Apart from the official winners of this 75th edition of the Cannes Festival, the return to normality contest brought us a good handful of films that leave their mark from the surroundings of the coveted official competition. As is customary, some of the filmmakers of the moment told great stories from the fringes of the official programming, leaving a great residue, despite their inability to win prizes.
This is the case of the new film Mia Hansen-Løve which, after entering the competition in the previous edition with ‘Bergman Island’, was again presenting a film this time from the non-competitive platform of Directors’ Fortnightin which, however, it won the unofficial award from Europa Cinemas as the best film in its section.
Out of competition, in those new sections that proliferate every year as discards from the Official Selection, we found the best Rodrigo Sorogoyen presenting the world premiere of his brilliant new film ‘As Bestas’, which we will tell you about in another text, and also in that strange section this year called “Midnight Screenings” we enjoyed the craziest of current cinematography, the new proposal of the surrealist Quentin Dupeux.
‘A beautiful morning’ (Mia Hansen-Løve)
Mia Hansen-Løve continues her exploration of the human soul, of everyday stories and tales of small gestures within this coherent filmography that reflects the nature of relationships in our time and that throughout his career he draws the generational profile of the moment.
As if prolonging that vital search of previous works such as ‘El Porvenir’ (2016), the French filmmaker now investigates the aging process and degeneration as a natural evolution of life, leading to an inevitable progression from mourning to acceptance of the loss, often occurring in parallel with other equally important and decisive events in one’s transformation.
Starting from her own experience, Mia Hansen-Løve introduces us to a moment in the life of Sandra, a widowed mother who begins to assist the process of decline of her beloved father, a former university professor who is being consumed by an irreversible degenerative disease. little by little, destroying in its wake that intellectual identity that he had built during his life around literature and philosophy.
During this process of accepting the loss, Sandra will again find love, symbolically opening the door to that inner rebirth that makes its way in this period of transformation. A portentous and well-directed performance in which could be Léa Seydoux’s best performance to dateor in any case the most humane and empathetic.
A photograph of daily life that reaches inside with the exploration of one of the sensitive issues of the moment, exposed from the simplicity of the small conflicts of the daily. Without underlining or morals, ‘Un Beau Matin’ is a close story that has an emotional impact due to its recognizable character with which we could all empathize. beautiful and devastating.
‘Fumer fait tousser’ (Quentin Dupieux)
The always crazy absurdist filmmaker Quentin Dupieux is also presenting another of his magnificent bizarre films at this Cannes Film Festival, adding to a long list of geniuses from a most extravagant filmography.
‘Fumer Fait Tousser’literally smoking makes you cough, is a harebrained story of stories in which a group of power rangers style avenger superheroesends up telling the craziest scary stories around a bonfire, boy scout camp type.
After a melee fight against a terrifying rubber and papier-mâché monster, the famous anti-tobacco squad he escapes to a spiritual retreat as a team-building to prepare for their next fearsome mission: save planet Earth from extinction.
Absolutely funny and clever, Dupieux’s crazy imagination is not exhausted. Sustained, as usual, on the grossest of the fantastic comedies of splashes of viscera and spurts of blood in broad daylight, and supported by that strong visual and sound component of synthesizers and desaturated pastel colors, which usually characterizes his productions, The new Frenchman is undoubtedly among the best of his career.