Image of Penelope Cruz, in 'Everyone knows it'.
For an exceedingly long time, Iranian cinema became fashionable at festivals. I have known too many unbearable fashions, but sadly I have been immune to the irresistible charms that they seem to treasure. Of course, I believe that excellent films and directors can appear in any cinematography in the world, but I cannot believe that some hallmarks guarantee the overall quality. The obligatory presence of Persian cinema at festivals with pretensions of greatness, even without it, gave me many hours of drowsiness in the armchair. Including much of the filmography of Abbas Kiarostami, a lord who had been elevated to the most sacred altars.
But since one can be myopic, if not absolutely dull, I have always recognized originality and excellence in the case of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. I was dazzled by his ability to truly portray the obverse and reverse of human beings, everyone's reasons for acting as they do in conflict situations, the complexity of feelings, the interchangeable areas of light and shadow, in the extraordinary
Nader and Simin, a separation, a
film that I keep with zeal in my home film library and that causes me priceless sensations every time I review it. The cinema that this man makes, in his successes and in his failures, always interests me, it makes me think and doubt, including his successful forays into Spanish cinema and French cinema. They are titled
Everybody Knows
and
The past
.
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"If I lost the Spanish details, I also lost my oriental look"
Asghar Farhadi, the director against Spanish clichés
A hero,
exhibited in the Competition, I am not disappointed either. It makes me understand and be disturbed by the feelings of the characters. A good man who leaves jail with a permit, to which he was condemned for the complaint of his lender about the debt that he could not pay, tries in vain to find an arrangement with him so as not to have to return to that hell. His family and his girlfriend try to help him. The second finds a bag full of gold coins on the street. Even though that finding meant its release, they decide to hand it over to the owner who lost it. This gesture reaches great social repercussion thanks to television. But everything will continue to entangle for the worse before the desperation of the prisoner. Farhadi tells this sad story providing multiple nuances,Getting the viewer to get involved and understand the motives and conduct of all Christ in such a problematic situation. It is not the best film that Farhadi has made, but the aesthetic and emotional power to express his world remains intact.
If
The Hero
makes you think and feel, in the French
Titanio
everything obeys delirium. And it irritates me. But the gore-friendly crowd already has its tasty food at the Cannes Film Festival. It is directed by Julia Ducournau, a director whose work I did not know and whom I will try to avoid in the future. The plot is huge nonsense, but the development is even worse. A girl who has had a car accident in the company of her father has titanium implanted in her head and face. Ten years later the young woman makes a living by dancing in a very strange disco and pretending to fornicate with cars. He also has girlfriends, but there is a moment in his sexual relations that prompts him to stick a needle in the nape of the people with whom he is hooking up. She finds her cretin father again, changes her image trying to look like a man and becomes pregnant. But not from a male,since sex is not consumed. Apparently riding it with cars has reproductive capacity. Imagine what the baby of the woman of
Titanium.
I believed that with
The French Dispatch,
directed by Wes Anderson, we had reached the highest level of silliness at this Cannes festival.
But
Titanium
surpasses it.
I wouldn't be surprised if it became a commercial success.
They assure that gore and nonsense continue to give a lot of play in the market.