Cannes at Home: Days 5 & 6 – Histories of Violence

by Cláudio Alves

Coralie Fargeat's THE SUBSTANCE is a body horror shocker.

Half of the Cannes Main Competition has screened, and it seems we're in a year of big swings and even bigger faceplants. Divisive titles aplenty, the most acclaimed films of the festival appear to be located in parallel sections rather than Thierry Frémaux's selection. Even so, Jia Zhangke's Caught by the Tides has confirmed itself as the critics' favorite, though that only extends to writers already fond of the director's oeuvre. The documentary-fiction hybrid made no new converts. Jacques Audiard dazzled audiences with the trans-themed Mexican musical Emilia Perez, and while some critics are ecstatic, others loathe the thing. Reactions are more pointedly adverse to Kirill Serebrennikov's Limonov biopic, while Coralie Fargeat's The Substance has elicited equal pans and praise. Some folks online are trying to characterize the body horror's critical divide as a battle of the sexes, but that ignores the work of various women who've applauded the picture. Still, it's a controversial one.

Since all these cineastes have filled their filmographies with shocking violence, that felt like a good unifying theme for this Cannes at Home program. So, let's delve into Jia's Ash is Purest White, Audiard's Dheepan, Serebrennikov's Petrov's Flu, and Fargeat's bloody Revenge…

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Cannes 2024: Coppola and Cronenberg in Competition

by Cláudio Alves

Early this morning, journalists congregated around Thierry Frémaux for the announcement of the 77th Cannes Film Festival Official Selection. The director shared titles from various sections, confirming some suspected rumors and setting the world of cinephilia abuzz. As ever, the main focus is on the Competition titles, as the next Palme d'Or may be among the films already announced. But of course, a project or two are usually added before the festivities start at the Croisette, so our champion may remain in mystery. Many predicted Audrey Diwan's Emmanuelle remake to be selected, for instance, but the Happening director was notoriously absent from today's dispatch.

In the past few years, The Film Experience has had two parallel coverages, and we hope to keep the tradition. There's Elisa Giudici on the ground, reviewing new films through her festival diary. And then there's my Cannes at Home project, focused on past projects by the competing auteurs. Let's go down the list…

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TIFF '23: "Not a Word" finds mother and son at the world's edge

by Cláudio Alves

It's always curious how shared themes and repeated motifs can spread through a film festival's program. At TIFF '23, motherhood is among the hottest topics, especially concerning the bonds and barriers between single mothers and their adolescent sons. Another more unexpected trend is how many titles enjoying their North American or World Premieres recall Todd Field's TÁR, as if that work had echoed a shape-shift sound through the art film scene. None of this means cineastes are copying each other or that festival programmers are indulging in redundancy. It's merely a thought-provoking coincidence that can lead the viewer down the road to comparison and offer new avenues of analysis. Amid the similarities, you may grow to treasure each project's specificity, their points of divergence.

Consider Hanna Antonina Wojcik-Slak's Not a Word, where a busy orchestra conductor raising her son alone is confronted with the boy's inherent unknowability…

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TIFF ’23: “Days of Happiness” goes down a familiar road

by Cláudio Alves

You first notice sounds – the gurgle of running water, then the chirps of distant birds. It’s symphony-like, played by an orchestra with no maestro, though it’s through such a person we come to experience it. She’s Emma, a promising young conductor whose life is on the precipice of unraveling and to whose subjectivity Chloé Robichaud ties her new film. While the character’s vocation, sensitive ear, and relationship with a female cellist will inevitably draw comparisons to TÁR, Days of Happiness differs significantly from Todd Field’s Volpi Cup champion—the biggest distinction residing in the pictures’ narrative trajectory. One is about a public downfall, the other a private ascent…

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TIFF ’23: In “Seagrass,” marriage is a fragile ecosystem

by Cláudio Alves

Down the Pacific coast, there’s a place that looks like heaven but is no safe haven. You reach it by boat, sailing over turquoise waves, the wind carrying hopes of healing and promises of solutions to problems that have none. First-time feature director Meredith Hama-Brown and cinematographer Norm Li capture the environment’s full spectrum of color in their new 1990s-set film Seagrass, rendering bleak material beautiful. Skin tones are sun-kissed, while the deepest shadows are cobalt blue. It’s like we’re seeing the shoreline through a painter’s eyes. We’re not.

Rather than the artist’s gaze, we experience a family’s troubled perspective. They’re two girls and their parents, bound to a couple’s retreat where they hope their marriage will find salvation…

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