The New Classics: Two Days, One Night

by Michael Cusumano

I become invested in the struggles of Sandra in Two Days, One Night in a way I rarely do with other protagonists. 

The Dardenne’s unadorned style combined with the rawness of Marion Cotillard’s performance convince me completely of the reality of what’s unfolding, and I monitor Sandra like a friend for whom I am gravely concerned, inspecting every downward glance for hints of an impending crack up. When she teeters on the brink of a deep abyss after the film’s brutal first act, I can intuit that she is probably one more setback away from surrendering to her darkest impulses. The film doesn't need to say so...

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Cannes Winners 2019

With the 72nd Cannes Film Festival wrapped up in the beautiful south of France, it's time to see what the jury selected. Their winners were as such...

PALME D'OR

Bong Joon-ho receiving his Palme from Catherine Deneuve

PARASITE (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea)
Bong Joon-Ho already has major fans all over the world given the success of his Korean pictures like Memories of a Murder, The Host, and his internationally minded films Okja and Snowpiercer. Our favourite by him is definitely the mesmerizing Mother (2009). Can't wait to see this one! More on Parasite...

GRAND PRIX

ATLANTIQUE (Mati Diop, France/Senegal)
Diop, is as we've noted, the first black female director ever selected for the Cannes competition and her film walks away with the Grand Prix. That's quite a debut film experience...

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Cannes winds down. What's winning the Palme?

by Nathaniel R

Margot Robbie at Cannes for "Once Upon a Time in..."There are 21 titles competing for the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year. We've already talked about seven titles. Pedro Almodovar's Pain & Glory (Spain) is a potential prize winner (and a legit Oscar hopeful) and Mati Diop's Atlantique (France/Senegal), and Celine Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (France) could be the key films in ensuring prizes to female directors (something Cannes has historically been bad at) since they were both extremely well-received.

In addition to those three potential Palme d'Or or Best Director winners (Cannes most important prizes), Ladj Ly's contemporary French drama Les Misérables and Kleber Mendonça Filho's Brazilian oddity Bacurau are also threats for jury love.  Diao Yinan's The Wild Goose Lake and Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die got decent notices but we don't expect prizes there.  

With Cannes ending this weekend we've run out of time so here are quick notes on responses to the other 14 Competition titles and our predictions after the jump...

COMPETITION TITLES

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Cannes Competition Lineup

by Nathaniel R

This year's poster features Agnes Varda climbing on an assistant for a shot.The lineup for the 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled. 19 films will compete for the Palme d'Or and 16 films will compete in the secondary lineup Un Certain Regard (we'll get to those in a bit) though those numbers might expand should they add a couple more entries to either program. They usually do that after the official unveiling. Mexico's Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman) and Lebanon's Nadine Labaki (Capernaum) will preside over the Competition and Un Certain Regard juries, respectively. 

COMPETITION

These films are the ones gunning for the Palme d'Or. There are four female directors in the competition lineup and two black directors both of which are way more than usual at Cannes... 

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NYFF - The Unknown Girl

Here's Manuel reporting from the New York Film Festival with the latest from the Dardenne brothers.

The nameless girl at the center of the Dardenne brothers’ latest film is a black girl who, one Friday night near an expressway in Seraing, Belgium, rings the buzzer of a medical clinic. Doctor Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel) is both too tired to see yet another patient and too riled up from a disagreement with her intern Julien (Olivier Bonnaud) to let either of them respond to see why anyone would be buzzing at such a late hour. Neither thinks twice of it. “If it’d been an emergency they’d have rung twice,” she rationalizes. But the next day a police officer informs Dr. Davin that the girl has been found dead not too far from the clinic with no ID on her—her image on the clinic’s surveillance system the only clue they have to figure out what may have happened with her...

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