Last Sunday a curtain dropped on the 65th Cannes Film Festival, where 22 movies participated in the main competition. All of them were made by world-renowned and even iconic directors who repeatedly take part in this festival. No place was found here for debutants and women, which caused protests from local feminists yelling, “Long Live the Woman!” at a number of festival events.
Suffering “Love”
The Grand Jury was chaired by Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti. As you probably know, The Palm d’Or was awarded to the Austrian picture Love (“Amour”) by Michael Haneke who thus won this much-desired award for the second time in his career. A short time ago he took the top prize of Cannes for The White Ribbon. Haneke is also holder of Cannes’ Grand Prix for The Piano Teacher.
The new film features an elderly couple who tend for each other to their last days. Haneke is generous with physiological details, demonstrating the process of dying as it were through the microscope. The main parts were brilliantly acted by Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who had not done a film for the previous 14 years. This is what he said at Cannes: “It’s a long time that I’ve been out of cinematograph: I no longer want to play in movies, since I admire the theatre. I agreed only because this role was offered me by one of the world’s greatest film directors Haneke, but this will not be repeated.”
Emmanuelle Riva mentioned that she had already played in another film about dying. Haneke himself thus commented on this work: “Living to a certain age, each of us has to face the sufferings of his or her loved one, which are hard to endure. Reflecting on this fact, I set to work on this movie. I had no intention to reason about the place of old people in our society. I am happy that I made a simple film.”
The Prize to Best Director was presented to the most talented Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas for his Post Tenebras Lux (“Light after Darkness”).
Best Screenplay award was conferred upon the young Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who also has a Palm d’Or in his collection, for Beyond the Hills. The film’s two stars Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur were awarded the minor Palm d’Or as Best Actresses. Both made their debut in cinematograph. The scene is laid in one of the Romanian cloisters where the girls live for various reasons. For one of them the stay would end in death. Mungiu wrote his screenplay on the basis of real events that happened in Romania.
Best Actor’s award went to Mads Mikkelsen – probably the most popular actor of Denmark who starred in The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg. This movie was “inspired” by numerous media publications about the sexual abuse of children. Mikkelsen played the part of the teacher indicted for ostensible molestation of his young student girl with a powerful imagination. The girl’s relatives only exacerbate the child’s fantasies and an absolutely innocent man is accused of pedophilia.
The Angels’ Share – made by the classic of British cinema Ken Loach – was celebrated with a Jury Prize. Ken has again proved his commitment to burning social topics – this time he filmed a comedy about young whiskey dealers from Glasgow.
Grand Prix was awarded to the Italian film Reality by Matteo Garrone about a fish trader who went mad on the TV show and lost interest in his daily life and family. Moretti’s focus on his compatriot’s creativity is explicable, but the Jury could make a more weighted decision regarding this very significant award.
“For you, Katya”
It’s a shame that the Jury ignored the terrific movie Holy Motors by French director Leos Carax. Five years ago Carax attended the Spirit of Fire festival in the Russian city of Khanty-Mansiysk with his wife – the Russian actress Katya Golubeva. A short time ago Ekaterina passed away, having orphaned her two young children. The final frame with a portrait of Carax’s wife is accompanied by Russian words without an English caption: “For you, Katya.” Golubeva once starred in the Lithunian films made by her first husband Sharunas Bartas, was involved in the French movies alongside Bruno Dumont, Claire Denis and Carax, and in a few Russian films (in particular she played alongside Kirill Serebryanikov). Holy Motors is shrouded in funeral tonality, but this is a comedy of tragic absurdity or a drama reduced to a slapstick comedy show, depending on one’s individual perception.
Russian films
In the Fog by Sergei Loznitsa took the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize. This is the director’s second appearance at the Cannes Film Festival. Two years ago he shocked many with My Happiness – a powerful movie charged with plenty of energy. Born in Belarus, Sergei grew up in Kiev since he was six months old, where he earned his first degree in technology. Later he studied the filmmaking art at the Moscow VGIK; he was filming documentaries and working in Saint Petersburg. At the present time Sergei Loznitsa resides in Germany where he could raise money to make his new film after the eponymous story of Byelorussian writer Vasil Bykov. Belarus, Latvia, Netherlands and Russia also participated in the production.
The scene is laid in the Byelorussia of 1942, though the movie was actually filmed in Latvia on the territory of the former Vitebsk governorate, which has retained some of the village architecture reminiscent of Byelorussian one. It’s difficult nowadays to make films about WWII, given the dwindling ranks of its eyewitnesses and the fact that the generation of frontline film directors boasting firsthand experience have passed away almost completely. Yet Loznitsa did not make a film about the war. It was more important for him to talk about self-preservation under challenging circumstances, about the art of staying human in the inhuman situation where those around consider you a traitor only because you miraculously survived in German captivity.
The Russian film The Road to… by Taisia Igumentseva participated in the Cinefondation program where movies made by students of film schools were competing. She is a recent graduate of VGIK, the workshop of Alexei Uchitel, who now admits that he was not sure whether to enroll her or not, but recently defended her from other teachers of VGIK who criticized Taisia’s movie for obscene language. Taisia took the initiative to send her picture to the Cannes Festival some time after the deadline. Yet the selection committee liked her film, which was included in the program. As a result, Taisia received the first prize from the hands of Belgian director Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Besides the EUR 15,000 check, she was given the right of participation in the Cannes Festival with a feature-length film.
Cannes Classics
The Cannes Classics program showcased restored prints of classic films dating from different years, including Andrei Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train made in the USA. Andrei personally presented his masterpiece and later mounted the stage of Debussy Hall before the show of the movie made towards the jubilee of the Cannes Film Festival, along with his 16 colleagues – Nanni Moretti, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, brothers Dardenne, Claude Lelouch, David Cronenberg, and Roman Polanski.
A Kazakh screen adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment by Darezhan Omirbaev, named Student, was included in the Special Screenings program. Several years ago this filmmaker came up with a rather radical adaptation of Anna Karenina, having transported the heroine to our days and placed her on the train heading from Alma-Ata for Astana (Shuga). The scene of Prime and Punishment is also laid in modern-day Kazakhstan. Raskolnikov of the newest time murders a grocery store’s shop-assistant, rather than an old pawnbroker lady. When the salesman was approached by an old babushka who lacked some pennies to pay for oil, he rather rudely refused her a credit. And Sonya Marmeladova is a deaf-mute rather than a fallen woman, but a sufferer anyway. The film is made in Russian.
Svetlana Khokhryakova
