Choc channel broadcasts this Thursday evening at 8:40 p.m., the filmmaker changes his air. Direction Los Angeles where Ryan Gosling does not chat, he drives. Stuntman by day in Hollywood and robber driver by night. Toothpick at the corner of the lips and jacket decorated with a scorpion, the ace of the steering wheel, lonely and silent, has a crush on her adorable neighbor (Carey Mulligan), a child on her arms and a husband in prison.
Sadomasochistic impulses
As we said, romantic comedy is not really the genre of the house NWR. The continuation is violent and black, generally with the cold weapon. And Gosling is not the last to go into a spin, blond sociopath far from the ideal son-in-law. See the scene in the elevator where he kicks the face of a villain under the horrified eyes of his lover.
With Drive , a polar pop on the edge of the pastiche (between Los Angeles Federal Police by William Friedkin and Michael Mann's Le Solitaire ), Cannes Director's Prize, NWR comes to the end. After that, Gosling will continue to assuage his sadomasochistic impulses in Only God Forgives , a nightmare located in Bangkok. Then NWR will return to Los Angeles, with Elle Fanning this time, for The Neon Demon , sluggish satire of modeling.
The Danish formalist seems out of inspiration. We crossed paths with him in Lyon in October 2017. Invited to the Lumière Festival, he presented “byNWR.com”, a streaming platform to get out of oblivion of the nuggets of cinema bis. In front of an audience of journalists, the collector took the microphone: “It is interesting to be where the cinema was born to celebrate the death of cinema. Because yes, the cinema is dead and I ask you to take ten seconds to meditate on its extinction. ” Today, the cinema is stopped because of the coronavirus. Sooner or later, it will eventually restart. For NWR, we don't know.
