The Surfer
I am back after 15 days in Cannes still jetlagged, still reeling from the countless films I saw and everything between my apartment and the Palais, everyone from the shopkeepers to restauranteurs to colleagues and more, feels so familiar that it’s like coming home. The only thing that doesn’t feel normal is being back here.
I can’t just go one block from my bed to grab a fresh baguette at 7 a.m., or run into Justine Triet while grabbing a quick meal in which she tells me she won the Palme. But more than fest screenings and gorging myself on one meal a day at places like my beloved Pastis and Café Hoche where I had lunch with George Lucas this morning, no big deal (we’ll get there) this year was weird. Last year was an amazing year for cinema all around; there were surprises left and right. Never could I have predicted that Wim Wenders would make two of his best movies in decades, if not ever, but hey! This is why we do what we do!
On paper, this year should have been even better Coppola! Schrader! Lanthimos! And then well, okay. When the curtains closed Sunday night over what was supposed to be some kind of awards ceremony? It felt fine.
Not terrible. Not great. Fine. That’s not to say there were no winners; “Anora,” Sean Baker’s Palme d’or champ, is great (and yet I worry it might get torn apart now that it’s been given so much attention).
But because last year was such a standout year and this year looked like it could be even better, this feels like something of a letdown. That feeling probably has something to do with nearly everything playing in competition being “fine,” and then not even being awarded for their “fineness.”
This year was also about the discourse around the festival, which for some reason seemed particularly poisonous from afar. I don’t know if it’s because people have forgotten how to talk about movies or if we were all just so excited to be back that we let our prejudices show. But there was a lot of talk from people who hadn’t seen anything, and I expect this year is going to get hit with a big ol’ backlash from all sides. (Note that as of writing this column, my favorite tweet was someone calling Cannes “a haven for rich white people” who listed their location as Los Angeles.)
Anyway. This is already happening with Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a very fine movie that stars exceptional performances and has been slapped with a cease and desist by a former (and probably future) president. Whether or not this means it will be hard to screen is up in the air, whether or not it results in something like a Streisand effect is also TBD. Given that it’s exactly the kind of movie those closeminded to it on both left and right should see, I’m curious to see how many changes are made after its festival debut.
And few movies played more than Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” which is either the biggest boondoggle of his career or the capper on top of his history-of-cinema rewrite he’s been working toward since 1979. I am glad I saw it once, I don’t know if I ever need to see it again; but beyond that, even simple questions become incredibly difficult to answer like, “Is it good?”
Meanwhile! What luck! It was nice spending 90 minutes inches away from George Lucas at his honor ceremony yesterday morning as he ignored every single question asked by the moderator (including, at one point. “What was it like working with Francis Ford Coppola?” to which George responded, “Well, I don’t know about that” and then went on a rant about Hollywood hegemony and gendered casting and his desire to make movies instead of money and so forth). It was also fun sorry, “fun” having to shout out reminders to the 80 year old director about the title “Heart of Darkness” and, even better, the character’s name that he cast Billy Dee Williams as.
I’ve always half-joked that I’d like to go to Cannes one year and only see movies in the Classics section, because there’s something really nice about going into a movie that you already know is going to be pretty good. This was my first time seeing Abel Gance’s “Napoléon,” and the first half just under four hours is certainly a way to kick off a slate. The restoration is absolutely stunning, a touchstone in film preservation that’s deservedly being celebrated; since we only showed the first chapter, it even has something of a happy ending, with the French winning the battle. Hopefully nothing bad happens to the suave general in the next chapter.
Toho presented yet another restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai,” this time in 4K, and boy did it look sumptuous. It screened from my usual front row at the Debussy, so it was easy to pick out grain intact, a dialing back of digital noise removal that had plagued previous versions, and most importantly, an audio track that had been newly restored so as not to have nearly all of its harshness removed without sacrificing any artistic intent. A fitting celebration for one of the greatest movies ever made (and with a still from Japanese master’s “Rhapsody In August” on this year’s poster).
In comp: “Oh Canada” by Paul Schrader was an interesting whiff, but it was fun being the token Canadian who had to explain just how horribly he represented me. I’ve expressed my appreciation for a French educational system that allows young girls horror films directed by grown women auteurs responding openly to their inner Cronenberg come true, and “The Substance” (also seen by some people who then decided they didn’t want to see it) is an exceptional example of this trend. I’m surprised many colleagues either dismissed or flat-out trashed “Emilia Pérez” by Jacques Audiard, as I found it not only one of the most electric, experimental and engaging movies on the slate, but also further confirmation that this filmmaker is truly among the greats to ever play this festival.
Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour” was celebrated by many. I thought it slight at best, risible at worst a haphazard collision of documentary footage and meandering narration about what doesn’t happen versus what does. But it won the prestigious Director’s Prize, so clearly others felt differently.
Then there’s “The Seed Of The Sacred Fig,” Mohammad Rasoulof’s film that had people convinced would take home the Palme d’Or after uproarious applause at its premiere. I saw it in a small room with (in a rare occurrence for this fest) only French subs, which allowed me to focus more on staging and performances neither of which did much for me. The true-life story of the brave director escaping with his family is always going to be more powerful than anything you do on screen, it certainly drew attention to an otherwise middling tale that feels very underbaked save for some timely social media videos. Its special jury prize win feels far more tokenistic than perhaps intended, we’ll see how audiences outside the festival bubble receive it.
Still, a lot of persons didn’t bother to see Michel Hazanavicius’ latest film “The Most Precious of Cargoes” and it is probably true that this animated Holocaust tale wouldn’t have been helped by a late in fest slot or inclusion in the competition, which tends to invite nitpicking. The visuals are strong, but the story may be too childlike for this crowd. Yet it’s definitely worth checking out. More middling were movies like Karim Aïnouz’s “Motel Destino,” a grungy gangster thriller set in a sordid sex cavern that somehow comes off as chaste, or Paolo Sorrentino’s masturbatory “Parthenope,” which feels even more like an aimless travelogue than the Gomes film.
Not that Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” is any kind of masterpiece, but its blend of gangster chic and young romance proved captivating enough to keep me awake through all 166 minutes. You know there’s something wrong with a festival when an almost three hour movie mid fest is energizing, while some 90 minute entry near the end feels like it’s sucking your soul.
There were several films I simply couldn’t fit into my schedule without risking what little remains of my sanity, Alexandre De La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s “The Count of Monte Cristo,” Lorcan Finnegan’s “The Surfer” and Andrea Arnold’s latest (which at least has the intriguing title “Bird”) are among those I look forward to catching up with post-fest. And though I’m not generally an Arnold fan, having tried and failed multiple times to track down a ticket for her movie here before every screening sold out suggests hopes remain high.
As much as anything else on offer, however, I’m pleased to report that I managed to snag a screening of “Eephus,” Carson Lund’s gentle yet profound film about a baseball game on a small-town field scheduled for demolition. It is both an existentialist rumination on the human condition and a celebration of the inherent preposterousness of the game for both player and spectator alike. The central metaphor connoted by the title, a pitch that’s both too fast and too slow to swing at, seemingly stopping time, is absolutely perfect for this bucolic setting. If there’s one movie likely to find more love outside the flashbulbs, it’s this quiet late summer Linklaterian love letter to middle-aged meanderings a home run hit with very few in the stands who were there to appreciate it, yet precisely the kind of effortless artistic fare one comes to Cannes hoping to discover.
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