Cannes at Home: Days 5 & 6 – Stories of Women

by Cláudio Alves

The festival is past its midpoint, and it's looking like this'll be a banner year. At least, that's the general tenor of the international coverage. The films of the moment offer a wide variety of cinematic approaches. Ramata-Toulaye Sy's debut feature Banel & Adama is being lauded for its rich visuals, while many have declared Todd Hayes's May December as a return to form with juicy acting across the board. And yet, one feels that the Cannes Best Actress frontrunner is neither Portman nor Moore, but Sandra Hüller, who dazzled viewers in Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall. Finally, Karim Aïnouz's first English-language feature Firebrand (starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law) is an outlier earning harsh reviews.

For this Cannes at Home chapter, we consider Our Lady of the Nile which is not directed by Sy, but she co-wrote the script with the director. Then, let's explore Haynes' first Moore movie Safe, Triet's main competition debut Sibyl, and Aïnouz's sensual Love for Sale. They all tell stories about the feminine experience, from imperiled schoolgirls to sexually liberated women…

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Cannes at Home: Day 4 – Once Upon a Time In...

by Cláudio Alves

The competition continues to heat up at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, with various contenders staking their claim on the Palme. It may be time for Nuri Bilge Ceylan to win his second. About Dry Grass is his seventh competition feature, including 2014's grand champion Winter Sleep. Then again, the critics have reached a consensus so far, with the favorite film being Jonathan Glazer's return to feature filmmaking after a decade-long pause, The Zone of Interest. Kaouther Ben Hania's follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Man Who Sold His Skin is less acclaimed but might yet prove an awards contender. Four Daughters is one of two documentaries in competition.

For this 'Cannes at Home' adventure, let's look at some of these directors' past successes, their best films according to yours. There's Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Glazer's Under the Skin, and Ben Hania's Beauty and the Dogs…

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Cannes at Home: Day 3 – A Cinema of Violence

by Cláudio Alves

The third day of the festival, second day of competition screeners, brought with it our first big Cannes stinker of the year, as well as a potential prize magnet. Starting with the catastrophe, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire's Black Flies, which stars Sean Penn, incurred the wrath of many a critic. In more positive news, Chinese documentarian Wang Bing presented the first part of a tetralogy project (Youth or Spring are the alternate English language titles), a three-hour-plus epic of observational cinema concerning the lives of young laborers in China's garment industry. Could this be a significant contender for end-of-the-festival honors?

For the Cannes at Home project, let's consider how these two auteurs have dedicated much of their careers to depicting violence – Sauvaire the brutality of war and combat, Wang the horrors of exploitation. With that in mind, our films for today (both available to stream) are Johnny Mad Dog and Bitter Money…

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Review: Virginie Efira is miraculous in "Other People's Children"

by Cláudio Alves

Watching Rebecca Zlotowski's Other People's Children, I was reminded of a discussion I once had with a professor. Despite the class focusing on theater, we talked about cinema and what stories deserve to have the camera pointed at them. In short, we debated the merits of dramatizing ordinary people. For me, there's plenty of interest in exploring individuals whose lives are entirely un-dramatic, maybe even anti-dramatic. Great art can be created by investigating the complexities of the simplest-seeming experiences. Just because something appears anodyne or common doesn't mean there aren't beguiling specificities or that we should be above it. My professor disagreed.

At the time, a great deal of the conversation centered around the films of Chantal Akerman, but Zlotowski's latest effort feels like an up-to-date if more conventional, example. Indeed, I imagine my former pedagogue would hate the thing if he ever set eyes on Other People's Children…

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The haunting beauty of "Kwaidan"

by Cláudio Alves

This month, in the Criterion Channel, there's a spotlight on Kwaidan, the Masaki Kobayashi classic that became the first significant example of Japanese horror to reach international audiences. You can find critic Grady Hendrix exploring the 1964 anthology on the streaming service, but that's far from the only reason you should check it out. Kwaidan collects four ghost stories that, together, form cinematic poetry of ravishing beauty. No wonder Kobayashi's film has entranced The Film Experience for years. Dancin' Dan once wrote about Kwaidan for the Oscar Horrors series, Nathaniel and Juan Carlos discussed it in podcast form, and I highlighted its costuming for an idealized Oscar ballot. 

Still, it's never a wrong time to re-consider Kwaidan, to get lost anew in its visual splendor...

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