Rediscovering the Festival is about reacquainting oneself each year with the immense Palais, the metallic architecture reminiscent of Henki Bilal in the Grand Amphitheater, the somewhat forgotten seats at the very top of the room (our favorites), the secret corridors, the luminous rotunda of the bar… The “Bunker” is a monster, but a familiar and benevolent one.
THE DEAD DON’T DIE (Jim Jarmusch / USA)
When a great director decides to make a genre film, as Stanley Kubrick did with his legendary Shining, the small world of cinephiles is very eager to see the result. Well, with Jarmusch’s “zombie film,” they won’t be disappointed: it’s a masterful success.
The director fully engages with terrifying (but slightly talkative) zombies, which will be his personal touch, bloody entrails, and quaint and somewhat stupid victims, not forgetting the little eco-friendly message about the planet we are destroying and that is taking revenge.
But beyond this stylistic exercise, Jarmusch knows how to take a step back to deliver a personal message: what if modern life (for example, our addiction to cell phones) has already turned us into zombies? A Pirandellian message in its form because his characters do not hesitate to address it directly to evoke the end of the story.
And as the trailer states, the cast is really enough “to raise the dead” with a special mention for the trio of bewildered police officers supposed to defend the town against the invaders: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, and Chloé Sévigny (one of my favorite actresses), the half-Kill Bill, half-Six Feet Under alien, Tilda Swinton, and Tom Waits as a hermit with the final word: “What a shitty world!”
BACURAU (Kleber Mendonça-Juliano Dornelles / Brazil)
Bacurau is a small village in Sertão, in northeast Brazil. Under the control of a corrupt politician, the inhabitants must face very harsh living conditions worsened by a water shortage caused by their enemies.
In cahoots with the Regional Prefect, a band of American supremacists decimates the population for sport, with heavy war weapons and a peculiar drone shaped like a flying saucer.
In this tragic Asterix village, the inhabitants have a small magic potion in the form of a local pill that gives them courage. So they will not let themselves be overrun and will turn a programmed massacre into a delightful western.
The film is supposed to take place in the near future but is also a very contemporary metaphor of the Bolsonaro-Trump alliance at the expense of Brazilians.
LES MISÉRABLES (Ladj Ly / France)
In Monfermeil in the 93, three BAC police officers with different personalities are
confronted with tensions between the various groups in a sensitive neighborhood. Forced to negotiate with traffickers, bearded men, and shady mediators from the town hall, they fulfill their duty as best they can in this neighborhood on the periphery where they live.
One day, they are overwhelmed during an arrest, and one of them causes a blunder. A drone (another one!) has recorded their every move.
The film almost has a documentary aspect enhanced by current events. Very balanced in searching for the causes of this urban violence, it perfectly illustrates Victor Hugo’s statement roughly explained at the end of the film, “there are no bad plants, only poorly cultivated gardens.”
A friend told us that the Script Commission had not liked the script because there were no women: fortunately, like ridicule, political correctness does not kill…!
ATLANTIQUE (Mati Diop / Senegal)
In Dakar, the workers on a futuristic tower site haven’t been paid
for three months by a failing boss who even refuses to meet with them. Desperately, they decide to leave the country by sea for a better future.
One of them, Souleymane, is the lover of Ada, promised to a wealthy man by her family. Their disappearance being more or less accepted, Ada – who in the meantime has renounced her husband – and her friends, using traditional practices and spells, organize a terrible revenge.
The love story is very beautiful, and the social critique is effective. However, the fantastic part of the film is both naive and complex to follow, but one cannot blame this young director for a lack of ambition. To be followed.
SORRY WE MISSED YOU (Ken Loach / Great Britain)
A Uber-boss offers Ricky, a worker from Newcastle, a bad deal:
he becomes an allegedly independent delivery driver while being tied by
a franchise contract that leaves him hand and foot bound to an unscrupulous business owner.
His wife Aby, who provides home care for the elderly, is forced to sell her car to finance the truck that her husband must purchase on credit. From that moment, Ricky will exhaust himself to profit from his work, and Abby will no longer have a minute for herself to take care of the children, with the eldest slipping into delinquency.
Ken Loach (already two Palme d’Or awards) pure style! The denunciation of new capitalist turpitudes is clear, and the story of this family could bring tears to the eyes of a City trader. However, the accumulation of hardships falling on poor Ricky’s shoulders might slightly lessen the story’s impact, which lacks the fluidity of Loach’s previous films where the social drama was interspersed with lighter breaks and sometimes even moments of grace.
