Cannes at Home: Day 10
Friday, July 16, 2021 at 10:17AM The 2021 Cannes Film Festival is on its last days, and almost all Competition titles have premiered. The latest were new films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Bruno Dumont and Nabil Ayouch. The Thai director's Memoria has already been met with raves by fans, though, as ever, his work continues to be unfit for all tastes. Some audiences aren't into slow-cinema. Dumont's France, however, got full-on boos, while Ayouch's Casablanca Beats was deemed a possible contender for the Palme d'Or. We'll know the jury's choices on Saturday. For now, let's indulge in cinematic reminiscence as we look back at these artist's previous triumphs. They include a poetic reverie complete with an interspecies sex scene, a funny serial killer movie, and a film that drove irate people to attack its cast…
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010)
The barrier separating humans and nature, reality and unreality, material life and the spirit world, is a porous membrane. At least, that's the case in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's cinema, and nowhere more so than in Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The Palme d'Or winning picture reduces that membrane to a blurred line, almost nonexistent. It happens as a man facing his mortality returns to a rural homeland. There, he meets a series of expected unexpecting sighs like the ghost of a wife, a son grown into a specter-like monkey, endless fragments of past lives, erstwhile existences that are both lost to time and unnervingly present. In some ways, what is gone is more actual than the now. The paradigm means that folklore becomes the gateway that allows both dimensions to commune. All that and this is probably Weerasethakul's most accessible film. Yes, even when one considers the fish-fucking.
Accessible being a relative word, of course. Uncle Boonmee is a strange creation, but its slow-cinema pacing distends the narrative oddity until it becomes dream-like. In such a milieu, oneirism warps logic out of its usual shape while still making internal sense. Weaved into the magical realism is a political verve that's sometimes difficult to parse out from other Weerasethakul films. Telling a story of cyclical rebirth, the director looks back to his country's troubled history, examining the tole of the anti-communist purges whose wounds haven't still scarred over. However, instead of concluding the reflection in a note of forlorn meditation, this film finds hope, whether in the form of reconstruction, reinvention, or simple perseverance. It's also beautiful, a sensory feast bursting at the seams with cinematic visions, gorgeous photography that expands the limits of imagination.
Streaming on Fandor. You can also rent it from many services.
LI'L QUINQUIN (2014)
After a career full of Bressonian minimalism and a taste for mirthless brutality, Bruno Dumont surprised his fans with a mighty departure from form. Regardless if one considers it film or TV, Li'l Quinquin is the director's first outright comedy. Naturally, as with all things Dumont, different audiences will get distinct experiences, and not all of them will agree with such categorizations. For some, this murder mystery will be nothing but a pageant of oddball tableaux, as devoid of laugh-inducing antics as the director's Flandres and Humanity. For others, Li'l Quinquin might well be the great comedy of the 2010s. Between cows stuffed with human body parts and much police incompetence, this is a mural that takes as much from Bosch as Caravaggio, full of hellish slaughter and grotesque visages. Add some notes of carnivalesque cinema à la Fellini, and you have a most curious object of Gallic absurdism. Who knew serial killer stories could be this much fun?
As farm animals are suspended to high heavens, Dumont finds humor in the proceedings with a strategy of po-faced apathy. Indeed, it's the juxtaposition of alienation and insanity that creates the director's oddball brand of comedy. The camera seems uninterested in forcing whimsy unto the proceedings, coldly staring from a distance. In that regard, it copies the gaze of the little boy who gives Lil' Quinquin its title, a sullen thing full of contempt and inexpressive disaffection. All that being said, this strange experiment doesn't revel in cruelty. Instead, it blossoms with compassion for every player, even those whose characters do horrible things. Part of that comes from the casting, a selection of non-actors who seem to have been picked for their funny faces first, acting prowess second. All their performances are thus oriented around a tenet of machine-like tics and laconic observations. It shouldn't work, but it does, amazingly so.
Streaming on Hoopla and Kanopy.
MUCH LOVED (2015)
Sex workers tend to be either dehumanized in media or victimized to the point they're no longer people with autonomy but symbols of abuse, bodies bound for exploitation. Yesterday, while remembering Sean Baker's Starlet, we already looked at a contemporary filmmaker willing to consider these professionals as complicated individuals, extending cinematic empathy towards them and showing respect too. Today, we're confronted with another such gem in the shape of Nabil Ayouch's Much Loved. The film concerns a group of Moroccan prostitutes – first a trio, then a quartet – working and living in Marrakech. Each of them is a full-rounded character, dealing with the stresses of day-to-day existence and the systemic issues within some parts of Moroccan society, Western intrusions, patriarchal oppression, and moral tensions birthed from religious hypocrisy. It can be heartbreaking at times, full of anxiety and the anticipation of pain.
Even so, the film doesn't overindulge in struggle, constantly finding space for contentment, joy, even pleasure. Ayouch's images skew towards realism, but they're not without nuance or the occasional suggestion of abstracting feeling. There's also his incredible ability with actors. Working with a cast of non-professionals or thespians trying out film for the first time, the director has encouraged a collection of superb characterizations, polyeidic marvels whose edges are sharpened rather than sanded down. Moreover, Much Loved is a courageous act of creation and social commentary, going against the values held in high regard by state authorities and the mainstream public. Many people who worked on the film have been harassed and persecuted, widely denounced for participating in a work they deemed obscene. It's not Much Loved that is obscene, but the people who've tried to destroy it.
Streaming on Netflix.
Do you think any of these directors have a chance at winning gold this weekend?
Reader Comments (2)
Funny, I think UNCLE BOONMEE is one of his less accessible films, especially compared to much more straightforward works such as BLISSFULLY YOURS and CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR. Anyway, super excited for the new one. Love Apichatpong!
Uncle Boonmee is a masterpiece. Definitely not what I expected it to be and I love it for being that film.