Jornal da Mostra
Cannes 2005 - Haneke with his invisible terror and, in addition, outstanding features from `Un certain regard` with visions from Mexico, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Burkina Faso
16/05/2005
The 28th Cannes Film Festival assigned "Cachê/ Hidden/ Oculto" for competition. This is a new film by disquieting Austrian film maker Michael Haneke, better known worldwide for his successful "A Professora de Piano/ The Piano Teacher", a film that was also first shown at Cannes.
"Oculto" is a well-elaborated film on the possibility of triggering terrible psychological disorders, unleashed by actions that are apparently simple. Haneke is a specialist in the art of precipitating a disturbance and shattering harmony in a conventional society that think in terms of buying social peace by simply paying lawful taxes to the state. We are analyzing the scars left over from old European colonialism.
In Haneke`s films, equilibrium is prone to vanish all too readily and seems to show how very fragile balance can be in the social game. And this will demand nerves of steel from spectators. Here is the new Haneke film promising a really exciting, thrilling, edgy game with a challenge that may be the greatest of all in terms of cinema - to make spectators keep their eyes glued to the screen.
Noone can imagine how the happiness of a French middle-class couple with a pre-teen-aged son can be shattered at one single blow. The first images of the film already show the attack that is to become more and more sophisticated over the course of the narrative. The images show a clandestine video camera set to focus on a fixed plan of the house, filmed from the street, for all of two hours. We spectators see only a few minutes of these apparently banal and senseless images. But for the couple (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), this is like a terrorist attack: it means they are being watched.
The game of hide-and-seek will gradually let us into the family secrets of the successful literary critic. Secrets about his childhood, with an adopted brother, Algerian by origin, who eventually finds himself back in the orphanage. The greatest conflict is in the crisis of conscience in a Europe of plenty, when confronted with the cultures that Europe dominated in colonial times. Those who are familiar with Haneke`s films will recognize the psychological sensation of a tourniquet twisted tighter and tighter mid unexpected situations. "Cachê", a co-production of France and Italy, Germany, and Austria has been designated not only as Michael Haneke`s finest, but also as one of the best films in the festival.
Some of the outstanding films from the `Un Certain Regard` selection:
"Sangre", by Mexican first-timer Amat Escalante, breaks into the intimacy of an unassuming couple from the outskirts of town, with day-to-day mechanical repetitions, at work, at home, at table, and in bed. Here, the extraordinary factor is that, through the couple, the film is able to focus on episodes of a tragedy we view as no more than banal news in the everyday press. Amat Escalante is a new film director with a promising career ahead in film making - undoubtedly so.
"Sulanga Enu Pinisa/ The Forsaken Land/ A Terra Abandonada", by Vimukthi Jayasundara is an impressive film - a revelation by a first-timer from Sri Lanka. Lost in time and space, a band of soldiers and civilians meet each other as though in an invisible war. All is bestial and absurdly surrealistic, even down to an instinctive search for sex and defense. Another film by a beginner with a promising career in film making.
"Nordeste", by Argentinian Juan Solanas, also a first-timer, shows Caroline Bouquet, beautiful as ever, living out the dilemma of an adopted mother traveling in up-country Argentina in search of a child. Through her foreign point of view, we are brought face to face with social injustice and overt poverty - and, also, with the well-known elusive solidarity.
"Delwendei/ Lève-tois et Marche/ Levanta e Vá", by Saint Pierre Yameogo from Burkina Faso, follows along the lines of an allegorical film from Africa that attributes worth to female emancipation and respect for women. The women are not submissive and marginalized under pretext of religious radicalism, but the film shows how they bear the brunt of ancient beliefs in witchcraft and evil spells within the prospects of a good harvest or, alternately, of a poor harvest. A film with all of the elements and clichés Europeans are want to view and feel for - at a distance.
For further information: www.festival-cannes.org
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