Jornal da Mostra
Cannes 2004 - Third and fourth days Tarantino schools in Korea and Lucrecia Martel stands out in Argentina
17/05/2004
Still about Mondovino. The documentary by Jonathan Nossiter doesnt get out of my head. Its very clear in his denunciation the battle between archaic handicraft and the disastrous side of globalization. Its obvious the role of the American magazine Wine Spectator and its critics to favor harvests and European and Californian regions. Its shocking to notice that the North American politics against France, for not having supported their war politics against Iraq, provokes retaliations, driving away the attention of its consumers and tourists for the discoveryof Toscana region and its wines, unexpectedly elected number one by the same magazine.
On the other hand, we missed the 8:30 a.m. screening of Kusturicas film Life is a Miracle due to the hotel alarm clock mistake. Ive been told that its superb. I catch up later. And I missed the cinema lesson by Bergmans great actor, Max von Sydow. Cannes always provokes painful loss feelings. More than joyful discovery ones.
The 9th film - Bienvenue em Suisse, a comedy by the Swiss newcomer Lea Fazer. A very particular humor, with common sense appeal, meaning obvious, searches the French taste for the patriotic egocentrism. A question of heritage brings together two distant sides of a family, one living in Paris and the other in the French part of Switzerland, with all its clichés of honesty. This was the opening film of the section Un Certain Regard. Inappropriate.
The 10th film Five, by the Iranian Abbas Kiarostami (special screening). It is not a film in a wide sense. It is the junction of 5 pieces of video-installations, with settled shots on human movements, animals (ducks and dogs) and nature (floating stubs, moon reflection on the water) somewhere on Caspian Sea and that could be on any coast in the world. But it should not be transformed into a cinema masterpiece. The radicalization of Abbas Kiarostami, who has lately abandoned the so-called conventional cinema to defend the easiness of video, can work against himself. His master past may disappear in the imagination of new generations of film lovers.
The 11th film Moolaadé by the Senegalese Ousmane Senbèbe ( Un Certain Regard). A model of primitive African cinema, with performances almost theatrical, but of great importance especially for the ignorant population that doesnt abdicate to circumcise violently the poor defenseless girls. The film of educative merits follows the battle of a mother who gets revolted against this brutality.
The 12th film - Khâkastar-o-Khâk / Earth and Ashes by the French-Afghan newcomer Atiq Rahimi (in Un Certain Regard). The book is excellent (published in Brazil by Estações Liberdade), straight and simple, written by Rahimi himself. But the film is ambitious and puerile. It has marvelous images shot in Afghanistan, following the delirious of an old character and his grandson who travels to give a bad news to his son who works in a coal mine: his village has been destroyed by the bombing and his only small son who is left got deaf by the explosions. What happens then? The film doesnt give the same commotion of the book. Opportunist promotions like watch the film, read the book applies perfectly well in this case.
The 13th film Old Boy by the South Korean Park Chan Wook (Competition). There are some speculations that it is a special film for Tarantinos predilection president of the jury. Its an excellent film, a phenomenal puzzle inspired by Japanese trip cartoons, a box-office champion in his country. A violent man has been kidnapped for 15 years. When he leaves his captivity he becomes an enraged revenger who needs to find out the person that persecutes him in such a crude way. Like in a Tarantinos film, black humor constrains the spectators nerves and claustrophobic despair. Maybe the best film in the Korean modern cinema.
THE FOURTH DAY
Its possible to miss on Saturday morning the screening of Shrek 2, as therell be other opportunity to see it. What is impossible is to image a jury whose president is Tarantino, that works for Miramax, that works for Disney, to award this film produced by Dreamworks, the biggest rival of Disney animation studios.
We also missed the Argentinean Los Muertos by Lisandro Alonso who, according to Richard Peña, director of the New York Festival, is the best film that he has seen at the festival. Alonso, from what its heard, repeats the minimalist formula of his previous film La Libertad. It goes on the tolerance flow of new wave of Argentinean cinema.
The 14th film Tarnation by the American newcomer Jonathan Caouette (The Directors` Fortnight), with blessing and executive production of Gus van Sant. This is for sure the best film till now in Cannes. It comes from a great success at the last Cannes Festival. Its a documentary that has cost only US$ 218.32m, says the director that uses every existing images from his family and actor career album to sweep the past of a mother tragically maddened by a sequence of sexual violence in the childhood and a young girl surrounded by drugs and electric discharge treatment in psychiatric clinics. Caouette looks into the homosexual past of his personality, also from a problematic childhood. His cinematographic and musical influences are well respected, he reveals: Alejandro Jodorowsky, John Cassavetes, Lars von Trier, Marianne Faithful, Led Zeppelin, Mavis Staples e Sidney Lumet.
The 15th film - LOdore del Sangue by the Italian Mario Martone (The Directors` Fortnight). A love drama with a touch of pornography and a nightmare of sick possession. A couple free for love, each one having sex with whoever they feel like as long as its revealed in details what is done to the partner, it develops badly. The French-Italian couple of performers is respectable Fanny Ardant and Michele Placido. What they do and see the other doing is discomfort.
The 16th film The Heart is Deceitful... Above all Things by the Italian Asia Argento, daughter of veteran Dario Argento. A trip to the junkie inferno into the relationship of a mother and son, violent and cruel, inspired by J.T. Leroys autobiography, written in his youth. For strong nerves, as her fathers films.
The 17th film - Kontroll by the Hungarian newcomer Nimrod Antal ( Un Certain Regard section). Urban violence, deep down on the underground, the passengers and the controlling crew that show inefficiency when chasing a serial killer. The Hungarian cinema, with the end of the socialism, seems to recompose slowly on the focus of real characters and real life.
The 18th film - Non ti Muovere / Dont Move by the Italian Sergio Castellito (Un Certain Regard). Castellitto, also actor, performance with Penelope Cruz, as an old disturbed lover of a surgeon. The memories gush on the hospital corridors where the doctors daughter suffers a delicate surgery of a high risk of death. The actor and director Castellitto makes a powerful film about desire and pain.
The 19th film - La Ninã Santa/ The Holy Girl, by the notable Argentinean Lucrecia Martel, acclaimed in Cannes in 2001 for her debut film La Ciènaga. This second film, in the competition of the Festival, has Almodóvar brothers in the list of prestigious co-producers. Its power to induce the psychology of characters in situations of apparent normality is very strong. Her style in shooting is similar now to the Belgian brothers Dardenne shaking camera, close on faces sometimes disturbed, sometimes indifferent. It talks about a sexual molestation done by a doctor during his stay in a hotel while taking part of a congress. The good girl feels initiated by the doctors daringness who touches her buttocks in the middle of the street. The seduction game cant go further for the doctors prudence. But the teenagers disloyalties may provoke a moral tragedy. More than a film about sexual initiation, we are in front of a new exercise of style, full of mannerism, that will drive the film lovers delirious and those impatient enraged again.
Read more about the 57th Cannes Film Festival in the site www.festival-cannes.org
Translation into English: Hugo Casarini and Célio Faria ([email protected])
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