TIFF 50: A Linklater Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

Nowadays, if you're not named Hong Sang-soo, it's rare for a director to release multiple features in the same year. Rarer still for these projects to land on the main competition of two of the big three European film festivals, even winning an award when all is said and done. Well, that was the case this year for Richard Linklater, who bowed Blue Moon at Berlin and then took Nouvelle Vague to Cannes. Now, as happens with various of those fests' juiciest prospects, they are also playing at TIFF, where I had the luck to experience them back to back, finishing the day with a good old-fashioned double feature. Unfortunately, it's an unbalanced pair formed by one of the most disposable follies in the director's career and a gem seemingly composed to be seen as a minor work, that nevertheless sings the song of a major achievement…

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TIFF '24: "Else" and "U Are the Universe" find Love in the Apocalypse

by Cláudio Alves

For a body horror nightmare, ELSE can be surprisingly beautiful.

It says something about the state of the world, or, at the very least, the collective mood, that the apocalypse is a prevalent concept among contemporary artists. At TIFF this year, several films tackled this fatalistic topic head-on, exploring cosmic dereliction through a litany of genres and registers, from high-budget passion projects to indie experiments. Last time, I broached the topic of Joshua Oppenheimer's divisive narrative feature debut, The End. Now, it's time for two other examples. There's Thibault Emin's feature-length adaptation of a pandemic short, Else. Secondly, an unexpected sci-fi proposition from Ukraine of all places, Pavlo Ostrikov's U Are the Universe. Both are love stories of sorts…

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A Very French Scandal

by Cláudio Alves

The César Awards ceremony happens tomorrow, with Anatomy of a Fall poised for a sweep befitting its status as an Oscar darling. For some, its victory will taste like justice after what many have decried as a scandalous snub. After all, despite its acclaim, Justine Triet's film wasn't selected to represent France in the Best International Film race. Instead, the selection committee went with Trần Anh Hùng's The Taste of Things, which competed against Anatomy in Cannes, losing the Palme d'Or but nabbing the Best Director prize. The decision generated much press, with people decrying it as undue punishment toward Triet, who criticized Emmanuel Macron's government in her Palme acceptance speech.

However, this perceived indignity has led to its own backlash. Hùng's film has been belittled nonstop, including by Triet on social media. It all culminated with the César nominations, where France's Oscar submission got three "below-the-line" nominations and nothing else…

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César Nominations: "L'Innocent" leads and David Fincher will receive the Honorary César

by Arnaud Trouvé

Louis Garrel & Noémi Merlant in "L'Innocent", the nomination leader

The 48th César awards have released their list of nominations, and guess what? Just like the Oscars, an oddball family comedy leads with 11 nominations, including nearly the same acting breakdown (1 lead, 2 Supporting Actress, 1 Supporting Actor). L'Innocent is nowhere near as eccentric as Everything Everywhere All at Once, but it's a pleasant heist movie and the first box-office hit for director Louis Garrel (who also stars, his biggest hits in the US have been Greta Gerwig's Little Women and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers).

I mentioned L'Innocent's box-office on purpose given that French cinema is having an existential crisis: for the first time in decades, no national production managed to crack our yearly top 10 box-office...

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Palme d'Or Champions: En francais, s'il vous plaît

by Cláudio Alves

Apologies for my absence in the past few weeks, dear readers. Two back-to-back festival makes up a daunting task, when it involves over fifty write-ups. Anyway, eager to jump back into The Film Experience. To ease the way a curious trifle. As I was browsing through Twitter, I came across a curious conundrum in the form of a new French poster for this year's Palme d'Or winner, and the title splashed across its badly Photoshopped self. While Ruben Östlund's latest is called Triangle of Sadness or a direct translation in nearly every territory, those French distributors had another idea. In the land where it won the Croisette's highest honor, the film is known as Sans Filtre…

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