The Love Songs of Christophe Honoré
Presented as a musical, the film is actually built on a classic scenario interspersed with songs. Specifically, love songs which are quite successful. The story begins as a somewhat trivial flirtation among bourgeois babies with uncertain sexuality. But quickly, following the accidental death of Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), everything changes and this tiny world is suddenly faced with absence, remorse, and bleak tomorrows.
Each person reacts in their own way, endlessly questioning, to eventually relearn how to live. But recovering from grief is a bit like returning from a journey: Ismaël (Louis Garrel), the anti-hero of the story, sort of a natural son of Antoine Doinel, will experience this. He will never be the same man again.
From the young French cinema, sincere and ambitious: we ask for more.
Two films on the agenda for this fourth day of the Festival: the latest production from the Coen brothers and a Korean film.
No Country for Old Men, by Joel and Ethan Coen
A Texas poacher (Josh Brolin) discovers in the desert a half-dozen bodies and a suitcase full of dollars, all probably linked to a drug trafficking operation with Mexico. By trying to appropriate another’s property, the poor man triggers an explosion of violence coupled with a hellish chase between himself, the trafficking sponsors, various more or less freelance killers, and the affable local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones, barely back from his “Three Burials”). But the worst of all, the one who leads the game, is a psychopathic killer (Javier Bardem, impressive) who eliminates, almost for pleasure, all those who stand in his way. Notably, he slaughters his victims with a pressure gun usually used in slaughterhouses to kill cattle. The effect is spectacular, and Tarantino probably had to turn green with envy for not having had this idea! In the end, everyone will pass away, Anton Chigurh, the psychopath, will eliminate all the protagonists of the story except the affable sheriff who can take an undeserved retirement.
In fact, the Coen brothers revisit the spaghetti western: same passion for faces and characters, same taste for stylized violence, same fascination with overheated deserts, same humor (“If I die, tell my mother that I love her. – But your mother is dead! – Then I’ll tell her myself”). Even so, in their version, the brute triumphs hands down, eliminating both the good and the bad.
A jubilant film, but perhaps a bit too parodic to live up to its declared ambition.
Soom, by Kim Ki-Duk
After the county councillor of the 7th district during the opening ceremony, I again have by my side a famous person from Nice: the talented Sophie Duez. Just enough time to discuss the difficulty of existing artistically when one has decided to pursue a career in the provinces, and we are already plunged into the hell of Korean marital relations.
Mr. Jin is a scoundrel. He cheats on his wife openly, while demanding that she be a model wife and mother. Mrs. Yeon, inevitably, snaps and decides to seduce a death row inmate to prove herself that she still matters to someone. This gives some incongruous but stunningly beautiful scenes, like those visitor room meetings that the lady decorates beforehand, successively in the colors of the four seasons.
Everything ends well. Mr. Jin, a bit jealous, finds the right path and after some prison frolics, Mrs. Yeon sends the prisoner back to the lust of his cellmates before joining her family’s fold. This gives an anthological final scene: the small family singing loudly in the car the famous “Tombe la neige” by Adamo… in Korean, of course!
An imaginative cinema, disturbing, but a bit too excessive to really touch. That said, the actors and the director will be rewarded with the most beautiful standing ovation since the beginning of the Festival. So, wait and see…
