CANNES - Palmares eve at the Cannes Film Festival.
The president of the jury Vincent Lindon with the other viewing companions of these two weeks (including our Jasmine Trinca) is grappling with the latest decisions for the verdict made public tomorrow night at the closing ceremony presented by VIRGINIE EFIRA.
In anticipation it is time to take stock for this 75th edition which has seen a strong return of international attention, with thousands of accredited, with Americans and Asians (but not from China where health restrictions on the return quarantine have weighed) that one year ago they had deserted the exhibition.
The most evident thing is the strengthened link with Hollywood, after a few subdued years: the two major events of the festival were linked to two major blockbusters, TOP GUN:
MAVERICK with the ever-young Tom Cruise arrived by helicopter complete with French tricolor arrows in the sky and Baz Luhrmann's ELVIS with the new star Austin Butler and the return of Tom Hanks and a night of partying with the Maneskins like those that once abounded on the Croisette and which had been wiped out by crisis and pandemic.
With Elvis, Cannes also relaunches on the Oscars in the always open challenge with the Venice film exhibition to who has the most titled premiere for the American statuettes in March.
Another consideration concerns the studios (and not just them).
From the Palais du Cinema the general delegate Thierry Fremaux once again became the spokesperson for 'cinema only in cinema': both Top Gun and Elvis are two examples of resistance to platforms.
The theme of streaming and the full-blown role of producers like the majors is in fact increasingly central both in general for the future of cinema and in particular for festivals where Cannes and Venice currently have opposite rules with the Mostra del cinema that has always been open to any film destination including streaming.
Being a trench of resistance to the medium that has thrown the world on the sofa and continues to attract great directors or an outpost of a cinematographic world in which the theater is no longer necessarily the designated place?
For festivals this is not a small dilemma and for this reason there was the feeling of an edition of Cannes 'passing through'.
In these two weeks, seeing the films very often, the question arose: where will they be seen, who will see them (apart from the platforms specialized in auteur cinema, the only ones that are still welcoming), for whom they were made if the public is disaffected with hall, confused by the overdose of products offered by the platforms that spew out news every day and level everything?
A sense of detachment from reality stronger than usual.
Yet a reason, not only the umbilical of the filmmakers, is evidently to be found in all this cinema seen in Cannes.
Stories feed our imagination, help it open its eyes or get lost inside.
Here then is that a trend seemed to dominate everything in the competition: the story of the COMING OF AGE, which is a cinematographic sub-genre to say films of formation, growth, childhood or adolescence.
Beyond the palmares there was an incredible abundance of films on this theme and on the adjacent one of BROTHERHOOD, of blood or friendship, as children or even as adults, which overshadowed other issues, starting with adult love and a completely fugitive couple.
There is CLOSE by the Belgian Lukas Dhont, history of
indivisible friendship between two thirteen-year-olds that ends in tragedy when one of them goes away;
there is UN PETIT FRERE (Mother and Son) by Leonor Serraille, the story of two immigrant brothers from the Ivory Coast with a warrior mother struggling with disorientation and a difficult growth between expectations and disappointments (she will go out in Italy with Teodora) ;
there is TORI ET LOKITA of the Dardenne, in which a boy and a teenager, arrived in Europe alone without parents from Africa, oppose their invincible friendship to the difficult conditions of their exile;
there is ARMAGEDDON TIME by James Gray where the friendship between a black orphaned child and a peer whose family expects a social spurt will give rise to the drama.
There is THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen history of
friendship between a city child and a mountain child that will last even as adults (our Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli).
There is BROTHER AND SISTER by Arnaud Desplechin with the inexplicable and ferocious hate relationship between Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud, sister and brother.
That's a third of the competition titles, a little too much to be just a coincidence.
Finally the politics: Cannes opened with a connection with Ukrainian President Zelensky and continued by keeping the attention high between films, red carpet protests and boycotts.
