The theme of love was central to the two films in competition that day. A heterosexual version from the Polish director Pawlikowski, and a homosexual one from the French director Honoré. But in both cases, as they say on social networks… it’s complicated!
ZIMNA WOJNA (Cold War), Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland)
During the Cold War, between Stalinist Poland and Paris in the 1950s, a musician who cherishes freedom and has defected to the West lives an impossible love story with an ambitious young singer who has stayed in Warsaw.
Very quickly, it becomes apparent that if the era is indeed not very favorable to East-West romances, it is mainly their inability to overcome their couple’s incommunicability that dooms Zula and Wiktor’s relationship. Zimna wojna, you understand, is a bit like Antonioni among the Poles! As long as there are Iron Curtains to overcome, love seems possible, but when face to face, there is nothing left. This beautiful black-and-white film (very fashionable at Cannes this year) – where the sublime Jeanne Balibar appears briefly in a delightful scene – falls in line with L’Avventura and La Notte. Only, it’s more Slavic.
PLAIRE, AIMER ET COURIR VITE (Sorry Angel), Christophe Honoré (France)
Each year, it has become a tradition, the Festival presents a film about the AIDS years seen through the lens of the homosexual community. It’s 1990, and the student Arthur meets Jacques, a writer 15 years his senior. An arduous love story builds between the two men, as the specter of the elder’s illness looms on the horizon.
Christophe Honoré’s film is somewhat a counterpart to 120 Beats Per Minute, presented here just last year. Arthur, Jacques, and their friends are not activists (one of them is even surprised that someone would attend an Act Up meeting). They are part of a sort of gay civil society living rather badly with the threat of the disease while almost accepting it with resignation.
In the film’s final part, the young Arthur, through his poise, lack of complexes, and generosity, seems to embody a new generation that might face the future with more hope.
