[COLUMN] Darren’s Cannes Diary, Day Ten - The Festival Wind Down | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

Published:

2024-05-26 13:40:12

Imported:

2024-05

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One of the benefits of the last days of a film festival is that the crowds are generally smaller, which means less time queuing and cramming. With fewer big films showing, it also affords an opportunity to take in the various strands of the festival.

Cannes isn’t just about the future of cinema, a place for big movies to stake their claim on the year ahead. It is also a celebration of the medium’s long history. The festival includes two strands largely dedicated to screenings of older films. The first of these is Cinéma de la Plage, which projects films nightly on the city’s beach, open to everyone to attend. Screenings this year include a restoration of Trainspotting, Martin Scorsese's After Hours, and Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise.

The festival also has a more conventional Cannes Classics strand, which celebrates notable past entries into the competition. There is some really great stuff showing in that section of the festival, but the problem is that this always involves a sacrifice: seeing a beloved older film often means having to actively choose not to see a buzzy new release. Still, with the festival calming down a little bit, two screenings presented themselves today.

The first marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Palme d’or win for Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (★★★★★). Indeed, Cahiers du Cinema published a special edition celebrating Demy in April, only the third entry in a collection that also includes David Lynch and François Truffaut. The opportunity to see a 4K restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Cannes Film Festival was too wonderful an opportunity to decline.

Look, it’s almost impossible to say something that hasn’t already been said about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the most beloved musicals in the history of cinema. It’s particularly challenging ten days into a buzzing festival, averaging about four hours of sleep a night. Still, the film is as fresh and mesmerizing today as it was on original release, an enchanting celebration of everything that cinema is and can be. It is truly sumptuous filmmaking.

In particular, there is something very appealing in the way the film blends its influences from both sides of the Atlantic. In the opening sequence, tired auto workers finishing their shift argue about the relative merits of Georges Bizet’s Carmen. “I don't like operas,” complains one member of staff. “Movies are better.” The beauty of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the way in which it blends the magic of both forms into something that still feels novel and exciting.

In the rich tradition of European opera, almost every line in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is sung. This isn’t a conventional Hollywood musical, with musical numbers interspaced between dialogue scenes. However, Demy obviously employs the language of cinema to exploit the potential to edit these lines into larger sequences that cross larger amounts of space and time than would be possible within the framework of a traditional opera.

More than that, Demy is very obviously influenced by the big technicolor musicals that Hollywood was producing around the same time. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is just a stunning piece of pop art, the rare film where almost any random frame could be mounted and hung on a wall as a piece of modern décor. It features incredible work from production designer Bernard Evein, costume designer Jacqueline Moreau and cinematographer Jean Rabier.

Even narratively, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg remains a compelling combination of the classic American musical with the neo-realism of contemporary European cinema, a film so far ahead of its obvious stylistic influences that it feels like the American studio musical only really managed to catch up to it with La La Land. The only problem with seeing a film like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at a festival is that it ruins the grading curve for any of the new releases.

This evening also saw a screening of a special 4K restoration of Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express (★★★★☆). It is technically Spielberg’s second film, following Duel, which enjoyed a limited theatrical release in certain European markets. Arriving just before Jaws, The Sugarland Express tends to get somewhat overlooked in evaluating Spielberg’s larger filmography, despite the film marking his first collaborations with composer John Williams and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

The Sugarland Express is not a classic, but it is a damn enjoyable film. It follows former convict Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) as she breaks her husband Clovis Michael (William Atherton) out of prison to reunite with their child (Harrison Zanuck). The pair end up hijacking a squad car and kidnapping Patrolman Maxwell Slide (Michael Sacks) as they embark on a journey across America that quickly descends into a media circus.

The Sugarland Express obviously isn’t Jaws. There’s a reason that the film’s reputation isn’t quite as polished as Spielberg’s subsequent films. The movie’s a little rough around the edges in various places. It’s very obvious, for example, that Goldie Hawn is a star and that – as charming as he is – William Atherton is destined to spend the next couple of decades in charming and memorable supporting roles.

Still, there’s a lot to enjoy and appreciate about The Sugarland Express. Spielberg is very much himself, even at this young age. There’s a gleeful and childish energy in the movie’s car chases and pile-ups, reflecting his cartoon influences. Indeed, around the midpoint of the movie, Lou Jean and Clovis stop to watch a Road Runner cartoon, with Clovis providing all the sound effects himself. It gives a very clear sense of the register that the movie is operating in.

The Sugarland Express is in some ways a classic Spielberg story; it’s the rare movie that the director has a writing credit on, having drafted the story that provided the basis for the screenplay. In its basic structure and themes, The Sugarland Express is recognizable as a Spielberg movie. It is a story about a dysfunctional and disconnected family unit, trying desperately to pull itself together. Indeed, the movie’s resolution is especially evocative of Spielberg’s key themes.

However, the most impressive aspect of The Sugarland Express is Spielberg’s ability to balance tone. The Sugarland Express pivots sharply between slapstick anarchy and aching sincerity. It is a goofy comedy, one that understands Lou Jean and Clovis are fundamentally absurd characters, but it’s also a sincere family drama that retains a strong sense of empathy for them. It’s a very fine balancing act, and Spielberg manages to pull it off perfectly.

There was also time yesterday to take in three new films screening at the festival. The first was the Saudi Arabian movie Norah (★★★☆☆), directed by Tawfik Alzaidi. Set in a rural Saudi Arabian village during the mid-1990s, the film follows a teacher named Nader (Yagoub Alfarhan) who arrives in town to teach the community’s children how to read and write. Modernity is coming to Saudi Arabia, despite the protests of the elders, who see it as an intrusion of the outside world.

While there, Nader crosses paths with a young woman named Norah (Maria Bahrawi), who is due to undergo an arranged marriage. Seemingly abandoned by her parents and isolated from her blood relatives, Norah feels trapped within the confines of this extremely traditionalist village. Her only escape comes from reading magazines smuggled into the village and sold under the counter at the local store. Looking at those pictures, Norah can imagine a better life for herself.

On top of being a teacher, Nader is an artist with a great deal of talent. Her wedding fast approaching, Norah commissions Nader to draw a portrait of her. Of course, this causes all manner of challenges. Norah cannot show Nader her face, nor can she be alone with him. Any discovery of the portrait would have serious repercussions for either. However, grudgingly, the pair try to figure out a way to capture something of Norah’s essence on canvas.

There is an endearing gentleness to Norah. The film is surprisingly understated and restrained in its unfolding drama. Until its final ten minutes, the movie gracefully avoids leaning too heavily into melodrama or sentimentality. Instead, it accepts the reality of the world and the characters as presented, offering a sweet and thoughtful study of how sometimes art escapes those things that people can’t. The ending is wonderfully affecting.

As tends to be the case with these late-festival diary entries, there was also time for an animated film. This time around, it was Alexis Ducord and Vincent Paronnaud’s Into the Wonderwoods (★★★☆☆). The movie follows a precocious 10-year-old named Angelo (Dario Hardoin-Spurio), with a rich inner life. Angelo is the kind of kid who can transform a mundane breakfast into an epic quest for the Holy Grail.

Angelo finds himself challenged when news comes through that his beloved grandmother is seriously ill. The family load into the car and embark on a journey to visit. During a routine rest stop, Angelo is left behind to fend for himself. Figuring that the most direct path to his grandmother’s house is through the woods, Angelo finds himself drawn into a series of increasingly bizarre encounters with the eccentric denizens of the forest.

There’s an appealing creativity and imagination to Into the Wonderwoods, which looks gorgeous. There are armies of termites that can fashion themselves into a makeshift hairdo, farting mushrooms, a sentient mass of moss with a sweet tooth, a mustachioed frog with a piano, a cloud with anger management issues, and a sinister alien general (José Garcia) with an army that consists entirely of metal worms, each with a gigantic expressive eyeball.

The film’s playfulness extends to its form as well. The opening credits are narrated by Angelo, directing his own movie and humming his own theme music. Throughout the movie, various flashbacks and exposition scenes shift animation styles, often towards more two-dimensional hand-draw styles. Watching Into the Wonderwoods, it really feels like the kind of movie that everybody working on enjoyed making, and that joy is somewhat infectious.

At the same time, the movie ends up about ten degrees away from genuine greatness, just shy of other animated festival screenings like Ghost Cat Anzu or Flow. Into the Wonderwoods has a fairly solid emotional core in the relationship between Angelo and his beloved grandmother, capturing something of the unique relationship between children and grandchildren. The framework of the movie, right down to the plot device of the Holy Grail, touches on mortality and death.

One of the key ingredients of any coming-of-age story is an understanding of mortality. For children, that often comes through the passing of an older relative. (The genius of Back to the Future is that it inverts this; Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) doesn’t learn that his parents will die but that they lived.) Into the Wonderwoods walks up to the line of recognizing this, but pulls back incredibly sharply to offer a banal happy ending. As a result, it falls shy of greatness, settling into a register of “very good.”

The third and final new release film I caught yesterday was Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts (★★★★☆), which makes an interesting bookend to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The film is built around two separate solar eclipses, a delightfully heavy-handed metaphor for the movie’s central romance; two bodies caught in an elaborate dance with one another, defined by one another but perhaps destined to overlap for only the most fleeting of moments.

Running two-hours-and-three-quarters, Beating Hearts charts a truly epic love story between Clotaire (François Civil) and Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos). It is a tale of star-crossed lovers, two very different people drawn to each other, separated by events but seeming to pulling themselves back together against all odds. It’s a story with sweep and heft, one that gives its characters and story room to breathe, allowing the audience to experience Clotaire and Jackie’s lives together and apart.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Beating Hearts, which follows the pair from their childhoods in 1980s France over two ensuing decades, is that the movie never feels its length. Indeed, it breezes by. Part of this is largely down to Lellouche’s kinetic directorial style, which tends to keep things moving along. The film never really settles into a particular mode, which is quite fitting for a story about two lovers who also never quite manage to figure out how to make it work.

Jackie is a promising young student with a keen mind and a bright academic future ahead of her. Clotaire is a child who has been nothing but trouble to everybody around him, a bad influence with strong self-destructive tendencies. Even before Clotaire finds himself drawn into the local criminal underworld, it is obvious that the pair should not be together and probably cannot work together. However, it’s to the credit of Civil and Exarchopoulos that the audience wants them to be together.

Inevitably, tragedy strikes. The pair are separated by a horrific sequence of events. Clotaire is sent to prison in the aftermath of a job that went horribly wrong, and this completely shatters Jackie’s faith in humanity. Their lives are pushed off-course forever. However, a dozen years later, Clotaire returns to town to discover that Jackie is engaged to be married to another man (Vincent Lacoste). As Clotaire sets out to reclaim what was taken from him, Jackie wonders about her own desires.

All of that acknowledged, Beating Hearts is a movie that works more on tone and execution than on narrative. In storytelling terms, there’s relatively little novel in the movie. However, Lellouche imbues the film with a sense of vigor and excitement. Indeed, it seems likely that a significant portion of the film’s budget went on securing music rights, including hits like “Nothing Compares 2 U”, “Eyes Without a Face” and “Sirius.”

However, while these tracks are used well, they are more indicative of the movie’s general aesthetic. When it does appear, Jon Brion’s original soundtrack evokes the synth-heavy scores of John Carpenter, lending the movie a decidedly ominous feel. Laurent Tangy’s cinematography is crisp and clear, giving the movie’s depiction of urban wastelands an eerie beauty that somehow compliments romantic shots of sun-drenched beaches and golden fields of barley.

Beating Hearts is lovely, a surprisingly tender movie for a film that opens with a machine gun massacre.

Check out the rest of Darren’s Cannes columns below –