At a point in the week when festival-goers are already speculating on the awards list (for example, in the magazine “le Film français”), two films were presented today, an Italian one and a Korean one. Without aiming to top the list of awards, they were of good quality.
DOGMAN, Matteo Garrone (Italy)
In an impoverished suburb, Marcello, a dog groomer and occasional small-time dealer, sees his friend Simoncino return from prison, a former boxer addicted to cocaine. Simoncino makes Marcello his punching bag and drags him into a criminal spiral.
Marcello is a curious little fellow. Rather scrawny and unattractive, somewhat unkempt, he is quite kind: a (divorced) father attentive to his little girl, ready to take all risks to save a chihuahua, helping the fauna that serves as his neighborhood in this area that serves as his community. But his attachment (one could call it canine!) to this brute Simoncino, who subjects him to all humiliations (he even goes to prison in his place), eventually finds its limits and the little man transforms into a war machine.
This realistic yet picturesque film is watchable without displeasure despite its great violence. We are just a bit surprised that Garrone, the director of Gomorrah, has erased the social context to such an extent. To the point of making his film a sort of fairy tale. For adults, though.
BURNING, Lee Chang-Dong (South Korea)
A young man meets by chance a former neighbor from his childhood village. After a brief affair, the young woman leaves for Africa. Upon her return, she seems to have connected with a mysterious man she met during her travels.
As in Garrone’s film, Burning features a confrontation between two men: Jongsu, the reluctant farmer (forced to succeed his father), somewhat naïve, and Ben, the elegant and self-assured yuppie. A subtle battle for the affections of the whimsical Haemi. The Italian film revolves around the subdued, the Korean film around the dominant, this Ben who is handsome, clean-cut, and wicked. Although with this wickedness, it takes 2 hours and 28 minutes to truly touch upon it. Despite the quality of this occasionally enchanting film, it is still rather long.
