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Cannes opening with Volodymyr Zelenskyj: glamor and war

2022-05-18T12:51:07.961Z


Tom Cruise and Volodymyr Zelenskyj: This year the balancing act that the Cannes Film Festival is trying to do is even more daring than before. At the beginning, missteps and strokes of luck keep the balance.


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Jury President Vincent Lindon (middle) on the red carpet surrounded by his co-jurors (from left) Asghar Farhadi, Rebecca Hall, Noomi Rapace and Joachim Trier

Photo: GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO / EPA

No, cinema certainly cannot save the world.

Virginie Efira, Belgian cinema star and presenter of the Cannes opening gala, immediately scaled down expectations of the festival in the first few minutes on the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

Rescuing an industry under double pressure from the consequences of the pandemic and streaming competition would be enough of an achievement for this 75th film festival.

But the world's most important celebration of cinema, which Cannes sees itself as without further consultation with the rest of the world, is aware that this year it absolutely has to walk the fine line between self-assertion and humility.

Humility because you can take place despite the war in Ukraine and the ongoing pandemic.

And self-assertion, because audiences are still reluctant to return to the cinemas and Cannes wants to persuade them to buy tickets again with strong films.

There is no question that there will be enough strong films again.

David Cronenberg, Claire Denis and Kelly Reichardt are just a few of the heavyweights in the competition. Palm winners Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ruben Östlund and Cristian Mungiu also return with new films.

Plus special screenings of »Top Gun: Maverick« with Tom Cruise and Baz Luhrmann's »Elvis« extravaganza, series premieres by Marco Bellocchio and Olivier Assayas as well as a captivating »Quinzaine des réalisateurs« series, in which the French cinema with Mia Hansen- Løve (»Bergman Island«), Alice Winocour (»Proxima«) and Léa Mysius shows immense female strength.

Misstep even before the start

Not much of this strength is noticeable in the competition.

In 2021 it was the French Julia Ducournau who was the first female director to win the main prize alone.

But the representation of women is probably one of the problems that will no longer be solved under the direction of program director Thierry Frémaux.

As the high-profile industry service Deadline announced on Tuesday, Frémaux had completely eliminated questions about the presence of female directors in the authorization for an interview with Deadline.

A statement about Roman Polański, whom Frémaux would invite unreservedly despite various allegations of abuse, was also watered down.

The industry service then decided not to publish the interview.

One would not have expected such missteps from the festival - after all, they had several years to clarify their position on #MeToo and diversity and to advance internal reforms.

With the German media manager Iris Knobloch, a woman was recently elected president of the festival for the first time in the history of Cannes.

In 2023 she will succeed Pierre Lescure.

In addition, under the impression of the Russian war of aggression, Cannes quickly found a coherent position in the dispute over a possible culture boycott: Official delegations from Russia would not be invited and no one with connections to the government would be tolerated, but the works of Russian filmmakers critical of the government would be shown.

The result is convincing.

Kirill Serebrennikov, who fled to Germany from Russia a few weeks ago, will screen his film about the volatile marriage of Peter Tchaikovsky in the competition.

Video switch to war

However, Ukraine dominates thematically: the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa has been invited to a special screening with his new documentary »The Natural History of Distruction«.

Space was also made for »Mariupolis 2«, the last film by Mantas Kvedaravičius.

The Lithuanian director, who had previously filmed in Ukraine and was returning to document the current war, was killed by Russian forces in early April.

Despite these political accents set in advance, it still came as a surprise when the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was connected via video at the opening on Tuesday evening shortly before the end.

The gala audience was not prepared for so much politics.

In any case, the standing ovations for this year's jury president Vincent Lindon, currently the biggest male star in French cinema, and honorary award winner Forest Whitaker were much easier for him than reacting just as emphatically to Zelenskyj's speech.

Perhaps also because the trained actor, despite his closeness to the subject, did not praise the cinema unconditionally, but recalled his ambivalence: the cinema had both served fascism and resisted it.

Where would it position itself in this war?

The B-movie that can't be called »Z«

Direct answers are not to be expected during the eleven days of the festival, rather small, symbolic gestures.

This includes renaming the opening film by Michel Hazanavicius.

Originally named "Z", the title was changed to "Coupez!" to avoid any confusion with the Russian pro-war symbol.

With the remake of the Japanese surprise hit »One Cut of the Dead«, the festival seamlessly switched back to normal operations after Selenkskyj's performance.

Hazanavicius has carved a strange niche for himself in French cinema: he makes films almost exclusively about filmmaking.

»The Artist« about the change from silent film to »talkie« was his big Oscar success in 2012, but with his lame Godard farce »Le redoutable« the cinephile credit was lost again in 2017.

Those who had low expectations of »Coupez!« could be pleasantly surprised on Tuesday evening.

The film begins with a disaster: a half-hour B-movie about zombies is shot.

But because the director wants real horror, he unleashes the curse of the undead that lies over the film location.

The resulting flick is neither scary nor funny — but that turns out to be the big joke of »Coupez!«.

Because in its second third, the film jumps back a few months and begins to tell how the unspeakable film project came about in the first place.

In the last third, the actual B-Movie can be seen again, but now including all the chaos behind the scenes, which in combination converts the original blunders into punchlines.

As a meta joke, this works reasonably well.

Shown outside of the competition, »Coupez!« doesn't even have to compete with expected highlights such as »Holy Spider« by Swedish-Iranian hopeful director Ali Abbasi or »Pacifiction« by Catalan provocateur Albert Serra.

Only the prospect that if »Coupez!« is a notable success at the French box office, that the German remake, directed by Sönke Wortmann, will surely be forthcoming, somewhat dampens the joy of the opening.

But let's practice humility first and look forward to everything that can be seen at large and small cinemas in the next few days.

Source: spiegel

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