“Young Mothers” by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (in competition)
As inevitable as they are regrettable is the effect of rehearsal, even eternal return concerning the presence of the Belgian brothers at the Cannes Film Festival. Their film, like any other, nevertheless deserves to be watched for itself.
And, in a singular way, this “Dardenne effect” (humanist angle and empathetic staging), which tends to reproduce within the very interior of Young peopleis beautifully thwarted by their thirteenth feature film, presented in official competition just before going out in theaters this Friday, May 23.
Very quickly, we understand or believes to understand both the issue of the film – the trajectories of several young women hosted in a center for mothers alone and in great difficulty – and the device which organizes it and which consists in circulating from one to the other, according to crossings on places itself, then without more continuity other than their situations have in common.
But of course, each of their way in which they live, the most important is the bonds of attachment constructed or suffered and where their hopes, their desires, their anxieties materialize. Each of them, like each film for itself.
Par brief episodes centered successively on four young women, Jessica, Perla, Julie and Ariane (with a brief but memorable appearance of a fifth, Naïma), Young people Composes the collective account of situations supported by what is called, in Belgium, a maternal house. The staging, sequence by sequence and in the arrangement of these sequences between them, succeeds in a very beautiful project, which unfolds on several scales.
It is a question of articulating the issues (“society”, as they say) at the same time with what is the singularity of each person, including children, relatives, caregivers. And it is a question of sharing how are seen, perceived, experienced, beings, babies – born, to be born, or not – and of the Avenirs. Seen, perceived: question of staging obviously.
But it is also a question of inscribing these same issues, individual and on the scale of the particular context of those supported by maternal houses, which concerns, beyond this subject and the conditions-economic, medical, administrative, psychological-in which they take place, all that these conditions tell or hide, of a much larger reality. Let’s say about the contemporary world, at least in Western Europe.
And it is again the staging that allows this moving and fluid circulation between these different degrees, with an impressive art of attention, gestures, rhythms. Well beyond all discourse that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are obviously capable of stating, this sensitive and precise deployment can only be accomplished thanks to what they are: citizens, observers of reality, but especially filmmakers.
“The History of Sound” by Oliver Hermanus and “Resurrection” by Bi Gan (in competition)
Still among the films in competition, we will not dwell here on the detestable Woman and Child
From Iranian Saeed Roustaee, who managed to make all of his protagonists odious, while rather sparing the justice system in Iran. In the same selection, we will prefer to pay attention to two other titles, which represent apparently opposite ideas of cinema, but perhaps less than it seemed.
The History of Soundfirst American film by the South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus, opens onto a magnificent sentence, stated in voice OFF by the narrator, who will also be the main character. It is said that he has always perceived music and all sounds, not only by hearing, but also by sight. Ah but that, we know him well! Music for eyes is called cinema.
This beautiful idea will never be activated by the film, which is mainly the story of what will happen to this same character, Lionel (Paul Mescal). Musician and singer who will especially become ethnomusicologist, he will collect popular airs across the country from the 1920s. This quest takes place in the company of a musicologist, David (Josh O’Connor), to which the relationship binds as passionate as that which they both dedicate to the songs recorded in farms, churches and bistro, but more opaque.
If The History of Sound had been satisfied with this narrative thread, it would have been much more convincing than it becomes, believing that it is necessary to add adventures, explanations, “resolutions” of a situation which had everything to gain to remain uncertain. The script, sociological and psychological imperatives increase the film as it progresses, when its beginnings were rich in presence, emotion, multiple openings.
But when Lionel and David walk in the forest in charge of their recording equipment, or sit under a porch to listen and keep track of the treasures that stop there and modulate themselves, Oliver Hermanus is enough filmmaker to make them wonderful moments.
The confinement in a restrictive narrative setting is a risk that does not run Resurrectionthe third feature film of the young Chinese filmmaker-poet Bi Gan (35 years old). Radicalizing the approach explored from Kaili Blueswhich revealed it in 2015, it grows even further than in A big trip to night (2018) The search for a sensations and suggestion cinema, without any consideration for the narrative structure.
Playing with the codes of a science fiction account and with a parable on cinema (officially declared as long disappeared) as a magical relationship with reality, the film unfolds by sensory sheets obeying other imperatives than the interior movement of imagination, saturated with memories and forgetting.
It is happy that a large festival like Cannes welcomes in its most demanding selection, the official competition, a work which so openly detonates with clichés and formatages.
See Resurrectionaccompanying his “character”, if it is one, in a succession of hallucinated situations, where he circulates in a completely non -logical way, is likely to disturb the habits of spectators. And festival -goers after ten days are far from all available for this kind of experiment.
Who will get carried away on these flying carpets of images and sounds carried by the breath of a ubiquitous camera will cross children soothsayers and singers, a beautiful vampire and a Baudelairian ship, will be caught up in frenzied dances, air music, explosions and fights, riddles and pranks.
When the vast majority of the achievements presented in Cannes have affirmed the interactions between realities and narration, the film of Bi Gan pleads the possibility for a film to connect to subliminal springs and to offer in sharing other resources to feel and think. And there is every need to rejoice.
