The very idea of Europe remains so unstable, imprecise and, for many, at best, at best without stake, at the worst a rejecting, which we can struggle to identify in Cannes the massive phenomenon that is the presence of European cinemas – as a result of the French case – especially by paying attention to the boundaries, at the borders to the east, where a decisive part is played at this moment.
“Two prosecutors”, by Sergei Loznitsa (in competition)
The first day of the official competition was marked by the dark rigor of Two prosecutorsnew fictional film by Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, as impressive in this register as in those of the documentary and the archive editing film.
The implacability of the crushing mechanics of spirits and bodies leads very close to a very black form of comedy, the real issue of which is concentrated in an opening scene where a convict of the prisons of the NKVD burns on the orders of its jailers of the heaps of letters addressed to the comrade Joseph Staline.
These letters all aim to inform him of the horrors committed by his police without doubting that he intervenes immediately to restore law, justice and the liberating ideal in which the revolution was made.
It will also be the approach of a young rigid prosecutor, of a mild legalism which, from the sordid labyrinth of a province prison to the ministry’s monumental offices in Moscow, appears almost, today, as an abstraction in a context of which no one can now ignore murderous perversion.
But, inspired by a news of a writer, Gueorgui Demidov, who experienced Stalinist terror, Two prosecutors is explicitly made at the time of Vladimir Putin, to invite to perceive everything that has changed and everything that has not changed. Without any anachronism.
“Imago”, by Deni Oumar Pitsaiev (Critics’ Week)
Coming from the same part of the world, whose membership disputed to Europe makes it all the more rich in meaning, Imago From the Russian filmmaker Deni Oumar Pitsaev is located in a particular region of Georgia, the Pankissi valley, in the east of the country.
This valley is mainly populated by Chechens who have been fleeing, for a century and a half, Russian oppression in its multiple forms. Coming from this community, but having lived above all in Paris and not feeling in no way assigned to this single “identity”, the director returns to the invitation of his family members, who decided for him that he had to settle there and found a family according to ancestral uses.
Here we regretted the weak presence of documentaries this year in Cannes, more reason to salute the daring accuracy of the documentary resources mobilized by this film around its author and main character.
Giving spectators of the presence of the camera, he invents a space that is both realistic and inhabited by dreams (and nightmares), individual, family, and collective. Very fertile, including in funny scenes, this device is deployed in the last part in an extraordinarily moving and brutal confrontation space around a paternal figure that is both very real and symbolic, which reconfigures everything that has been seen before.
“Fuori”, by Mario Martone (in competition)
Everything revolves around a well-known figure in his country, less in France, even if it originally allowed the recognition enjoyed by the writer Goliarda Sapienza. This figure of post-war Italy with singular and disturbing lives has only become famous only after the posthumous recognition of what is today considered its major book, The art of joy.
In competition for the Palme d’Or, the film of Italian filmmaker Mario Martone is inspired by two autobiographical works, devoted one to the stay in prison of her author for theft, the other to her fusional relationship with a very young woman linked to the clandestine activism movements of the 1970s.
His title, Fuer (“Outside” in Italian), seems to designate only one component, when the two women are outside the prison. But it also includes chapters tooth (inside), when that interpreted Valeria Golino with singular energy, both attractive and disturbing, was incarcerated for a jewelry flight with complex motivations.
Neither biopic nor literary reconstruction, Mario Martone’s film explores strange paths, which are redefined facts, dreams including erotic, romantic elaborations.
Confusing, Fuer Engenders a form of proximity with ways of existing, an era, a whole mental landscape and an assortment of ways of being which are the transposition into rhythms and colors, in stylized body and improbable words, of a whole aspect of a long and partly always in progress. Fluid and embodied, it is also the best film for a long time of the filmmaker of Death of a Neapolitan mathematician (1992) and War theater (1998)
And also …
Among the memorable European films, we already insisted a few days ago on the very beautiful accomplishments that are Laughter and knife Portuguese Pedro Pinho (a certain look) And
Mirrors n ° 3 of the German Christian Petzold (fifteen of filmmakers). Without being so convincing, you must mention the ambition of the proposals of a young filmmaker, also German, Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Fallingor Spanish Carla Simón with Romeríaboth in competition.
The chronicle saturated with imaginary as much as trivial details of life on a farm in the first, the quest for a teenager around the mystery who accompanied the disappearance of her father in a provincial city in Galicia (north-west of Spain) in the second: Sound of Falling And Romería have also been one of the significant titles of this edition. And, among the big European names, we wait, of course, from Belgium, the new proposal of the Dardenne brothers, Young peoplepresented at the very end of the Cannes Film Festival.
And above all: “sentimental value”, by Joachim Trier (in competition)
But it is necessary without waiting to celebrate the emotional richness of Sentimental valuethe new film by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, also in competition.
Finding Renate Reinsve, the actress he had revealed with Julie (in 12 chapters) In 2021, the filmmaker discovered, in Cannes already, with Oslo, August 31 In 2011, composed in small dramatic blocks all singular a vast vibrant meditation of emotion.
This one deploys, with main decor an old house which could also appear Europe itself, around an elderly filmmaker and its two daughters, but also a history of the continent from the middle of the XXe A century, where the Second World War and the big modern questions circulate, such as as many underwater monsters in this story that is both clear and saturated with mystery.
Haunted by Ingmar Bergman’s cinema, Sentimental value Never fall under quote, even less imitation. It is located in a world where this cinema and all that he had had existed.
Contemporary film playing with the signs of several eras, it benefits from an impressive interpretation of its two main actresses, Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, as well as that of Stellan Skarsgård and its actor, to whom comes to join Elle Fanning, for a very difficult role in door.
