Cannes 74 says goodbye

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The passage of time is brutal, especially the more years accumulate. Waiting for it for so long, then you go through it, suffer through it, run through it and then... it ends. And it ends up with one: a couple more gray hairs, a flu and a desire to sleep for two days remain for sure. The stumble of the president of the jury, Mr Spike Lee, will not be forgotten, who didn’t apologize but did acknowledge his mistake. This event will be remembered for his strange, confusing and great special selection and other gems out there.


Here we go with the movies:


I was expecting a lot from A FELESÉGEM TÖRTÉNETE (THE STORY OF MY WIFE) by Hungarian director Ildikó ENYEDI. The first 40 minutes is where his love story starts with vigour and then the marine animal, taking everything different in this love story seen and told to the point of boredom.


By Tim Roth as the protagonist of a Mia HASEN-LØVE film about where Bergman lived: the mythical island Fårö. And yet, BERGMAN ISLAND will remain a tourism brochure, the kind that you throw away as soon as you receive it. 


THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD by Joachim TRIER deepens the indifference, if not the laughter, that hearing white people problems usually generates.


Highly anticipated THE FRENCH DISPATCH by Wes ANDERSON, here serves to highlight that beauty is not always good per se.


TRE PIANI by Nanni MORETTI left me waiting for the coarse salt that he knew how to put into everyday dramas. Anyway, here I am still in the Nanni stamina.

Sean PENN fell again. This time the banana peel was FLAG DAY. However, when do we go on a field trip to Minnesota?


DRIVE MY CAR confirms Hitchcock's phrase about adapting minor works and making masterpieces. From a short story by the bland H. Murakami, Ryûsuke HAMAGUCHI, a Japanese director, draws a masterpiece that won the Best Screenplay Award, alongside Oe Takamasa. A story about losses and internal contradictions that we discuss with ourselves being with what we want.


Another masterpiece is Annette from French Leos CARAX. Solid cinema for the director who won the Best Direction Award. All cared for and handled with an iron fist. The counterexample to understand that no matter how well or badly the protagonists of the stories told live, well-exposed interior dramas can move any fiber without the viewer being clearly reflected.


I hope to reach Paul VERHOEVEN's age, over 80, and be that dynamic and clear. BENEDETTA can pass for the less favored sister in a house of geniuses. Outside of Cannes this film will be remembered and more highly valued.


With RED ROCKET, Sean BAKER is back and appreciated using his trick of exposing his country's dominant race. Funnier than his previous movies, just as tough and uncompromising with the big white trash.


The cinema of protest thanks to slowness and contemplation has an icon in Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL. MEMORY has Tilda Swinton as the protagonist walking through Colombia, the land of coffee, a land that hides unfathomable secrets that must become part of the collective memory of a nation to achieve peace of mind.


Todd HAYNES 'The Velvet Underground is the avant garde of Andy Warhol's Factory in New York. That which always was: art, film and music in one. The great multimedia disco with Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico and The Velvet Underground. The 60's further away from horse racing than the war itself.


DE SON VIVANT by Emmanuelle BERCOT or how we have been walking this planet for more than 40 thousand years and we still do not know how to handle death, which on many occasions goes through the selfish pain inflicted by those who remain alive.


Asghar FARHADI, of course, was awarded by AHERO. A minor work if compared to A Separation or The Salesman that speaks of the horror of being in the middle of morals. A place where things are not going well, the director seems to say.

Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV, prisoner for corruption in Russia or censorship? PETROV’S FLU recounts the anguish and pain and immobility of losing an empire. All wrong, my Argentine friend would say.


During the Critics' Week, an event parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, AMPARO, by Simón MESA SOTO, made its premiere. This Colombian film was taken with Sandra Melissa Torres es Amparo, from which she inherits the name of the film, the award for Newcomer Actress. Take one then home!


And the Golden Palm went to TITANE. Qualified as "delusional" by some and as "wonderful" by others. The director Julia DUCOURNAU is the first woman to direct alone and take home the Palme d'Or. A finishing touch for an equally delusional and wonderful festival crossed by PCR, vaccinations, races, little sleep, parties and more. Crowned, the brooch, by an award ceremony just as bizarre. Thank you Cannes Festival. See you next year.

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