Making Sense of Life – On the Philosophy of ‘Barbie’ & ‘Oppenheimer’ | FirstShowing.net

Making Sense of Life – On the Philosophy of ‘Barbie’ & ‘Oppenheimer’

by Alex Billington
July 24, 2023

On the Philosophy of Barbie & Oppenheimer

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” –Proust. Two of the best movies of 2023 are now playing in theaters worldwide: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. Yep – they’re both outstanding movies deserving of all the praise, both ambitious and unique and creative, both made by exceptionally talented filmmakers who understand the terrific power of visual storytelling. They may differ in many ways, especially in tone, but they’re actually quite similar in many other ways. I am in awe and delighted that we have two of the most philosophical movies I’ve seen in years, both big budget studio projects, both intellectually stimulating, showing on big screens and drawing big crowds. This is an invigorating moment for cinema that we should relish. What I appreciate the most is how much each film relies on intellectual storytelling, with no desire to pander to audiences or be accessible to everyone. There is so much to discuss about each, and I want to dig into the philosophy present in both films. To borrow a quote on Twitter: “It’s not Barbie and Oppenheimer. It’s Barbie, and it’s Oppenheimer.”

I’m elated these films are damn good and especially so smart. I’ve watched both Barbie and Oppenheimer twice already; the second viewing is so much more fascinating, as I can observe in closer detail everything these filmmakers are doing and how this works wonderfully in the movie. Intellectual filmmaking is rather uncommon these days and yet we have two big movies pushing boundaries again. Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t just a story about the man who led the team that created the atomic bomb, it’s about the moral implications and existential struggles that come with that. It’s about how hard it is to handle the guilt and sadness that comes with knowing your creation killed so many people, then lead into a world perpetually fearful of death. Gerwig’s Barbie, on the other hand, also deals with existential worries. What happens when you go out into the “real world” and learn that who you are, and the world you come from, are not actually representative of the real world. It was just a utopian fantasy, and the real world is much more sexist and greedy and careless. Both films ask similar profound philosophical questions: what does it mean to be you, how do you make sense of your life, specifically in relation to how your life has impacted the world – in both good & bad ways.

Watching Oppenheimer is like watching a horror movie (though critics are arguing about whether it’s horror or something else) – at some point we realize this well-respected, optimistic scientist is going to encounter some of the darkest darkness ever when confronted with the horror of what he built – even with the context of stopping the other great darkness threatening the world at the time. There are scenes in the second half that play like a psychological thriller, with visions of the dead appearing, the room shaking violently, bright light taking over. Nolan has artfully visualized this remarkably hard-to-describe feeling of dread and guilt and death. Oppenheimer is a biopic, it’s not about what the bomb did, because he wants to tell the story of this man and put us in his shoes. There are questions posed about whether he’s really a bad guy, because all he wanted to do was save the world. There’s also questions about – once you’ve created this deadly gadget, what next. How do you respond, how do you handle it, how do you move on, how do you even live? Everyone knows Oppenheimer’s famous quotes borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita, and the film shows us that he dealt with frighteningly existential dilemmas: is he death? Is he now the destroyer of worlds? What has he done?

One of the best analysis I’ve read is an examination of ending of Oppenheimer written by my colleague Bilge Ebiri for Vulture. In his analysis, he connects the opening shots and ending shots of the film and goes on to explain how it is a clever visual metaphor for Oppie’s obsession with a scientific understanding of the world. Ebiri points out how the ripples that he sees in the pond mirror the circles being drawn on maps at the end of the film, measuring the size of nuclear explosions atop cities in Russia (and elsewhere). The film’s editor, Jennifer Lame, explains: “Science to him is beauty and art and poetry. It just makes the movie so much more devastating at the end.” After going on this three hours journey with Oppie, he realizes his fascination with science and knowledge about the universe we all exist in has crossed over into the “real world” with devastating consequences. Perhaps he doesn’t realize it yet, at that point, but humanity is forever changed. He is responsible, in theory, but we can’t blame him (alone) nor can we blame his fascination with science. There are, of course, other conversations on the inevitability of atomic weapons – if it wasn’t Oppenheimer, someone else would’ve figured out how to use fission for a bomb. His article ends with a potent realization:

“Nolan’s closing images do serve as a warning and a portent of doom, and they are enormously moving as such. But they’re also one final glimpse into this character, revealing that in his mind at least, he has destroyed the world: He has destroyed his world, his very conception of reality. Where once he saw the astonishing connections that lay at the heart of all matter and even human relations, now he sees only horror and fire, of the destructive power that lies beneath the shape of all things.” Via Vulture

It’s an intricately complex film that asks – is one man truly, solely responsible for what he makes if others misuse our creations in nefarious ways, especially when it is simply unlocking the scientific secrets of our universe? Oppenheimer hits hard with this profound, overwhelming realization. It’s a grand examination of a life – that’s also an examination of humanity, of our real world, of men and war and the power they crave.

Barbie & Oppenheimer

Barbie actually digs much deeper into the philosophy of meaning and existence than Oppenheimer (strange, but true). It borrows from the Pinocchio story of a perfect, plastic woman who enters the real world and discovers what it means to be a “real” woman. Not just a perfect Barbie. One of the most beautiful scenes is when she first has a moment to herself in the real world: she’s sitting on the bench and suddenly breathes and takes in the world around her. She looks at the trees and sky, and notices both happiness and sadness, and the anger and depression and joy all around her. She sees kids playing, a couple arguing, happy and sad people and realizes this is the grand, magical complexity of life. It is everything all at once. It’s a visceral and visually stunning moment of existential clarity. Later on she literally meets her creator, and must confront the very idea of what it means to be Barbie and if she is free to be herself and live in this “real world” in the way she wants to live. She doesn’t even know what that is exactly, she’s on the road to figuring that out. All of this is played against the eye-opening, Plato’s cave experience of stepping out of Barbie Land for the first time and realizing the world isn’t this idealistic, glossy, pink reality. This is as close as movie can get to The Matrix narrative of “free your mind” and, as she does, escape into the real world for a “voyage of discovery”.

They even mention Proust Barbie at one point. (And there’s talk of philosophy books on Oppie’s shelves in one scene as well.) Barbie’s ultimate thesis is this question of who she is, how does she navigate and exist in the world, how her experiences and her understanding of the world changes who she is as a person. Ruth Handler, the original Mattel creator of the Barbie Doll, explains to her that the idea of Barbie is also more important that the actual perfect definition of or image of Barbie, that is what truly matters. It’s almost a direct reference to V for Vendetta, and V’s empowering speech that “beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof” – ideas can go beyond a person, ideas live beyond an individual person, or an individual Barbie. This is something profound she must contend with as well… Has the “idea” of Barbie she embodies become toxic, more harmful to the world than helpful? How can she free herself from that, confront the patriarchy, and re-establish an idea that truly represents how empowering she feels. It’s weird that an expensive Barbie movie made by Mattel dares to dip into this kind of philosophical discussion, but that’s part of the genius of this movie. It’s what makes these two Hollywood movies invigorating, so exciting, because they both dare to be intellectually provocative when so few contemporary Hollywood movies are…

It’s no coincidence that both films feature their main characters having mental breakdowns, trying to figure out who they are and what their place is in a world. The parallels are fascinating, in that they’re so different yet so similar in their exploration of existence and meaning and how one person (or even one idea) can have have a great impact on humanity and on our “real world”. Did Barbie change the world for the worse? Is she actually a harmful representation of toxic feminism? Did Oppenheimer change for the world for the worse? Is he actually a harmful representation of dangerous science? Thankfully both filmmakers are talented and intelligent enough to not provide one clear, definitive answer to these kind of questions – both movies are an exploration of ideas; conversation-starters, thought-provoking works of art. Barbie, even though it is pink and glossy and bright and fun, is also examining the same darker sides of the world as Oppenheimer. “Is one woman truly, solely responsible for what she [causes] if others misuse our creations in nefarious ways…?” Funny enough, referencing what I wrote earlier about Oppenheimer, Barbie is also “a grand examination of a life – that’s also an examination of humanity, of our real world, of men and war and the power they crave.”

As a lover of philosophy, of big ideas and big thinking, and of cinema that can make wonder about all these big ideas, I am delighted that these two movies are so profound and stirring and successful. The cliche idea of what “going to the movies” means has been getting louder & louder in these past few years: “shut off your brain and just enjoy it,” they love to say. However, real cinema, real intelligent storytelling, is about turning on your brain. It has the power to make you think, even make you re-examine your life, your choices, your identity. And maybe, just maybe, it may make you question who you are. Once again, there’s a perfect Proust quote for this: “If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.” A rejuvenating reminder that movies can do this. One of my favorite lines in Barbie is near the end when she’s talking with Ruth. She explains, maybe the things that you think make you you, are not actually the things that make you you. We all need to stop & think about this, process this conundrum, to truly understand ourselves and understand what makes us us, what defines humanity. We need to decide whether we truly want to make the world a better place, or if we all just want more power and/or perfection.

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Yep, The Karlovy Vary Film Festival is Still One of the Best in the World | FirstShowing.net

Yep, The Karlovy Vary Film Festival is Still One of the Best in the World

by Alex Billington
July 7, 2023

Karlovy Vary Film Festival

If you know, you know… If you’ve been, you’ll always want to go back… At least that’s how I feel. There is a wonderful film festival in Czechia called the Karlovy Vary Film Festival – they’re celebrating their 57th year, making it one of the oldest festivals in the world (it was originally founded in 1946). This is my fifth year attending KVIFF (as it’s known – the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival), returning to this lovely little spa town in the middle of the summer to watch more films and enjoy the full-on cinema lovers party ambience. Karlovy Vary is a famous town in the hills of west Czechia, right near the border of Germany. It’s only 6 hours by train from Berlin, where I live, and even less if you go directly from Prague. They’re an A-list event and the first major festival after Cannes in May to play the best of Cannes’ selection, including all the awards winnersAnatomy of a Fall, Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Perfect Days, and many others. I write about KVIFF every year nowadays, because this humble festival really is one of the best in the entire world.

What makes this particular film festival stand out from so many others is how much it really feels like going to cinema heaven. In addition to the picturesque town where it takes place, as well as their always-amazing selection of films from around the world, the audience at every screening at KVIFF is full of genuine film-loving fans. No matter what time it is or what film may be showing, every screening is completely packed. Sometimes they even let in extra people who sit on the floor or stairs just because they’ll sit anywhere and don’t want to miss whatever is showing. These audiences are also respectful of the experience, very rarely ever taking out their phone or chatting, and they always seem completely engaged in and focused on the film on the screen in front of them. It’s actually kind of awe inspiring to see, especially since phone use in movies has been getting really bad again post-pandemic. This festival is Czechia’s chance to dive head first into the world of cinema, with tons of Czech people pouring in from every corner of the country to watch new films.

My biggest complaint – the chairs suck. After spending a few days the festival, my back starts to hurt because the chairs in most of the venues are terrible. There are about four venues at the festival that are actual movie theaters they takeover and use for screenings. The rest of their key venues are gorgeous old hotels (like the Grandhotel Pupp) or vintage spa palaces (like the Lazne III) or big conference rooms. Unfortunately they put the cheapest plastic chairs in these places and it’s tough to sit in them. This year I went to watch the three-hour-long Argentinian film The Delinquents (which I loved) at a venue with chairs that barely have a rigid back on them and it was tough to make it through. I doubt my complaining will make them change the chairs, but I hope one day they’ll put some better seating in. At least the “Grand Hall” (which is their version of Cannes’ Grand Théâtre Lumière), located inside the famously clunky Hotel Thermal, is a nice place with nice seats and a huge screen. All that really matters is that I can get tickets & get in to watch all these films.

Karlovy Vary Film Festival

I was first introduced to the Karlovy Vary Film Festival by a film critic friend years ago. Ever since I started attending in 2017, I’ve been passing the torch and doing my best to introduce it to more people. I also follow film critic Robert Daniels, who went for his first time in 2022 and is back again in 2023. I love his writing anyway, but his coverage of KVIFF is especially invigorating. He opens his first review article from this year with this lovely intro: “oh, how I have missed its winding cobblestone streets, its canals, and its resplendent Renaissance style. But most of all, I’ve missed the jubilant crowds and bountiful movies.” Indeed, Robert, indeed. Even if you don’t believe me, I’m not the only one going on and on about how delightful this Czech film festival is. His wrap up article from 2022 also eloquently captures what makes KVIFF so unforgettable once you attend: “I was struck by the jubilant mood of the event, and the graciousness shown by the heads of the festival—the Festival President Jiří Bartoška, Executive Director Kryštof Mucha, and Artistic Director Karel Och—along with a film community so eager, so passionate to share their festival with the world.” Yep.

In addition to coming to Karlovy Vary to watch the Cannes films I might’ve missed, or a few world premieres of something that might be the next big international breakout, their retrospective selections every year are always remarkable. I caught a total of 11 films over the five days I was in town, with a few more screeners to catch up with this weekend as the fest winds down. I always make sure I watch at least one old film on the big screen – this is one of the most important aspects of great film festivals. This year’s key retrospective is a tribute to the movies of the Japanese master Yasuzô Masumura. Most have probably never heard of this filmmaker or seen his movies before, and I admittedly only learned about him from the festival itself. I was lucky to catch one of the 11 films they showed, called Kisses (from 1957), and it was splendid. Of course, as soon as it was over I checked the schedule to see if I could catch any more of Masumura’s films before leaving, alas, there was no way to fit them in. In the past I’ve watched some Czech classics on the big screen and it’s always a delight. It’s a refreshing experience to watch old films this way with an entranced audience.

There’s only so much I can write in a post like this before I start to sound too arrogant. Above all else, if you love film festivals, you have to book a trip to KVIFF one year and experience it for yourself… As long as it’s possible, I’ll continue to return. It feels so surreal, escaping from my apartment to visit this cute spa town to watch some excellent films every summer. It’s an enriching experience that feels vital to my yearly routine nowadays, reaffirming why I love doing this (talking about movies for a living) and reminding me why I am still so addicted to film festivals. Even if the seats suck, even if it’s hard to get good vegan food in Karlovy Vary, it’s still worth it. The films matter, the audiences matter, the festival matters. Cinema still matters. And it still has the power to pull us into unforgettable stories, to bring us all together, to teach us about the world, and different cultures, different perspectives. KVIFF is a testament to the true potential of festivals and how important they are in the world of cinema. For more info or to view their line-up, visit kviff.com.

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Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or wraps up vintage year for women in Cannes

Justine Triet won a richly deserved Palme d’Or on Saturday for her French Alps courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall”, becoming only the third female director to win cinema’s most prestigious prize. But it was a bittersweet win for the home country’s government, whose “repression” of pension protests she blasted in her acceptance speech.

Triet’s award capped a thrilling contest that saw a record seven female directors vie for the Palme d’Or, which only two women had previously won – Jane Campion in 1993 and Julia Ducournau in 2021. The latter was on this year’s jury, led by the 2022 Palme d’Or laureate Ruben Östlund.

Triet was presented the Palme by Jane Fonda, who recalled coming to Cannes in 1963 when, she said, there were no female filmmakers competing “and it never even occurred to us that there was something wrong with that.” 

A gripping psychothriller, “Anatomy of a Fall” stars Sandra Hüller as a successful writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death. It was co-written by Triet’s partner Arthur Harari, who caused a stir in Cannes two years ago with his epic war movie “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle”.

Le palmarès du festival de Cannes 2023.
Le palmarès du festival de Cannes 2023. AFP – LOIC VENANCE

 

Accepting the award, Triet took aim at the government of French President Emmanuel Macron in a fiery message to the audience of films stars and industry professionals gathered inside Cannes’ Grand Théâtre Lumière – and the millions watching live on television. 

“The country suffered from historic protests over the reform of the pension system,” she said of the protest movement that has roiled France through much of this year. “These protests were denied, repressed in a shocking way.”

She added: “The commercialisation of culture that this neoliberal government supports is in the process of breaking France’s cultural exception, without which I wouldn’t be here today.”

That did not go down well with the country’s culture minister, Rima Abdul Malak, who promptly tweeted her “dismay” at Triet’s words. 

Demonstrations were banned from the area around the Palais des Festivals this year, though that did not stop French unions from staging several protests nearby – including a rare rally outside the iconic Carlton, the Riviera town’s most famous palace hotel.

Chilling Auschwitz drama takes ‘Grand Prix’ award

The Palme d’Or competition saw Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest”, also starring Hüller, take the second-place Grand Prix award. A chilling look at the idyllic family life of a German officer stationed at the Nazi death camp, it is based on the eponymous novel by Martin Amis, whose death was announced just days after the Cannes premiere.

Finlands Aki Kaurismaki completed the podium by taking the third-place Jury Prize for his Helsinki-set deadpan comedy “Fallen Leaves”, a favourite of festivalgoers.


Among the other awards, French director Tran Anh Hung won the prestigious Best Director honour for his lush “The Pot-au-Feu” (La Passion de Dodin-Bouffant), a tale of middle-age love and culinary delight, reuniting former real-life partners Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel. The surprise award comes exactly half a century after the ultimate arthouse food-porn movie, Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe”, nearly caused a riot on the Croisette.

Japan’s Sakamoto Yuji took Best Screenplay for “Monster”, the latest exploration of dysfunctional families by the 2018 Palme d’Or laureate Hirokazu Kore-eda. That film also bagged the unofficial Queer Palm, an honour bestowed by journalists for the festival’s strongest LGBTQ-themed film. 

Fellow Japanese Koji Yakusho won the Best Actor award for his turn as a Tokyo toilet cleaner in Wim Wenders’ gentle gem “Perfect Days”, while Best Actress went to Merve Dizdar for her part in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s slow-burner “About Dry Grasses”, a school drama about a teacher whose career is imperilled by a sexual abuse charge, set in western Anatolia

“I understand what it’s like to be a woman in this area of the country,” said Dizdar as she accepted the award. “I would like to dedicate this prize to all the women who are fighting to exist and overcome difficulties in this world and to retrain hope.”

Merve Dizdar, winner of the Best Actress award for her turn in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's "About Dry Grasses".
Merve Dizdar, winner of the Best Actress award for her turn in Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses”. © Vianney Le Caer, Invision, AP

Hers was one of several powerful female characters that made this a vintage year for women – on either side of the camera.

Stars, controversies and a Tarantino masterclass

The 76th Cannes Film Festival witnessed a number of modest breakthroughs for the world’s premier movie gathering, most notably in the number of women directors and the abundance of African films on display, many of them by newcomers to the festival circuit.

The stifling burden of patriarchal oppression underpinned two ground-breaking competition entries from Senegal and Tunisia. One was Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s “Banel & Adama”, a tale of frustrated love with echoes of Romeo and Juliet. The other was Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters” (“Les Filles d’Olfa”), an experimental docu-drama based on the real story of a family ripped apart by the the onset of jihadist militancy.

For all the talk of a welcome shift towards greater diversity, this year’s edition also featured an impressive array of old-guard veterans, from 80-year-old Martin Scorsese to 86-year-old Ken Loach, who enjoyed a record 15th shot at the Palme d’Or with what was in all likelihood his final film.

Scorsese provided one of the festival’s red-carpet highlights with his “Killers of the Flower Moon”, starring fellow travellers Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio in a grim Western that exhumed a dark chapter in America’s past. It was one of several period dramas to screen in Cannes, bringing to the fore the characters (mainly women) who were left out of the history books.

Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet.
Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet. © AFP (Loïc Venance)

 

The festival’s journey into the past began with Maïwenn’s curtain-raiser “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that generated plenty of controversy.

Brazil’s Karim Aïnouz paid tribute to the resilience of Catherine Parr in his thrilling “Firebrand”, starring Alicia Vikander as the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, though it was unfortunate to see his heroine upstaged by an uproarious Jude Law as the paranoid and bloodthirsty English king.

Another period drama that was widely acclaimed – but left without a prize – was Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped”, the harrowing tale of a young Jew who was abducted by papal authorities on the eve of Italy’s independence.

Bellocchio was one of three Italian directors in the main competition, all of whom left empty-handed. Another was Alice Rohrwacher, whose absorbing “La Chimera” starred Josh O’Connor as an archaeologist-turned-tomb-raider.

Speaking of archaeologists, Harrison Ford revived his “Indiana Jones” character for one last crack of the whip. The 80-year-old Hollywood was visibly emotional as he picked up an honorary Palme d’Or for his long and distinguished career.

There was also time for a Quentin Tarantino masterclass, which saw the 1994 Palme d’Or laureate delight his many Riviera fans with a lengthy chat about his first steps as a movie buff and his taste for violence in films – provided no animals get hurt.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde



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Cannes serves up a parade of ageing maestros and a Tarantino masterclass

From our special correspondent in Cannes – The final stretch of the world’s premier film festival has seen Cannes roll out the red carpet for a cavalcade of veteran auteurs, including two-time Palme d’Or laureate Ken Loach, past winners Wim Wenders and Nanni Moretti, and fellow Italian Marco Bellocchio, whose magnificent “Kidnapped” joined the list of frontrunners for this year’s top award. Meanwhile, the 1994 laureate Quentin Tarantino delighted his Riviera fans with a lengthy chat about his taste for violence in movies – provided no animals get hurt.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival has witnessed a number of modest breakthroughs for the world’s premier movie gathering, most notably in the abundance of African films on display and the number of women directors competing for the coveted Palme d’Or.

Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher wrapped up that contest on Friday with her latest folk tale “La Chimera”, about Italian tomb raiders who hunt ancient graves to find artefacts to sell. It followed the premiere of French director Catherine Breillat’s new erotic thriller “Last Summer”, centred on the fallout from a woman’s relationship with her stepson.

But for all the talk of a welcome shift towards greater diversity, this year’s edition has also featured an impressive array of old-guard veterans, from 80-year-old Martin Scorsese to 86-year-old Loach, who is having a record 15th shot at the Palme d’Or.

 


 

The veteran Briton first won at Cannes in 2006 for his Irish civil war drama “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”, before repeating the feat 10 years later with “I, Daniel Blake”. His latest entry “The Old Oak”, which he has described as his last, is about an English pub struggling to survive amid tensions caused by the arrival of Syrian refugees.

Other silver foxes this year included 77-year-old Wim Wenders, the 1984 Palme laureate for “Paris, Texas”, whose “Perfect Days” – about a Tokyo toilet cleaner – was widely hailed as a gem. Critics, however, were distinctly harsher with another festival darling, Moretti, whose “A Brighter Tomorrow” was described by some as a dud.

Hidden histories

Outside the main competition, the revered Spanish director Victor Erice made his long-awaited return to Cannes at 82 with the highly rated “Close Your Eyes”, a meditation on memory and ageing, while fellow octogenarian Martin Scorsese provided one of the festival’s red-carpet highlights with his “Killers of the Flower Moon”, starring fellow travellers Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio.

A grim Western, Scorsese’s movie exhumed a dark chapter in America’s past, focusing on serial murders among the oil-rich Osage tribe in the early 20th century. It was one of several period dramas to screen in Cannes this year – some shedding light on little-known episodes from history, others bringing to the fore the characters (mainly women) who were left out of the history books.

 

Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet.
Encore in Cannes: Leonardo Di Caprio, Martin Scorsese & Robert de Niro on the red carpet. © AFP (Loïc Venance)

 

The festival’s journey into the past began with Maïwenn’s curtain-raiser “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that generated plenty of controversy.

Brazil’s Karim Aïnouz paid tribute to the resilience of Catherine Parr in his thrilling “Firebrand”, starring Alicia Vikander as the last of Henry VIII’s six wives, though it was unfortunate to see his heroine upstaged by an uproarious Jude Law as the paranoid and bloodthirsty English king.

Two other period dramas caused a stir at the Riviera film gathering, joining the frontrunners in this year’s race for the Palme d’Or. One was Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz-set “The Zone of Interest”, a chilling look at the idyllic family life of a German officer stationed at the Nazi death camp. The other was Marco Bellocchio’s “Kidnapped”, the harrowing tale of a young Jew who was abducted by papal authorities in the 1850s, on the eve of Italy’s independence.

A sinister Vatican tale

“Kidnapped” is based on the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a 6-year-old Jewish boy from Bologna who was taken from his parents and raised in the Catholic faith on the grounds that his maid had baptised him in secret. His appalling story, which eventually became a cause célèbre of the liberal camp in the nascent Italian state, was far from isolated.

Historians have documented numerous cases of forceful conversions of Jewish children, a practice encouraged by widespread antisemitism in the Church. In Mortara’s case, the family’s strenuous efforts to recover their son eventually led to a national scandal and a trial, involving the pope himself in a rear-guard battle to uphold religious dogma and the Vatican’s privileges.

 


 

“The dislocation of the Papal States”, which Bologna was then part of, provides the backdrop to “Kidnapped”, turning the Mortara family’s private tragedy into a political tussle, Bellocchio told a press conference in Cannes. His film is also a deeply troubling study of child abuse, detailing how the young Edgardo’s extensive brainwashing led him to become a priest and a lifelong partisan of the Church.

The 83-year-old Italian director, whose 2002 Cannes entry “My Mother’s Smile” was banned in Church-owned Italian cinemas, insisted that his latest work was not an “anti-clerical” statement. At the festival presser he said it was “not a film against the pope or the Catholic Church, but against intolerance.”

Tarantino’s masterclass

A fixture of the Palme d’Or contest, Bellocchio is yet to win a prize in Cannes – aside from the career award he picked up two years ago for his lifetime achievements. His lack of success here stands in stark contrast with that of another Cannes stalwart, Quentin Tarantino, who showed up for a masterclass on Thursday before an ecstatic crowd of several hundred, packed inside the Théâtre de la Croisette.

The superstar director of “Pulp Fiction”, who won the Palme at his first attempt in 1994, is currently at work on what could be his final feature film. His Cannes talk came two months after the release of his book, “Cinema Speculation”, in which he recounts his first steps as a film buff and details his love of the movies.

Tarantino kicked off the talk with a surprise screening of John Flynn’s “Rolling Thunder”, an obscure movie about a Vietnam veteran pursuing the criminals who killed his family – which he introduced as “the greatest revenge flick of all time”. With its gun-blast violence, lyrical badmouth, and cathartic final bloodbath in a Mexican bordello, it had all the hallmarks of a Tarantino favourite.

 

The poster for Quentin Tarantino's masterclass at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes.
The poster for Quentin Tarantino’s masterclass at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. © David Rich

 

The screening of “Rolling Thunder” was a chance for the filmmaker to reflect on his approach to on-screen violence, a subject he touched on in his book, describing how his mother would take him to the movies as a young boy and let him watch violent films – as long as the violence was contextualised and “understood”.  

Morality should not dictate the aesthetics of a film, Tarantino argued at the Cannes talk. The most important thing is to “electrify the audience”, he added, quoting American director Don Siegel. He did, however, draw a red line at on-set violence against animals, noting that “killing animals for real in a film (…) has been done a lot in European and Asian films”. The taboo applied to insects too, he quipped, eliciting laughter from the audience.

“I’m not paying to see death for real. We’re here to pretend, which is why I can put up with all this violence,” he explained. “We’re just being silly, we’re just kids playing, it’s not real blood and nobody gets hurt.”

A final film?

Tarantino also asserted his preference for edgy and divisive directors, as well as those – like Flynn from “Rolling Thunder” – who never got the credit they deserved.

“Everyone loves Spielberg and Scorsese, there was no question of me joining the club of the most popular guys, that’s not my style!” he said, echoing a theme he mined in his book, in which he detailed his love for Brian De Palma’s more divisive movies. “Part of my love for De Palma came from the possibility of getting into trouble defending him, sometimes to the point of coming to blows,” he added.

 

Quentin Tarantino arrives for his masterclass in Cannes.
Quentin Tarantino arrives for his masterclass in Cannes. © Delphine Pincet

 

Touching on his last Cannes entry, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (2019), Tarantino said his primary motivation for making the film was to “avenge” Sharon Tate, the actress who was brutally murdered by members of the ‘Manson Family’ in the 1970s, by imagining an alternative ending to the tragedy.

He was distinctly less chatty when quizzed about his new project, the forthcoming film “The Movie Critic”, billed as another ode to cinema. “I’m tempted to give you some of the characters’ monologues right now. But I’m not going to do that, no, no,” he teased the audience. “Maybe if there were fewer cameras.”

Tarantino has repeatedly suggested his tenth feature film is likely to be his last, based on his belief that filmmakers only have a limited number of good films in them. Whether or not he quits as a director, the conversation about movies will go on, he added, wrapping up the talk with a simple, “To be continued”.

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Cannes spotlights Cameroonian film: ‘It’s high time African stories influence world cinema’

From our special correspondent in Cannes – The Cannes Film Festival delivered its first honours on Thursday with a historic prize for Malaysia’s “Tiger Stripes” while African movies continued to enjoy the Cannes spotlight with the screening of “Mambar Pierrette”, an intimate portrait of a free-spirited seamstress and single mother in Cameroon. Its director, Rosine Mbakam, sat for an interview with FRANCE 24. 

Issued on:

With the race for the Palme d’Or now in the final stretch ahead of Saturday’s closing ceremony, the 76th Cannes Film Festival made history on Thursday by rewarding Amanda Nell Eu’s playfully subversive debut feature, “Tiger Stripes” – the first movie by a female Malaysian director to screen at Cannes.   

coming-of-age drama about female puberty inspired by the body-horror genre, “Tiger Stripes” scooped the top award in the Critics’ Week sidebar, dedicated to first and second films. The jury was led by French director Audrey Diwan, whose abortion drama “Happening” won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival two years ago.  

 


 

The Malaysian filmmaker won plaudits in Cannes for her bold take on menstruation and the trauma endured by young girls ostracised by their communities. While the film is set in a rural and conservative environment, Eu told FRANCE 24 it carried a universal message. 

“There are so many parts of the world where women or young girls fear their own bodies or don’t have ownership of their bodies,” she said following the film’s premiere. “Telling the story of what happens to young girls is incredibly universal.” 

>> Read more: Malaysian tweens earn their ‘Tiger Stripes’ in Cannes body horror

Films about the challenges of adolescence also picked up the remaining prizes in the Critics’ Week segment. Belgian director Paloma Sermon-Daï won the runner-up Jury Award for “It’s Raining in the House”, which follows two siblings as they experience first love and learn to fend for themselves, while Serbia’s teenage sensation Jovan Ginic won the Revelation Award for his part in “Lost Country”, about a 15-year-old’s showdown with his mother – a senior official in the administration of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic. 

Mother courage in Douala 

In the festival’s other segments, Africa’s “Cannes Moment” continued with the screening of films from two countries that are seldom represented at the world’s leading movie gatherings. 

“Omen” (“Augure”), a promising debut feature by the Belgian-Congolese rapper Baloji, mined the themes of displacement and ostracism through a set of characters who have been rejected by their communities following accusations of witchcraft. Its screening in the Un Certain Regard sidebar marked the first time a film from the Democratic Republic of Congo premiered at Cannes. 

Encore in Cannes!
Encore in Cannes! © AFP

In the Directors’ Fortnight, which runs parallel to the main festival, Rosine Mbakam’s “Mambar Pierrette” painted an intimate portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress and single mother struggling to make ends meet against a backdrop of social hardship and the threat of floods.  

Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat stars as the titular character, a mother of three who works tirelessly at her sewing machine to provide for her children while customers and neighbours linger in her small shop, sharing their joys and disappointments in a deftly woven tapestry of communal life in the city of Douala. 

A remarkable debut feature based on the life of Mbakam’s seamstress cousin, “Mambar Pierrette” draws on the director’s experience of documentary filmmaking, which has previously explored the themes of kinship and migration to Europe. FRANCE 24 spoke to the filmmaker about her focus on character studies and her commitment to promoting African stories in the moviemaking industry.  


“Mambar Pierrette” is your first feature-length fiction film, although it is based on your cousin’s life. Where do you draw the line between documentary and fiction? 

I drew inspiration from Pierrette’s life to write the script, placing it at the very heart of the film. Once we started shooting, the other characters also added their input, bringing the screenplay closer to their own lives.  

Fiction never takes over. Its role is to add substance to the narrative and provide more context. In particular, the fictional element helps underscore the fact that Pierrette’s social predicament is not only a result of her small income, her husband’s irresponsibility or Cameroon’s politics. It is also derived from an enduring neo-colonialism that leaves swaths of the population in poverty. 

"Mambar Pierrette" director Rosine Mbakam (left) pictured with her cousin Pierrette Aboheu, the film's protagonist.
“Mambar Pierrette” director Rosine Mbakam (left) pictured with her cousin Pierrette Aboheu, the film’s protagonist. © David Rich

The fabric shop is at the heart of your film. What does it symbolise? 

My film tells the story of Pierrette, who is a seamstress in real life. Sewing embellishes, it brings people together, and her workshop is a place where people open up and share their secrets. I wanted to highlight the value of this work of dressmaking and transformation, which has all but vanished in the West. We shop, but we have lost this relationship with what we wear. 

The sewing room also represents gender relationships in Cameroon. The men remain in the entrance, at the door, while the women establish themselves in the workshop, inhabiting the space. These opposing stances signal the contrast between a new generation of women who are increasingly assertive and men who don’t accept this reality – and are therefore in a vulnerable situation. Pierrette doesn’t sew for women only, she works for everyone, her workspace excludes nobody. By keeping at a distance, the men seek to protect themselves and avoid questioning their position in society.

This year’s festival has witnessed a breakthrough for African films, carried by a new generation of female filmmakers, in particular. Does this give a particular significance to your presence in Cannes?   

It is indeed very important to me. We know how much Western cinema has influenced Africa and continues to do so. It is high time that our works travel in the opposite direction and influence world cinema – introducing new narratives, different ways of speaking French, and characters we are not accustomed to seeing. The West must get used to all of this. 

There is a lot happening in African cinema, but these productions are scarcely visible in Europe. Africa is awash with European and American films, but how many films make it out of Africa? That’s why our selection at the Cannes Film Festival is so important. This is the best way for our films to be seen in France, Italy or elsewhere. Without these festivals we cannot export our works. I’m immensely proud to see so many African movies here in Cannes this year. 

Mali’s Souleymane Cissé has spoken of a Western “contempt” for African films. What are your thoughts on the way the film industry looks at the continent? 

The film industry tends to follow preconceived ideas. The few African films that make it abroad are often filmed by Westerners who, in reality, are merely filming themselves. Such films often show Africa without African people. I was interested in filming Pierrette, but people often ask me why I didn’t show more of the neighbourhood in my film. I don’t blame them, because that’s what they are used to. They have this image of a continent blighted by poverty and they want to feed that image. But I’m not going to change my way of filming. Pierrette is the focus of my film; she dictates the rhythm, the narrative and the camera’s movements. 

People who attended the festival will go home with seven African films on their minds – not one or two, as is usually the case. This is huge. These stories will feed the West but also the imagination of young Africans, who will see their stories valued beyond their continent. 

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Malaysian tweens earn their ‘Tiger Stripes’ in Cannes coming-of-age body horror

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From our special correspondent in Cannes – A young girl’s experience of puberty gets the body-horror treatment in Amanda Nell Eu’s playfully rebellious “Tiger Stripes”, the first feature by a Malaysian female director to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. FRANCE 24 spoke to Eu about the making of the movie and its universal message.

A bold and stirring debut feature, “Tiger Stripes” offered an original take on the experience of menstrual metamorphosis – and a welcome distraction from the relentless rain that has dampened the mood here in Cannes.

Its Cannes screening, part of the Critics’ Week sidebar, was met with warm applause from a large and varied audience that included teenage pupils on a school outing.

One student said she saw a “universal message” in the film, noting that “difference isn’t always accepted – in France, too”. Another said it was important that male students saw it as well, though joking that “the boys in the class probably didn’t get the message”.

There are hardly any male characters in this female-centred movie, aside from a sweet but apathetic father and a charlatan guru who takes it upon himself to “drive the monster” out of the film’s menstruating protagonist – live on social media.

“Tiger Stripes” is powered by an exhilarating trio of TikTok-savvy first-time actresses whom Eu and her casting director initially reached out to on social media, owing to Covid-19 restrictions.

From left to right: Feisty trio Piqa, Deena Ezral and Zafreen Zairizal in Cannes for the premiere of "Tiger Stripes".
From left to right: Feisty trio Piqa, Deena Ezral and Zafreen Zairizal in Cannes for the premiere of “Tiger Stripes”. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

Set largely in the strict environment of a Muslim school for girls, it explores the wildly shifting dynamics at play between feisty 12-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) and her two best friends once she gets her period and starts experiencing other, frightening bodily changes that lead to her ostracisation.

Rejecting or taming the “monster” in Zaffan is as cruel as it is futile, the movie points out, in a defiant call to lift taboos on the female body and sexuality.


Can you talk us through the premise of your film and why you chose to draw on the monster genre?

I love to tell stories that are inspired by my own body and emotions, and that’s how it really started. I was thinking about what it was like when I was growing up, with puberty. It’s my weird sense of humour that to me puberty is like a body horror [film], because one night you look one way and then the next day you wake up and things have grown on you – and if you don’t know what’s happening to you it can be quite terrifying. I remember it was quite violent the way I rejected my changes and really didn’t want it to happen.

As a young girl you’re always told that you’re emotional, you’re hysterical. But you’re really going through a lot of things and sometimes you’re labelled as a monster. And so I thought, ‘Let me show a young girl who really does turn into a monster and what a monster really is’.

Why did you opt for a rural Malaysian setting?

I really wanted to tell a fairy tale and in that sense you never really know in what village or part of Malaysia it is. It’s always this idea of ‘once upon a time there was a young girl who lived far, far away’. Of course we have the jungle, society surrounded by wild nature, and I thought that was a nice idea for a fairy tale.

"Tiger Stripes" director Amanda Nell Eu.
“Tiger Stripes” director Amanda Nell Eu. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

What would you say is specifically Malaysian, or Southeast Asian, about your film, in terms of its setting, themes and influences?

There’s the idea that monsters, ghosts or spirits – we have many names for them – are very much part of our community, and they’re also very much linked to nature. We believe there are many spirits living in trees, in waterfalls, in rivers. That was very inspiring, because I absolutely love the power that nature has. And to have that represented in a young girl was very exciting.

Of course the folk tales, the monsters, even the prosthetics were an homage to Malaysian B-movies from the 1950s and ‘60s, by the Shaw Brothers in particular. Those movies were always very gnarly and strange, and that was definitely something that I wanted to show on-screen.

How much did the film’s young cast inform and shape your movie during filming?

A lot! Of course I wrote the script and had my ideas of how it was going to be, but you throw all that away when you start auditioning and meeting talents. I love that they would always surprise me with their own personalities, their own experiences. It was very important to be with them every step of the way, moving with them, because they have so much energy that they want to unleash.

It’s also very much part of my personality. I do like crazy colours and bizarre things, and my personality worked well with the girls’ energy. I’m so connected to the girls; we could share and open up on whatever we were feeling. When we watched the film together yesterday it was so emotional just looking at their faces.


 

There’s a lot of love and hate between the girls on-screen; was it important to show that sorority is not a given?

I grew up in all-girls schools, so I know the experience where you love and support your best friend but you also really hate her and there’s jealousy and miscommunication. They go hand in hand and I love exploring female friendships that way. That was the balance of the film: to show both love and jealousy, and differences, and how you overcome that and support each other.

Zaffan’s is a lonely journey but it was important to show that you’re not alone if you share your experiences and stand proud.

It’s a universal message?

Telling the story of what happens to young girls is incredibly universal. There are so many parts of the world where women or young girls fear their own bodies or don’t have ownership of their bodies. There [are] people in power always dictating what they’re supposed to look like, what they’re supposed to wear, what they’re allowed to do and how they’re supposed to behave. It’s not just in Malaysia, it’s all over the world.

How does it feel to be the first female director from Malaysia with a feature here in Cannes?

It’s a mixed feeling. I don’t want to be pinpointed as a woman and yet at the same time I represent that voice and I’m so happy that I get to have my crazy voice represented here, because we don’t have that many female directors back home. It has also been many years since a Malaysian film has been represented in Cannes and so I hope this will help pave the way for more films that make it to the international market.

 

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Cannes’s ‘essential workers’ stage Carlton protest as French pension battle hits festival

From our special correspondent in Cannes – A relentless downpour threw a wet blanket on the world’s premier film festival on Friday, but it did not stop Cannes’s “essential workers” from staging a protest outside the Riviera town’s most emblematic palace hotel – a prelude to a larger rally scheduled on Sunday.

France has been roiled by months of mass protests – the biggest in several decades – against a deeply unpopular pension overhaul that President Emmanuel Macron’s government rammed through parliament without a vote.

The protests, some of them violent, have prompted the local authorities in Cannes to order a ban on demonstrations within a broad perimeter around the Palais des Festivals and the town’s palm tree-lined boulevard, the Croisette.

Opponents of the reform, however, have warned that they won’t sit quietly during the festival – a prime showcase for France and one of the world’s most publicised events, luring visitors and media organisations from all corners of the world.

“Cannes isn’t just about glitter and bling. It’s about workers too, people without whom the festival wouldn’t even take place,” said Céline Petit, a local representative of the CGT trade union, which is spearheading the resistance against a reform Macron has already signed into law.

Having failed to overturn the protest ban in the courts, the CGT found a way around it, staging a small rally of hospitality workers on private grounds, just outside the front porch of Cannes’ best-known palace hotel, whose guests this year include the film icon and festival darling Martin Scorsese.

The protest took place a day after the world premiere of the fifth and final installment in the "Indiana Jones" saga.
The protest took place a day after the world premiere of the fifth and final installment in the “Indiana Jones” saga. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

The use of a private hotel meant the rally was technically allowed, on condition that the protesters – a mix of union representatives and workers from the hotel and catering industries – numbered no more than a few dozen.

Braving the rain, they unfurled a large banner that read, “No to pension reform”. The glitzy setting, with the entrance to the recently refurbished Carlton in the background, made up for the lack of numbers.

“Hotel staff don’t normally have a voice,” said Ange Romiti, a CGT member representing staff at the Carlton hotel. “This is our chance to get our message across when the eyes of the world are on Cannes.”

No porters, no festival

Macron’s flagship pension overhaul raises the country’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and stiffens requirements for a full pension, a move the government says is required to balance the books amid shifting demographics.

Unions, however, say the changes are profoundly unfair, primarily affecting women with discontinuous careers and low-skilled workers who start their careers early and have physically draining jobs – the very “essential workers” who were feted during the Covid pandemic.

Without the Carlton’s 680 staff, and the thousands more employed in the Riviera town’s crucial hospitality sector, “absolutely nothing would happen in Cannes”, said Romiti. “But cleaners, porters, waiters, cooks – they’re all exhausting jobs, it’s impossible to keep going until 64,” he added.

The government has also faced fierce criticism over the timing of its reform, coming on the heels of the pandemic and amid a crippling inflation crisis.

“It certainly wasn’t an opportune move, let alone a classy one,” said Romiti. “Neither was it democratic,” he added, referring to the government’s use of special executive powers to get around parliament, despite an overwhelming majority of the French rejecting the reform.

>> Read more: ‘Democracy at stake’: French protesters vent fury at Macron over pension push

“Our democracy has taken a hit,” said the union representative. “It’s important that people keep up the fight and remind the government that this is not okay.”

Job insecurity

The protesters gathered outside the Carlton said the government’s controversial pension push threatened to exacerbate structural problems in an industry that is already grappling with severe shortages.

“Young people are abandoning these professions,” said Romiti, pointing to hiring difficulties. “They’ll be even less inclined to do them if it means lifting mattresses and carrying heavy trays at 64.”

The film industry itself faces a haemorrhage of jobs, said Mathilde, a festival worker who showed up at the Carlton protest in solidarity with hospitality staff. She is a member of the Collectif des précaires des festivals de cinema, which has launched a campaign to raise awareness of growing job insecurity in the industry.

Changing with the times?
Changing with the times? © france24

Mathilde said recent government cuts to unemployment benefits had made life impossible for the seasonal workers on whom film festivals depend, while the latest pension overhaul will make it harder for workers with interrupted careers to qualify for a pension.

“It’s just not worth it to work in festivals any more, and festivals can’t cope without us,” she said.

It’s a message the CGT also put forward ahead of the festival as it threatened to cut power during the 12-day film extravaganza, as well as at Roland-Garros and the Formula One GP in Monaco, in protest at the pension reform. The union hasn’t pulled the plug on Cannes, so far, but the threat remains.

Hollywood walkout

Often described as a celebrity bubble removed from the social context around it, the Cannes Film Festival has a long and rich history of social and political activism – from its pre-war roots in the left-wing Front Populaire to the May 1968 unrest that saw the likes of Jean-Luc Godard pull the curtain (literally) on the festival.

A founding member of the festival, the CGT still has a seat on the administrative board. It has planned another, larger protest on Sunday, this time further away from the Croisette. It will also host a screening of the 1988 documentary “Amor, Mujeres y Flores” (Love, Women and Flowers), about the effects of pesticides on women working in Colombian plantations.

This year’s festival is unspooling against the backdrop of labour unrest on both sides of the Atlantic, with US screenwriters staging a rare walkout.

The Writers Guild of America is seeking better pay, new contracts for the streaming era and safeguards against the use of Artificial Intelligence in writing scripts – a demand Hollywood studios have rejected.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

The walkout has been a recurrent topic of discussion during the numerous press conferences in Cannes, with jury members throwing their weight behind the strike on the opening day of the festival.

“My wife is currently picketing with my 6-month-old, strapped to her chest,” said juror Paul Dano. “I will be there on the picket line when I get back home.”

On Thursday, Ethan Hawke wore a shirt that read “Pencils Down” during the presser that followed the screening of Pedro Almodovar’s 31-minute queer Western “Strange Way of Life”, which garnered rave reviews.

The next day, veteran actor and activist Sean Penn described the studios’ stance on AI as “a human obscenity” during a press conference for his new film, “Black Flies”, a gritty drama about New York paramedics directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.

“The first thing we should do in these conversations is change the Producers Guild and title them how they behave, which is the Bankers Guild,” he said. “It’s difficult for so many writers and so many people industry-wide to not be able to work at this time. I guess it’s going to soul-search itself and see what side toughs it out.”

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‘Indy’ mania grips Cannes for Harrison Ford’s last crack of the whip

A year after celebrating Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun” comeback, the Cannes Film Festival paid tribute to another beloved icon of the 1980s with the world premiere of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”, returning Harrison Ford to the French Riviera to the delight of fedora-sporting Indy fans lining the Croisette.

Donning Dr Jones’ iconic fedora, leather jacket, safari shirt and khaki trousers, 39-year-old Marco Vendramini of Italy looked every bit the part as he stood outside Cannes’ Palais des Festivals early on Thursday, patiently waiting for his childhood hero to show up on the red carpet later in the day.

A lawyer by trade and Indy fan at heart, Vendramini arrived in Cannes at 3am after a six-hour drive from his hometown of Padua. He napped for a few hours in a nearby carpark before hitting the Croisette in his Indy outfit, joining other early birds in a fast-growing queue of fans of the world’s best-known archaeologist.

It’s not the first time this Indy buff went out of his way to catch a glimpse of his favourite film star. In October 2021 he flew to Sicily after finding out that the crew were shooting scenes for the film in the picturesque town of Cefalu. The gamble paid off, as evidenced by a photograph of him posing with Ford and other Indy lookalikes.

 

Firstcomers waited up to 12 hours for a chance to see Harrison Ford up close on the red carpet.
Firstcomers waited up to 12 hours for a chance to see Harrison Ford up close on the red carpet. © Benjamin Dodman, FRANCE 24

 

“If I can get an autograph on this picture, it will make my day,” he said, holding up a large print of the photo from Cefalù. “If he takes me inside for the screening, it will be even better.”

In Maverick’s wake

The marquee red-carpet premiere at this year’s festival, James Mangold’s “Dial of Destiny” got the “Top Gun: Maverick” treatment with a special, out-of-competition gala screening at the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

Disney, which now owns the rights to the “Indiana Jones” franchise, is hoping the world’s glitziest film festival will serve as a springboard for its latest instalment – much as it set the stage for the “Top Gun” sequel’s blockbuster success.

At the very front of the queue outside the Palais, in the exact spot where she stood last year, Cannes fixture Martine said the “Top Gun” premiere – which saw the French air force honour Tom Cruise with a spectacular fly-past – ranked among the highlights of her decades-long love affair with the festival.

The peppy 79-year-old blonde, nicknamed “Sharon Stone” by her friends, also recalled the last time Ford showed up in Cannes, almost a decade ago for a screening of the “The Expendables”, riding a Soviet-era tank along with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other arthritic action heroes who had surely known better days.

“It was an extraordinary spectacle, the Hollywood show at its best,” she gasped with a sparkle in the eye. “Stallone insisted on greeting every one of us before stepping inside – I hope Ford does the same today.”

Honorary Palme

Just like Cruise last year, Ford was greeted with a thunderous standing ovation at Thursday’s gala premiere, and honoured with a special Palme d’Or for a long and distinguished career that saw him play some of the most iconic roles of the past 50 years, from Han Solo in the “Star Wars franchise” to Rick Deckard from “Blade Runner”.

 

Harrison Ford poses on the red carpet in Cannes ahead of Thursday's gala premiere.
Harrison Ford poses on the red carpet in Cannes ahead of Thursday’s gala premiere. © Joel C Ryan, AP

 

“I’m very touched. I’m very moved by this,” he told the audience, visibly emotional as he looked around the vast theatre. “They say when you’re about to die, you, you see your life flash before your eyes. I just saw my life before my eyes.”

At 80, he has described the fifth instalment in the “Indiana Jones” franchise as his final one

“Dial of Destiny” sees Dr Jones come out of retirement to help his goddaughter track down an ancient treasure, even as diehard Nazis – inevitably – get in the way. The film uses de-aging technologies to shave several decades off Ford in flashback scenes set during World War II.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays the goddaughter, joining a star-studded cast that includes Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Boyd Holbrook, John Rhys-Davies, Shaunette Renee Wilson and Toby Jones, to name but a few.

The franchise’s fifth instalment is the first one to be directed by someone other than Steven Spielberg, though the veteran director is still involved as an executive producer, along with George Lucas. John Williams, who has scored each “Indiana Jones” film since the original “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, also returned to compose the film’s score.

 


 

Released back in 1981, “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a triumph at the box office and scooped four Oscars. Its two sequels – “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989) – built a legend that has inspired theme parks, video games and a spin-off TV series about Indy’s youth.

Though widely panned by critics and fans alike, a fourth instalment released nearly two decades later – “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” – proved to be another commercial hit, bringing the combined box office takings to nearly two billion dollars.

‘Indy will end with Ford’

Coming on the heels of the “Star Wars” saga, Indy’s runaway success cemented Ford’s standing as the most profitable film star of the late-20th century, capping an extraordinary turnaround for a man whose long-stuttering career as an actor forced him to take up a day job as a carpenter – until a chance encounter with Lucas resulted in him landing Han Solo’s part.

Ford could easily have missed out on Indy’s part too, with Lucas initially opting to give Tom Selleck the role – until TV series “Magnum P.I.” got in the way. That’s how the adventuring archaeologist ended up with Ford’s iconic chin scar and roguish grin, rather than an iconic moustache.

To imagine another actor taking on the role, in the manner of the James Bond franchise, would be absurd, said Vendramini, back on the Croisette. “Indiana Jones is intimately – and exclusively – tied to Ford,” he explained. “The character will therefore end with Ford.”

That day surely isn’t far off. But for now, Cannes and the wider world of cinema are eagerly clinging on to the industry’s most iconic – and bankable – characters.

As one film critic observed after the “Top Gun” premiere last year, for a film industry battered by the Covid pandemic and gnawed by self-doubt, Maverick’s triumphant return was “as comforting as an old leather jacket”. So is Indy’s final crack of the whip.

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Scandal at the palace: Cannes 2023 kicks off with Johnny Depp’s royal comeback

The 76th Cannes Film Festival kicked off on Tuesday with the red-carpet premiere of French director Maïwenn’s historical drama “Jeanne du Barry”, about French king Louis XV’s scandalous relationship with a lowly courtesan, starring Johnny Depp as the monarch in a high-profile comeback that has generated plenty of controversy.

Scandal is a clichéd word in Cannes, commonly slapped onto just about anything that causes a stir on and off the screen.

There are the many sexist scandals, of course, such as the 2016 “Heelgate” controversy that saw women in flat shoes barred from the red carpet. That was followed a year later by the controversial airbrushing of Claudia Cardinale on the official poster for the 70th festival edition.

Naturally, the movies have sparked their fair share of clamour. Four years ago, Abdellatif Kechiche’s sexually-explicit, three-hour-long nightclub extravaganza “Mektoub my Love: Intermezzo” triggered a walkout by the lead actress during its gala premiere. The film has since vanished from the radars, still unreleased.

Other, older fracas are now part of Cannes folklore. They include the uproar that followed the unsimulated fellatio in Vincent Gallo’s “The Brown Bunny” (2003) or the gorging-to-death in Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe” (1973), which saw people spit on the director as he exited the screening and jury president Ingrid Bergman reportedly throw up.

Fifty years on, another Swede – two-time Palme d’Or laureate Ruben Ostlund – heads the jury of the festival’s 76th edition, which opened on Tuesday with the screening of Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry”, about an explosive scandal that roiled the court of Versailles in the 18th century.

It stars Johnny Depp as the French king Louis XV in his first role since his short-lived marriage with actress Amber Heard was raked over in lurid detail during a defamation trial in the United States.


 

Depp, 59, was feted by fans as he arrived at the Palais des Festivals, sporting a ponytail and shades. He spent several minutes schmoozing with the crowd, posing for selfies and signing autographs, before heading up the film world’s most famous red carpet for the gala premiere of Maïwenns curtain-raiser.

‘Impunity’

The film revolves around the king’s tumultuous relationship with his final mistress Jeanne du Barry, played by Maïwenn, a commoner and courtesan whose admission to the gilded palace of Versailles naturally causes an almighty scandal.

Depp signed up for the role of Louis XV before the start of a legal battle with his ex-wife involving bitter accusations of domestic violence that threatened to derail his career. He has since been axed from Harry Potter spin-off “Fantastic Beasts” following Heard’s abuse allegations, though he is a long way from being “cancelled”.   

The US star long beloved of the French has secured a record $20 million deal to remain the face of Dior fragrance, according to Variety last week. He is also set to direct Al Pacino in a biopic of artist Amedeo Modigliani later this year. Still, the decision to hand his comeback movie pride of place at Cannes has inevitably raised eyebrows.

In remarks to the press on Monday, Cannes director Thierry Frémaux defended the choice, praising Depp’s part in the film and saying he paid no attention to the trial. “To tell you the truth, in my life, I only have one rule, it’s the freedom of thinking, the freedom of speech and the freedom to act within a legal framework,” said Frémaux. “If Johnny Depp had been banned from acting in a film, or the film was banned, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

Johnny Depp pictured on the red carpet for the Cannes premiere of Maïwenn's "Jeanne du Barry".
Johnny Depp pictured on the red carpet for the Cannes premiere of Maïwenn’s “Jeanne du Barry”. © Joel C Ryan, AP

Although the film is playing out of competition, members of the Palme d’Or jury were also asked about Depp’s presence during their traditional opening press conference. Outspoken MeToo supporter Brie Larson, star of “Captain Marvel”, looked flustered as she took a question on the subject, curtly replying: “I don’t know how I feel about it”.

Depp’s fall from grace is not the only controversy surrounding “Jeanne du Barry”, whose director has been a critic of the MeToo movement, once stating: “I hope men will catcall me in the street for the rest of my life”.

In March, a well-known French journalist, Edwy Plenel of the investigative news website Mediapart, lodged a criminal complaint for assault against Maïwenn, accusing her of approaching him in a restaurant, grabbing him by the hair and spitting in his face.

Maïwenn has admitted the assault in an interview on French TV, without going into details. Plenel said it may have been motivated by articles about the rape allegations surrounding Maïwenn’s ex-husband and father of one of her children, director Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element”), whom she married aged 16.

Her Cannes curtain-raiser comes just days after prominent actress Adèle Haenel (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), a French icon of MeToo, announced she was giving up movie acting to “denounce the general complacency in our industry towards sexual abusers”. It prompted a group of 123 French film industry workers to denounce the festival in an open letter published by Liberation newspaper on Monday.

“By rolling out the red carpet to men and women who commit assaults, the festival demonstrates that violence in creative circles can be exercised with complete impunity,” read the article, whose signatories include Julie Gayet and Laure Calamy among other prominent actors.

Back to Versailles

Still only 47, Maïwenn already has a distinguished record at the world’s premier film shindig, having won the Jury Prize in 2011 with her breakthrough film “Polisse”. Four years later, her follow-up feature “My King” earned Emmanuelle Bercot a best actress award.

ENCORE!
ENCORE! © FRANCE 24

 

A grand costume affair shot on 35mm film in the Palace of Versailles, “Jeanne du Barry” signals a radical change of scale and style for the French filmmaker, whose $20 million movie was part-funded by Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Foundation. Its classicism is as rigid as the court protocol of Versailles, shirking the naturalism and improvisation that characterised her past work.

The film is also bizarrely chaste, limiting the famously libertine king’s last passionate love affair to playful giggles, adoring gazes and the odd kiss.

In a world where “gallantry” and rape are scarcely distinguishable, choosing to be a libertine “is one way of being a woman and also of being free”, says the voice-over narrator early on in the film, describing Jeanne du Barry as a “daughter of nothing, ready to do anything”.

Depp, who was previously married to French star Vanessa Paradis, gives a solid physical performance, though his dialogue is kept to short phrases that help disguise his American accent. Benjamin Lavernhe plays his stoic valet La Borde, while India Hair excels as the king’s daughter Adélaïde, hell-bent on expelling the “scandal” her father allowed into the royal palace.

There’s also Melvil Poupaud in the role of Jeanne’s earlier lover and pimp, the charming and ruthlessly self-serving Comte du Barry, though his and other parts remain underdeveloped in a film that is entirely absorbed with its titular character.

Maïwenn has described the film as the fulfilment of a 17-year dream. She said her interest in Jeanne du Barry came from watching Sofia Coppola’s Versailles-set “Marie Antoinette” (2006), in which Asia Argento played Louis XV’s mistress.

Like Coppola’s lush art album, “Jeanne du Barry” is set in a cocoon, a self-contained world of indulgence, lavish costumes and architectural wonder that shuts out the external world. But it lacks the boldness and inventiveness that powered “Marie Antoinette”.

It also lacks the deeply moving intimacy of Albert Serra’s haunting “The Death of Louis XIV” (2016), starring New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud in an absorbing, candle-lit account of the Sun King’s final days in the palace he built.

A witty, working-class woman hungry for culture and pleasure, Jeanne du Barry is undoubtedly a more interesting character than poor-little-rich-girl Marie-Antoinette. But while Maïwenn’s own fascination with Louis XV’s favourite mistress is all too obvious on the screen, the film doesn’t quite make it contagious.

Cannes Film Festival
Cannes Film Festival © Studio graphique France Médias Monde

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How the Mighty Fall: Berlinale is No Longer an A-List Festival Anymore | FirstShowing.net

How the Mighty Fall: Berlinale is No Longer an A-List Festival Anymore

by Alex Billington
March 7, 2023

Berlin Film Festival

This has been bothering me for the past few years, and it’s finally time to get this off my chest. I have been attending the Berlin Film Festival (known as “Berlinale” locally) for 10 years, it’s one of the oldest film festivals in the world, and I’m bummed out by how this fest has lost their way and . Berlinale is no longer an “A-list” festival, and should stop being considered one of “the most important film festivals in the world.” They’ve lost that title. They’ve lost their relevance, they’ve lost their importance, and they need to wake up and realize this is happening instead of go on pretending nothing is different. The 2023 edition of Berlinale was its 73rd, the festival has been around for a long time, but that doesn’t automatically make it A-list. Ever since they hired the most recent directors – executive director Mariette Rissenbeek & artistic director Carlo Chatrian starting with the 2020 edition – things have gotten much worse. The line-up has become extremely niche, more obscure, filled with mediocre-to-bad films (and a very limited selection of good ones), which is the key factor in their demise. If they wish to be relevant again, they need to completely rethink the festival.

I believe it is an important part of art analysis to criticize festivals – not just their line-up. However, this is considered a huge taboo within the film community – critics especially are afraid of being honest or critical about the festival experience. We can talk all day about the films, but don’t dare say anything bad about the festival itself – unless their ticketing website doesn’t work. I have been running FirstShowing for 17 years so far, and I have been attending festivals for 17 years as well. My first trip to Sundance was in January of 2007 (driving from Colorado / sleeping on my brother’s couch), my first trip to Cannes was in 2009, my first trip to TIFF was in 2007. I have spent almost 20 years of my life dedicated to traveling around this planet to the world’s greatest film festivals to watch world premieres of the world’s best films. I have seen the industry change first hand; evolving with the times, with good & bad decisions. I have participated in conversations, I have spoken with others in the community, and most agree – Berlinale is no longer an important or relevant festival. They are – and I would like to emphasize this – still a very successful big city festival and should be compared more accurately to the Rome, Zurich, Vienna, and London Film Festivals – not Cannes or Venice.

I also have a deep personal connection with this city and this fest. In 2014, I was invited by Fox Searchlight (as they were once known) to fly to Berlin to cover the press junket & world premiere of Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. We had to get a press badge to be able to attend the screening, so I also caught a few other screenings while I was in town. I wrote a glowing recap of my experience, raving about it so much that Berlinale invited me back again as a “guest” of the fest – offering me a comp hotel room. After returning for a few years, I fell in love with the city of Berlin. It was these trips to Berlin every February that convinced me to finally move to Berlin in 2016, leaving New York (I could not afford it on my blogger budget). Ever since, I’ve been attending Berlinale as a “local” and it’s different. Not only do I go home to my own apartment and sleep in my own bed every night, I also don’t have to spend any extra money to attend. Over the years, my excitement has faded watching so many bad or forgettable films. I keep wondering why they keep making bad picks. I see people spending money to come to Berlin and I want to tell them: don’t, it’s not worth it. But I always hold my tongue – many cinephiles do find good films at this festival and do enjoy coming here. I love Berlin and really, if they want to enjoy a trip to the city and catch some new films, by all means go for it.

Berlinale was struggling for years before the current leadership, too. German film critic Dieter Kosslick was running the festival from 2001 to 2019, and while they tried to bring some major films to the festival, they could never maintain any momentum. I remember being at Berlinale to cover the premieres of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2014), Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special (2016), James Mangold’s Logan (2017), Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (2018), Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow (2020). Nearly everything else at the fest in the last ~10 years has not gone to any major prominence. This German festival used to be a place for major works of cinema to premiere. Did you know all these films were major premieres at the Berlin Film Festival: the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski (in 1998 – after first premiering at Sundance), Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (in 2014), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia (in 2000 – after it already opened in the US), Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (in 2011 – after originally premiering in Iran), Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (in 2002 – after it already opened in Japan), Barry Levinson’s Rain Man (in 1989 – after it already opened in the US). This era is over, however, and Berlinale is now insistent on programming mostly bland, forgettable artsy films that rarely make an impact on cinema outside of their very small festival runs.

At the end of 2017, a powerful group of German filmmakers published an open letter in German newspaper Der Speigel (read it here) criticizing Kosslick and his leadership. They were worried the fest was losing its prominence and its reputation was dwindling. In their letter, they stated they wanted to find new leadership that could “lead the festival into the future on an equal footing with Cannes and Venice.” Sadly, they failed to achieve this. Under the current leadership, the festival has faded even more, year after year burying itself with its selection of niche cinema rather than making ambitious picks. They hired the wrong directors. I would be very curious to talk to any of these German filmmakers (a list including Maren Ade, Fatih Akin, Ulrich Köhler, Volker Schlöndorff, Christian Petzold, Franz Müller, Margarethe von Trotta, Julia von Heinz, Christian Wagner) nowadays and ask if they feel if the festival has improved. The sad thing is that Berlinale was still somewhat meaningful and relevant when it was run by Kosslick, now they have drifted further from any importance. Among the many reasons they didn’t gain any new ground is a refusal to change anything regarding the fundamental structure or timing of the film festival. The various categories at the fest make no sense, and hosting the festival in February is no longer a good idea – but I’ll get into this issue more later on.

Most of the problems that Berlinale had, still exist with its current directors – Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian. They are wrong for this festival and it was a mistake to hire them. I sincerely hope that they do not extend their contracts, as it will only doom this festival further into irrelevance. Get them out… jetzt! Carlo Chatrian comes from the Locarno Film Festival, located in Switzerland – I’ve been once before in 2014. The Locarno and Rotterdam Film Festivals are both outstanding festivals within the world of cinema, but they’re not right for most people. They show extremely artsy, super strange, very weird, mostly experimental films. They are niche festivals for niche cinema lovers. They are minor in the grand scheme of things. It just so happens that the film critics that love these niche films also work for mainstream outlets, so they rave about these extremely niche films in a way that makes it seem like they’re important. But most people won’t ever watch these films, and that’s totally fine. Let them run as these niche fests, let the films play to niche audiences, but it isn’t worth trying to argue and defend Locarno and Rotterdam as if they’re that important. Letting Chatrian run Berlinale the same as he ran Berlinale is turning it into an unimportant, niche festival.

Berlin Film Festival 2023

The best film at the 2023 edition of Berlinale was Past Lives, which already world premiered at Sundance a month before. The festival’s position in February is becoming a hindrance. They’re right behind Sundance, which is an A-list fest that gets all of the best films; and they’re just a few months before Cannes, with most filmmakers choosing to wait until Cannes (or later until TIFF / Telluride / Venice) rather than premiering too early in February. None of the Golden Bear winners from the last 5 years have gone to become a success outside of the film festival circuit. Stop referring to the Golden Bear as one of the big three prizes – it’s not that major. The top festivals in the world are: Sundance, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Toronto, Telluride, Venice, New York, Busan (in Korea). These are the only fests that can truly be considered A-list in 2023. There are tons of other great festivals that run each year – SXSW, AFI Fest, Sitges, Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Tromso, Tallinn Black Nights, Melbourne, San Sebastian, Santa Barbara, Seattle, Tokyo, IDFA, CPH:DOX, True/False, Marrakech – but none of them are as prominent as the A-listers. Neither is Berlinale anymore.

“Berlinale is a festival where films go to die,” one friend remarked. Another colleague who has covered the festival for more than 20 years and studies German cinema is also tired of the lack of quality and worthwhile films year-after-year. This review of a film in the competition this year includes a line that sums up the fest: “a glum piece which feels like a relic of a European cinema that is no longer really attuned to the times.” Perfectly said. While there are always a few good films that can be found at any festival, much of the line-up from 2020 onward has been annoyingly mediocre, if not downright bad. Why do they choose these films? Where do they even find them? And why are they so opposed to playing better films instead of trying to highlight so much “artsy” trash? Most film critics agree – I spoke to many during the festival this year and they all feel the selection is consistently lackluster, nothing really stands out, save for one or two gems. It has become disheartening to talk about Berlinale without addressing the elephant in the room: it’s just not a top festival anymore. Yes, I adore “foreign films“, innovative indies, and artsy cinema – but I also want to watch good films, no matter where they’re from. Experimental cinema isn’t as good as it used to be.

My main suggestion on how to make Berlinale “A-list” again: move the festival to June or July. And most importantly, get rid of Chatrian as soon as possible. Replace him with an ambitious leader who can focus on more than obscure, niche films that a few people will ever watch or enjoy. All film festivals go through good times and bad times, and Berlinale needs to admit: they are going through a bad time… The best Berlinale experience I’ve ever had was in 2021 during the pandemic. They canceled their in-person event in February, and only let critics and jury members watch online screeners. Then waited until the summer and hosted a series of screenings at a number of gorgeous, outdoor venues around Berlin. I bought tickets to see a few of my favorites again, and a few others I missed, and it was wonderful. (Here is my full recap of that summer event.) It would be so much better if Berlinale moved out of the snowy, cold February timeframe and instead played the best of Sundance & Cannes in June, showing better films that aren’t world premieres, because that is what is most important – getting all the great films. This is why the Around the World in 14 Films event in December is now Berlin’s best festival. They are the ones who show all the best films, not Berlinale.

I certainly expect some critic colleagues to get angry and tear me down for saying this. I also expect the fest to get upset. Though I do think it’s important that the festival reflect on their prominence. If cinephiles want to fly in and see some experimental films, that’s great. However, Berlinale needs to step back and recognize that they aren’t an A-list fest and instead position themselves next to Locarno and Rotterdam. The European Film Market (“EFM“) drives a lot of the buzz during Berlinale – many industry members fly in to schmooze, take meetings, go clubbing, sell films, and maybe catch one or two of the main festival’s selection. Beyond that, I don’t think it’s worth coming to the Berlin Film Festival – there is not much worth seeing there, most of it truly is uninspired and insignificant. Even the best films won’t be talked about outside of Berlinale. Did anyone see Alcarràs? What about Synonyms? Everyone knows showing Tar months after it opened in every other country and celebrating Steven Spielberg with a German premiere of The Fabelmans even though it’s already out on Blu-ray in the US was an obviously desperate attempt to feign some relevance. It won’t help. Until the fest improves, there is a German word that nicely describes the relevance of Berlinale now: egal.

Find more posts: Berlinale, Editorial

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