Cannes Diary #8: Reshaping the world through voices or silence
Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 2:40PM by Elisa Giudici
TORI & LOKITA
Speak up for yourself and change the world. The problem is that sometimes that the most vulnerable people have no voice, enduring violence and betrayal in silence. Sometimes a forgotten language is found again. At other times silence is a radical choice made. Today, an immigrant story from the Dardennes, and a vivid true story from Agnieszka Smoczyńska, the director of The Lure...
TORI AND LOKITA by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (Belgium)
COMPETITION FILM
It takes approximately 30 seconds of footage to ascertain that the Dardenne brothers are directing. Their familiar handheld camera moves a little to catch a long, extreme closeup of the face of a young, scared young woman from Benin named Lokita. She is trying to explain to Social Services about her relationship to her younger brother Tori. At this point in their career, the Dardennes can do this kind of cinematic social commentary in their sleep. Halfway into Tori et Lokita I began to think of it as a sweeter version of Jacques Audiard’s Deephan. After its conclusion though, I'm not sure which is harshest.
Tori and Lokita are forced to deal with the byzantine immigration and asylum systems in Europe. The movie then becomes a J'accuse to European bureaucracies that pose so many challenges to migrants. The suspicious attitude of institutions and the continuous delays in issuing papers push migrants into the arms of criminal organizations. Newcomers who can not obtain regular IDs and permissions to stay have to find illegal ways to build a new life in Europe.
Some critics say this is a lazy, only slightly different movie a-la-Dardenne. I beg to differ. This time the Dardennes have made a clear effort to place the emotional tale of a brother and a sister trying to survive side by side with a treatise on how illegal migration provides the labor force to the complex drug trade on the streets. While it might not be the most memorable Dardenne movie, Tori and Lokita is one of their angriest and most harsh. They're screaming in frustration, tired of trying to call for a better world. The movie is good, but I hope they’ll cut the extremely didactic ending in which a character basically summarizes the entire message. The Dardennes are not the first filmmakers to feel the urge to tell the audience exactly what the point of their movie is but they'd already gotten their message across.
THE SILENT TWINS by Agnieszka Smoczyńska (Poland/UK)
UN CERTAIN REGARD
While I haven't yet seen The Lure, I booked a ticket for Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s new movie out of curiosity since I have heard marvelous things about her. The Silent Twins is based on the true story of two sisters born in Barbados who move to the UK after their father gets a new assignment as an RAF pilot. Suddenly, without explanation, the previously normal siblings stop speaking to anyone. They speak only to each other when locked in their shared room. The sisters are played as children by Leah Mondesir-Simmonds and Eva-Arianna Baxterand and as adults by Letitia Wright (Black Panther) and Tamara Lawrence (Kindred). The movie starts when “the twinnies” June and Jennifer having already mastered a complex system of rules to walk, eat, and remain silent in perfect sync. Their stubbornness in wanting to live in a big world entire within their bedroom, apart from the rest of humanity, will have terrible consequences.
The premise suggests an extremely heavy drama, but Smoczyńska wisely implements a splash of vivacity and playfulness. She even incorporates stop motion animations to insert pieces of the vast biography the two girls write. The director avoids deciphering the mystery of their radical choices the way most (lesser) films based on "incredible but true!" stories wouid have. As a result she delivers a biopic that is truly emotionally vivid.
P.S. It surprised me a lot to see Universal and Focus Feature logos showing up at the beginning of the movie but maybe Silent Twins is a sort of dry run for a bigger, bolder, mainstream movie? After this, I won’t be at all surprised if Cannes places her in the main competition next time around.
NOSTALGIA by Mario Martone (Italy)
COMPETITION FILM
TheTV series "Boris", which began in 2007, has been continuously quoted on social media and in real life in Italy. The show was a cynical hilarious take on how cheaply Italian TV and movies are directed, produced, and acted in. During a scene within the third season, a comedian is pissed off because every audition he goes to ends the same with the role going to Pierfrancesco Favino. “Once there were roles for actors… now all are taken by Favino”. I couldn't help but quote this line under my breath while watching Mario Martone’s Nostalgia. It's true! Almost every interesting role in Italian cinema is played by either Favino or Toni Servillo.
You might have seen Pierfrancesco Favino in Hollywood movies like Rush or Angels & Demons but his most famous Italian role, internationally is arguably as the protagonist of The Traitor, Marco Bellocchio’s Cannes competition film and Italy's Oscar submission from 2019 for which he won Best Actor awards as well as a European Film Award nomination. Two Cannes editions later he is the absolute star in Martone’s Nostalgia, playing a 50-something man named Felice who is returning to Naples 40 years after having left the city without an explanation. Felice wants to meet his mother since he was only an 11-year-old boy when he ran away, going to Libano to work with his uncle. The reason behind his long absence from the city he loves will be the central mystery of Nostalgia. Unfortunately, the most impressive work Favino does here will be lost on non-Italian speakers. He masters the perfect accent of a native speaker who sounds a bit funny using his language after having almost forgotten it.
Since Martone is behind the camera, Nostalgia has enthusiastic narration about the beauty of Naples, a city full of hidden places, lovely people, and cultural undergrounds, almost suffocated by Camorra. I should add that I am not exactly a fan of Martone’s filmography. A good share of Italian arthouse movies are fixated on this kind of portrait of Rome and Naples, beautiful and dangerous cities to grow up in. I have to concede to Martone though that he is refreshing his style, focusing more on the multicultural soul of Rione Sanità’s neighborhood. Favino is the entire show here (Best Actor contender?) but watch out also for Francesco Di Leva, a rising star of “Neapolitan movies” and Martone's new muse.
more tomorrow
Day 1 Opening Night, Coupez!
Day 2 Tom Cruise, The Eight Mountains, Scarlet
Day 3 Armageddon Time, EO, Tchaivosky's Wife
Day 4 Corsage, Brother and Sister, When You Finish Saving the World
Day 5 3000 Years of Longing, RMN, Triangle of Sadness, Boy From Heaven
Day 6 Holy Spider, Men, Smoking Makes You Cough, Marcel!
Day 7 Decision to Leave, Crimes of the Future, Forever Young
Day 8 Silent Twins, Tori and Lokita, Nostalgia
Reader Comments (4)
I'll watch anything by the Dardenne Brothers. They always deliver. They just continue doing what they're doing and not going to change anything for anyone. I respect that. They're like AC/DC. They stick with what works.
I was in that first screening of The Silent Twins. While I acknowledge that some of the director's choices were daring, I found the film as a whole to be hamfisted and, at times, a laughably bad slog. Instead of transporting me to the girls' world, the playful directorial flourishes reduced the twins to an exhausting joke and left me grasping for real-world context. I really struggled to understand how some of the supporting characters coped. I spent the screening wondering why Focus Features picked this up and was legitimately shocked to read good reviews afterward.
After having some real problems with Young Ahmed, I did love Tori and Lokita. That film is dripping with tension and pathos.
(Duplicate post!)
I am really looking forward to Tori et Lokita. I too love the Dardennes and always find fascinating things in their films. Even their less-acclaimed films such s La Fille inconnue and Le jeune Ahmed interest me.
Nostalgia sounds good.
Thanks for all these reviews, Elisa!