A year after the Palme d'Or in
Titanium
, cyberpunk bomb, bloody and without taboo, David Cronenberg promises in competition to dissect living human beings: has the Cannes Film Festival fallen in love with gore?
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: Titanium
by Julia Ducournau, sex, death and bodywork...
From the start of the festivities, on the evening of May 17, the tone was set with the opening film
Cut!
, signed Michel Hazanavicius, which is released simultaneously in theaters.
The pope of pastiche and mise en abyme, from
The Artist
which won him the Oscars to OSS 117, this time tackles zombie films with real fake comedy.
Gore,
“it has a super playful side, as westerns could be”,
recognizes Michel Hazanavicius, interviewed by AFP, whose film is to be taken at the 37th degree: in
Cut!
,
“these are baby zombies!”
he smiles.
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Remake of a Japanese film on the disastrous shooting of a zombie feature film, with Bérénice Béjo and Romain Duris in the cast, the film promises to make the Croisette drip with hemoglobin.
It is also designed as an ode to genre films, long looked down upon by the guardians of the 7th art, but which now have the right of citizenship on the most prestigious red carpets.
“Film festivals like Cannes are known for shining a light on cinema that pushes boundaries, films that may not be appreciated at their debut but which go on to acclaim,”
New York expert Kate Robertson told AFP. of cinema and art history, for whom gore films are today among the most
"singular, inventive, and pioneering"
.
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The 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival intends to prove it again this year, with the return to competition of David Cronenberg, who had already tested the nerves of festival-goers in 1996, with
Crash
, all of sex, violence and car accidents.
His
Crimes of the Future
promise to turn the guts upside down: it will be about live organ removal, with Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen in the cast.
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The cult director of
La Mouche
therefore seems to be returning to the foundations of gore: the exploration on the cinema screen of the interior of the human body, a subject that has always fascinated him, notes Marc Godin, journalist at
Technikart
and expert of the kind.
“The film promises to cleave, it's not for everyone,”
he analyzes, explaining that such a work
“isn't just made to revolt you”
but is
“cerebral gore”
.
“Raise the mayonnaise”
Creating the event with a film or gorissime sequences seems to have become one of the obligatory passages of the Festival.
From reactions to Marco Ferreri's
La Grande Bouffe
in 1973 to the screening of
Irréversible
by Gaspard Noé in 2002, with its unbearable rape scene,
"Cannes is still waiting for its scandal",
continues Marc Godin.
Nearly a century after Luis Buñuel's
Chien Andalou
, and its full-frame razor-cut eye, gore is today one of the means of creating this Cannes
"buzz"
that will carry the films, for the greatest pleasure.
"journalists who raise the mayonnaise"
.
Even, perhaps, to exorcise our pandemic or environmental anxieties.
After the bloody end of
Parasite
, Palme d'Or 2019, last year seemed to mark a consecration, with its Palme d'Or awarded to the most violent film in the selection,
Titane
, by Julia Ducournau, a director in her thirties crowned in two feature films new queen of gore.
The heroine, played by Agathe Rousselle, has her body haunted by a mass of metal that is growing in her belly, while she sweats and bleeds motor oil.
But for fans of the genre, like Kate Robertson, this consecration remains the exception that proves the rule.
"The lack of consideration for this kind of film is reflected in the prices"
despite everything, she analyzes.
“The coronation of (Julia) Ducournau last year was an exciting surprise for many, (who) perhaps promises that the world of cinema evolves even further”
.