So far my on-line requests for Invitations have been granted for the first eight films playing In Competition, three of which have already played. I’ve never been so fortunate. Maybe seniority means something. If this continues for the remaining thirteen films, I won’t have to play catch-up on the final three days of the festival when Competition films are given another screening. Instead I’ll be able to give my favorites a second viewing, which I’m always happy to do.
My day’s first two films were both competing in the Competition field and playing in the Palais. The day got off to a bad start when the guy checking bags found my pâté sandwiches in the flap of my pack that no one had checked before. There went my lunch. Fortunately I’d brought along a few extra madeleines, so didn’t have to take time to find food and made it through the day okay.
“Bacurau” opened with a truck driving through spectacular rural Brazilian scenery. The cinematography immediately stamped this as a Competition-worthy film as did the initial immersion into a funeral going on in a small, isolated village. This looked like another worthwhile dose of cinema-veritè. But then the film derails, degenerating into mere Market fare when it introduces a cast of western wannabe mercenaries who intend to shoot up the town. They are all silly caricatures whose motives make no sense other than to be a Brazilian fantasy of how the country feels dominated by the Land of Trump. The audience cheered when the Brazilians repel the assault and start killing off the whites.
There was no fantasy in “Les Miserables,” just hard-hitting reality in this gripping portrayal of a housing-project neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris dominated by gangs. It is seen through the eyes of a cop from Cherbourg on his first day patrolling the neighborhood with two ten-year very-hardened veterans of the beat. It turns into a veritable nightmare that the rookie calls the worst day of his life. It is the first film by Ladj Ly, who grew up in the neighborhood.
This becomes the first film that I will want to see again of those I’ve seen so far. He managed to insert a view of the Eiffel Tower in the opening montage of scenes of fans gathering in Paris to watch the World Cup championship game last summer that France won. It’s too early for any films this year to include scenes of the Yellow Vests. Next year they will no doubt be a dominant theme.
Thierry Fremaux was on stage in the Debussy to introduce the cast of the French animated feature “The Swallows of Kabul,” and as he likes to do after the director has said a few words, hopped down the short staircase from the stage ahead of the cast so he could lend a hand to all the women as they descended, and any of the men who didn’t reject his outreached hand. He is always a bundle of energy.
The film takes place in 1998 when the Taliban ruled Kabul. Women had few rights. There is an early stoning of one, and then another awaits public execution. A prison guard who knows she isn’t guilty of the crime she is accused of, killing her husband, tries to help her escape. The animation is somewhat sketchy, barely two-dimensional. The film manages to hold one’s attention but without fully engaging it.
“Lost and Found” was my lone French film in the Market today. A 35-year old man decides to give up his acting career and become a museum guard. This comedy portrays all the guards as a neurotic of some sort or another. Chief among them is a woman who tries to run him off, but then enlists him in a plot to steal uncategorized items from the museum’s storage and sell them. The script only gives a faint echo of what it is to work as a museum guard, written by someone who only imagines what the job must be like making this the least satisfying of the French films I’ve seen so far.
I finally ended my documentary drought with “The Ghost of Peter Sellers” by Peter Medak, who directed Sellers in the 1973 pirate movie “Ghost in the Noonday Sun.” The movie was beset with one disastrous problem after another, beginning with the Greek captain who delivered the ship to the shoot location in the Mediterranean crashing the boat. Sellers was wildly popular coming off the first two Pink Panther movies and “The Shining.” Medak too was at the top of the game having just directed “The Ruling Class,” for which he received an Oscar nomination.
Sellers had just broken up with Liza Minnelli and wanted out of the production, faking a heart attack at the start of the shoot. He was prevailed on to continue but sabotaged Medak from start to finish, resulting in the film getting a minimal release and savage reviews. It undermined Medak’s future as a director. Among those Medak interviews for the film are others who have directed Sellers saying how impossible he was, but all agreeing upon his genius. Late in the movie Medak speaks to the camera with a Telluride Film Festival poster in the background. As a commentary on film lore, this could well end up at Telluride in the Backlot, where films on cinema are screened.
When I fell two people short from getting into the Russian film “Beanpole” at the Debussy, which Ralph liked, I dashed to the Soixante for another documentary, “5B” about a special AIDS section set up in a San Francisco hospital in 1983 when the disease first broke out and there was no understanding of how contagious it was. This was a special screening introduced by Fremaux. Fremaux is denied his pleasure of helping those introducing films off the stage, as there isn’t one in this large warehouse of a theater.
The film is intermixed with footage from the time with interviews of many of the heroic nurses and doctors who were willing to work in the unit unsure of how safe it was. It wasn’t until 1996 that a drug was discovered that could stem the disease. Until then the disease was a virtual death sentence. 5B was a care unit, not a cure unit. Many of those working in the unit bravely made physical contact with the patients, holding their hands and giving them massages, when many staffers were afraid to come near them without being encased in a space suit. This was a quite moving testament to those worked in 5B. It wasn’t until 2003 that the special section was no longer needed and AIDS patients were intermixed with all others.
Ralph and I treated ourselves to a Cannes Classic to end the day—a freshly restored “Moulin Rouge” from 1952 by John Huston. The restorers introduced it along with a woman who worked on the film who said she hadn’t seen it in over forty years. She had been thrilled to be in Paris for the first time where it was partially shot along with a studio in London. The film was beautiful, opening with an extravagant can-can at the Moulin Rouge. There’s not much dancing afterwards as the movie tells the story of Toulouse-Lautrec. This nice biopic made for a relaxing, stress-free cinema experience in the hands of a master filmmaker.
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race--H. G. Wells
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