“Paper Tiger,” by James Gray (in competition): what is a family?
Halfway through this 79e edition of the Cannes Film Festival, two of the most anticipated films in the official competition have in common, at the same time as their success, the feeling that the two directors are remaking a film they have already made and repeating what is omnipresent in all of their work. It is that of New York filmmaker James Gray, who also has the rare quality, this year, of bringing to the Croisette two American stars, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, and the new opus by the already award-winning Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda.
With Paper TigerJames Gray combines the ingredients of a family story in New York, in a situation where Russian immigrants linked to gangsterism intervene. In the mid-1980s, the two Pearl brothers – Irwin, the peaceful father of a family who is a public works contractor, and Gary, the flamboyant ex-cop quick to embark on adventurous operations – saw mortal threats multiply, which also affected Irwin’s wife and sons.
Not only does the general outline go through the paths taken multiple times by the director discovered with Little Odessa (1994) and The Yards (2000), but James Gray boldly cites himself, notably with the sequence of the police ceremony and that of the chase in the tall grass of The Night belongs to us (2007).
This effect of repetition reinforces the question that accompanies the film during its first ninety minutes: why is James Gray telling us this (again)? Even with an undeniable virtuosity of direction, this is a question that also raises a good number of other films at Cannes this year.
The counterpart to this question, just as problematic, is to know too well why, when films are entirely subservient to a message, displayed like a banner or a banner; for example, in Abandonment by Vincent Garenq (out of competition), A Woman’s Life by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet (in competition), Gentle Monster by Marie Kreutzer (in competition) or Girl’s memory by Judith Godrèche (Un certain regard)… to stay with the official selection. Not so many titles escape the symmetrical pitfalls of formalism and the great subject that believes it can be sufficient in itself.
In the case of James Gray, the last half hour will finally reveal an issue in this elegantly regulated mechanism, around the question of conflicts of loyalty – in this case within a family, between brothers or between members of a couple and their children. The recurring use of the word “baby”used indiscriminately by everyone about everyone, points to infantilizing relationships as fuel for a society that seems to promote autonomy and ultimately only produces forms of dependence.
“Sheep in the Box”, by Hirokazu Kore-eda (in competition): misunderstanding of AI and return to blood ties
In terms of the multiple misunderstandings that accompany films at Cannes, we can cite the fact that Sheep in the Boxby Hirokazu Kore-eda, is regularly mentioned as the work in tune with a problem, indeed very present on the Croisette, that of artificial intelligence. While the film has nothing to do with the multiple questions that AI raises, in cinema and elsewhere.
The story of a couple who, unable to mourn the loss of their little boy who died in an accident, resorts to a robot cloned after the missing child, is again a new variation of the Japanese director’s recurring theme, this time around the idea that what truly constitutes family has nothing to do with blood ties.
This is the principle of the vast majority of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s films, including the Palme d’Or A family affair (2018). At a time when identity and family impulses are dominating, massively relayed by cinema, the Japanese filmmaker deserves at least a certain amount of benevolence.
The fact remains that he had already declined this theme based on an object with a human appearance, not a robot but a life-size doll, in Air Doll (2009), which accentuates the limits of the new feature film, despite an interesting foray into architecture and the construction of 3D models. This is undoubtedly the most innovative aspect of his film, placed under the sponsorship of Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the parable of exterior drawing which leaves room for the imagination.
“Come the revolution”, by Pegah Ahangarani (special screenings) and “In the mouth of the ogre”, by Mahsa Karampour (ACID selection)
Another mirror effect, but this time for the better, with two titles signed by young Iranian filmmakers in exile. Pegah Ahangarani and Mahsa Karampour have the merit of displacing overly systematic approaches in films made in comparable conditions, which address important questions but too often lock themselves between narcissism and deploration. Both construct their film – an inventive documentary form – under the sign of family, in terms of generational continuity for the first, proximity and differences between brother and sister for the second.
The revolution will come is largely composed of archives, where images of the family of director Pegah Ahangarani and those of the many popular movements in Iran since the revolution against the dictatorship of the shah in 1979, then the also dictatorial takeover of power by the Islamic Republic Party.
Raised in a very politically active environment, the one who was first an activist and journalist before becoming a filmmaker retraces with great emotion and lucidity the various episodes which mark her life and that of the Iranian Islamic Republic. Avoiding simplisms and excesses, with an impressive sense of rhythm and documentary images, some of them previously unpublished, Pegah Ahangarani composes a story that weaves together his personal journey, that of his family and that of his country and its inhabitants.
The title In the mouth of the ogreby Mahsa Karampour, a director exiled in France, suggests that the ogre in question will once again be the Tehran regime. This is the case, but the ogre is not limited to this single incarnation. The film accompanies the journey of the filmmaker’s brother, Siavash, a hard rock musician in Tehran, whom the film Persian Cats (by Bahman Ghobadi, released in 2009) spoke of his tribulations in the face of repression.
Installed in New York, Siavash Karampour has by no means calmed down there. And when his little sister joins him from Paris to film him, she discovers a rebel ready to do battle with the American ogre, as he was against the one from his native country.
If the previous film is also a study on the revolutionary process and the way in which the Iranian people perpetuate their aspirations, despite repressions and betrayals, this one is rather a study on the revolt – generational and artistic – which confronts its demands whatever the conditions.
Not just a witness, but a stakeholder, in a place different from that of her brother and with different means – music for him, cinema for her – Mahsa Karampour finds the right distances, including ironic ones, to do justice to what her brother lives for, without locking him into a role that is too big or too rigid.
