Cannes: The Critics Loved It But Will It Sell?
The jury went for movies about ordinary people battling life under dictatorships.
An investor had a dilemma at Cannes. He told me he wanted to back movies that could win a mainstream audience but get their lift-off by capturing hearts on the film festival circuit. Can critics' picks have mass appeal?
Film festival movies are passion projects by nature; they are niche and unusual. They explore thought provoking themes including bisexuality (The Chronology of Water) and BDSM (Pillion.) That typically doesn’t go down well with Milk Duds and Mountain Dew in the multiplexes of MAGAland.
This year’s festival opened with possibly the biggest line-up of celebrities outside of the Oscars’ red carpet: Nicole, Halle, Angelina, Scarlett, Dakota, Benecio, Leo, DeNiro, Denzel and Spike Lee to name a few. I sat behind a photo agency guy in the press room zooming in and out on celebrity teeth and had second thoughts on wanting to be rich and famous.
The festival whips a mix of highbrow films and mainstream movies into a tornado of publicity with something for all tastes. Shaggy haired Tom Cruise appeared in the Palais in a surprise Q&A interview with Mission Impossible 8, partner Christopher McQuarrie. The latest version of the predictable rock’em, sock’em action franchise will likely be part of one of the biggest Memorial Day weekends in movie history.
For Americans, the movies are about action and entertainment. We go to the movies to escape 12 hour work days, two weeks a year vacation policies and a “tariffying,” news cycle. Mission Impossible 8 will be a big hit, whether or not the story is strong; whether or not reviewers think it has too much Tom. Sometimes we just need comfort food. Other times we need to get out of our comfort zone - and that’s the mission of the Cannes jury.
This year’s crop of award winners could be collectively labeled, “life under dictators.” I watched the closing ceremony from the press room on Saturday night. There were clear favorites among the film reviewers I met, two of whom had been coming for more than 40 years. When Cate Blanchett announced that the Chopard crafted Palme D’Or had been awarded to an Iranian writer, director, Jafar Panahi, who’d been on hunger strike in prison in Iran just three years ago, the room erupted. “Let us join forces,” Panahi said. “No one should tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, or what we should or shouldn’t do.” (I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the Mullahs or to the festival's surprise ban on revealing dresses and long trains.)
Panahi’s movie, It Was Just an Accident, follows the victims of torture and their sometimes funny moral quandaries when they get a chance for revenge. The movie was picked up for distribution by Neon, which has a knack for finding the jewels at film festivals. It also bought “Anora,” which won at last year’s Cannes before heading to best picture victory at the Oscars.
Similarly, The Secret Agent, starring Wagner Moura, who played Pablo Escobar in Netflix’ Narcos, follows a tech executive who returns to a small town in Brazil in 1977 under military dictatorship. Moura and director Kleber Mendonca Filho both won awards.
Another movie, My Father’s Shadow won a special mention, it was Nigeria’s first film in competition. It follows two young brothers who barely know their father before he unexpectedly shows up one day. It is set in a fraught time in Nigerian politics just ahead of an election which might edge out the military.
Similarly, another winner, The President’s Cake follows children who have to find scarce ingredients to make Saddam Hussein a cake. In an interview with The New Arab, director Hasan Hadi recalled the difficulty of life under UN food sanctions in the nineties and the experience of blocking trauma. “We shouldn’t explore it from a political point of view. We should explore from personal points of view, from human points of view.” He picked up the audience award.
It’s perhaps no surprise that the jury related to the authoritarian regime theme. The festival itself was started in opposition to tyranny. When an Italian film festival awarded Hitler’s propagandist Leni Riefenstahl its top award for Olympia the French quit in disgust and with American support gave birth to Cannes in 1939 so that, “art would no longer be influenced by political maneuverings.”
On Saturday, as Aperol-soaked attendees limped to the finish line of this long event, a suspected act of sabotage cut power across Cannes and surrounding towns, leaving the Cannes Mayor David Lisnard fuming. Saturday morning hair salons were shuttered, restaurants were dark and there wasn’t a cappuccino to be had for miles. The locals drank beer instead.
But if the villains had thought they would silence the biggest celebration of film art in the world, they were wrong. Incredibly, the festival had a back-up power system and continued with barely a twitch and I got to my Wes Anderson screening of The Phoenician Scheme, without a hitch. Lacking basic creature comforts, this set of directors had transformed some of their darkest moments into something beautiful and now celebrated. They had found what they wanted to say and other people liked it. It’s unlikely that any of last night’s award winners were driven by potential financial rewards but the Cannes Film Festival just reestablished itself as both the start of awards season and a good hunting ground for investors looking for tomorrow’s hits.
I wrote for
this week in Cannes. You can catch-up on all the reviews by Gregg Kilday and my daily commentary here. If you want to read the winner’s list its here.A huge thank-you to the folks at Screen International for the warm welcome in their newsroom and an endless supply of snacks. You can check out their stellar year round film coverage here.
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