Cannes Diary #07: The French Dispatch, a Boomer, and a lot of "I liked it, but..."
Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at 9:15AM by Elisa Giudici
Three Floors (Nanni Moretti)
Cannes Film Festival has a color coded hierarchy. The lowest of the low are Yellow pass holders. With their slightly less powerless Blue cousins, they spend a lot of time (aka hours) in queue, hoping for a miracle. Pink journalists arrive later, having a high priority pass that lets them sleep a little more. At the top of journalist hierarchy, the aristocracy of pass holders: legendary Le Blanche, aka White pass holders. They can arrive at the last minute, waving their credentials to open every door.
The tales say so though I've never witnessed this with my own eyes. This year, with the (still not that reliable but definitively improved) ticketing system, things were a bit different. Even I, a humble yellow pass holder, was able to see almost every single movie on my list. Here are the four competition films I saw today...
Tre piani / Three Floors (Nanni Moretti)
COMPETITION FILM
Le Monde titled their movie review "How do you say 'OK Boomer' in Italian?" and that provocation is legit. Why Nanni, why this movie? One of our most beloved Italian directors arrives in Cannes with a conservative, problematic view of our society, via a microcosm of a condo in Italy. While watching I had the strong impression that the story came from a really different cultural background that had not translated well to Italy. Turns out that's true. The film is an adaptation a novel by the Israeli author Eshkol Nevo. Older colleagues who grew up considering Moretti a cultural and political hero were very really shocked by the way in which he portrays young people and women in the new film; the first group is perceived as dangerous and dumb, the latter as extremely week.
I've sensed some rigidity in Moretti's attitudes since the beloved Mia Madre (2015) so it was not a complete surprise for me and yet, my level of disappointment for this movie is so high. Even good actors such as Alba Rohrwacher give mediocre performances, some scenes are shot in such a fashion that they resemble bad soap operas (see the image up top). The worst from a very long list of complaints is how Moretti want us to side with male characters who are always imposing, always ready to tell to the women in their lives terrible things like "You have to choose between your son and your husband!". I am so annoyed that the only Italian film in the competition lineup is the worst I've screened so far.
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)
COMPETITION FILM
I was able to catch up with this buzzy movie at its very last screening. I would love to see it again to be sure but something was off for me the whole time. Let's start with the good things: Mia Hansen-Løve's direction is very impressive. She uses wide, fluid movements of camera, starting with the close-up of face and zooming out to see the surroundings and the facial expression of the person being spoken with and then the focus returns to the original character. This all happend without a cut, in a very naturalistic way. I absolutely loved the elegance of it. Another strong point is how the romantic bond between two lovers and parents, who also happened to be screenwriters, is portrayed. Hansen-Løve is able to catch small changes in their mood as artists working on different projects and as partners involved in a mature, long relationship. They are obviously in love but the distance between them changes with each scene.
The setting and the story within a story convinced me much less. Bergman is present more in the words of the protagonists than in the mood of the movie. The characters mock a tourist tour of the famous island where Ingmar Bergman lived but the movie itself felt touristic. Fårö Island is an evocative setting, for sure, but the screenplay doesn't make that much of it. Though maybe this is just me; I am not a Bergman connoisseur so perhaps I missed a lot?
The chemistry between Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie is great. They play the imaginary characters of the screenplay that Chris (Vicky Krieps) is writing but the whole meta-level portion of the movie felt disconnected. A lot of good ingredients are in this cocktail, but while shaking them together, I was left with a funny aftertaste.
Petrov's Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov)
COMPETITION FILM
I admit up front that at this point in the festival I am experiencing fatigue...but Petrov's Flu was never-ending! Serebrennikov's ambitious film starts as a fever dream fueled by both seasonal cold and a lot of vodka (even by Russian standards). It's full of hallucinations and incoherent fragments of very different stories. The problem for me was not how unclear the connections between these were at the beginning but how the director wanted to explain every scene later in small details. It's brilliant at times and full of energy but also off balance. I would have preferred a choice for either a feverish, non linear movie or a very analytical and precise one, not both in the same (very long) film. Even the ending credits roll on a long-planned sequence of a man running out of a casket trying to catching a bus.
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
COMPETITION FILM
I planned to close this very intense day with Wes Anderson because his cinema is always so entertaining and easy to be carried away by. At this point in what is now a long career is that his strongest assett is also his weakness: the fool proof system he uses to write and shoot every movie, the "Anderson Approach". You know what I'm referring to: the collection of recurring themes and actors, the love for little worlds that don't exist anymore with their rituals and inhabitans. And that's all before we get to the very personal visual style that makes you recognize a film belongs to him after 30 seconds or less of any random scene. Anderson's movies range from quite good to awesome and, even more impressive, he doesn't deliver bad movies. It's a fool proof system and yet is also a cage. There's a feeling of no risk, no gain.
The French Dispatch is an Andersonian take on a dying beautiful, artisanal world: Journalism (ouch). Divided in four episodes, it is visually stunning but a little inconsistent in quality. I really appreciated the second chapter about a criminal painter (Benicio Del Toro) and his prison guard and muse (Léa Seydoux), told by Tilda Swinton as the the stereotypical Tilda-ish character in an Anderson movie. Jeffrey Wright's episode was the weakest. Timothée Chalamet's episode confirms that no one is over his romantic, adventurous allure, even Wes Anderson who is a bit in love with Timothées look and attitude. The French Dispatch is a divertissement and I found this realization a little annoying. There is so much to say about journalism, especially right now. Using this profession as a theme to evoke nostalgia felt dismissive. The Anderson's movie I prefer are the ones like The Grand Budapest Hotel, in which romantic stories and amazing visuals uncover a strong message, sometimes a warning. I had hoped he had some reflections to share about this important topic. And, as pointed out on Twitter, it's weird that a love letter to journalism decided to cancel all press activities.
It's a little weird that 'The French Dispatch' is a love letter to journalism but Wes Anderson cancelled the film's press conference and isn't talking to any journalists out of #Cannes2021.
— Ramin Setoodeh (@RaminSetoodeh) July 12, 2021
Previously
Diary Entry #1 Annette
Diary Entry #2 Everything Went Fine, Onada, Yasha-ga-ike
Diary Entry #3 Worst Person in the World, Velvet Underground, Lingui, etc
Diary Entry #4 Benedetta, La Fracture, Mothering Sunday
Diary Entry #5 Flag Day, Compartment No 6, Mariner of the Mountains
Diary Entry #6 The Innocents, Drive My Car
Reader Comments (6)
You are absolutely right about Wes Anderson. He doesn't take risks, he plays it safe. Even Woody Allen sometimes thinks out of the box. For me he should be a painter, a book illustrator. His movies are beautiful and that's all.
These writeups are great!
I'm hearing BERGMAN ISLAND is nothing like a Bergman film which may be a problem or not for me. It sounds like it's almost a reaction against her ex, Olivier Assayas, who is, of course, much more beholden to "the master" something CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA and some of his other films demonstrates. The couple's relationship was literally falling apart as she was working on this film.
Maybe it's her way of saying I can make a film on "Bergman Island" and not have it be anything like a Bergman film. I'm free of daddy's influence and by extension the man I've been living with. In the trailer to BERGMAN ISLAND, someone says, "fuck Bergman," which might be more of a statement about Assayas than it about the so-called "Demon Director."
I've only seen The Son's Room which I think is a well-made family drama on grief but I don't understand why he's so lauded by the people at Cannes. Honestly.
@thevoid99
The Son's Room is surely the most famous (the one that won the Palm d'Or) but not the most representative. I think the most influential one in Italy are Dear Diary and Ecce Bombo.
Three Floors is disappointing but has two of my favorites,
Riccardo Scamarcio and Adriano Giannini. 💗💗