Cannes 2022: these films that would have deserved the Official Competition

The Night of the 12th by Dominik Moll

You have to bring together the right ingredients to make a thriller worthy of the name and Dominik Moll (Harry, A Friend Wishing You Well, Lemming, Only the Beasts) managed to make a standout. Being one of the last films announced at the Cannes Film Festival, La Nuit du 12 was not added in Competition but in the Cannes Première section, and that’s a shame.

Because this feature film has turned us upside down with a sordid and unresolved investigation by the judicial police. This investigation into the murder of Clara, a young woman who was burned alive one night when she was returning home after a party, will deeply mark Yohan, the investigator in charge of this case.

Despite the harshness and violence of the murder at the heart of the investigation – the story of which is based on part of Pauline Guéna’s book “18.3 – a year at the PJ” -, La nuit du 12 is imbued with a real sweetness and great sensitivity that emerge from its main performer Bastien Bouillon. As the list of suspects grows, the investigation will deeply mark the policeman in his flesh and question him about the world around him and the permanent violence against women.

Each stage of the investigation jostles him a little more and also turns us around to leave us with a bittersweet taste and a feeling of helplessness in the face of the singularity and fascination that an unsolved criminal case represents. Thanks to a fine writing, a hypnotizing staging and a sincere and involved cast, La nuit du 12 turns out to be a sensitive, visceral and captivating thriller.

Megane Choquet

Men by Alex Garland

Kevin Baker/A24 Films

Selected “only” in a special screening at the Directors’ Fortnight, Men could have had a nice place in the Official Competition after the Palme d’Or awarded to Titanium by Julia Ducournau last year. Because the director Alex Garland, to whom we owe Ex Machina and Annihilation, returns with a new radical and controlled proposal which mixes fantasy and psychological drama with body horror.

The British filmmaker could therefore have titillated The Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg in Competition with the story of Harper, a woman who left to isolate herself in the English countryside in order to rebuild herself after a personal drama which will be stalked by a strange presence. . What should have been a time of peace and resilience turns into a real nightmare.

Alex Garland once again offers a shocking and visionary cinematic experience, summoning symbols, metaphors and legends mixed with horror and fantasy to dissect the relationship of violence between men and women. In addition to his worked and very graphic imagery on rebirth and physical and psychic reproduction, the filmmaker directs his breathtaking actors Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear with great force in an inspired and captivating film.

Megane Choquet

Chronicle of a temporary affair by Emmanuel Mouret

Distribution Pyramid

For lack of a festival, The Things We Say, The Things We Do had only been entitled to a Cannes 2020 label. Two years later, Emmanuel Mouret is present on the Croisette with a new exploration of the menu tenderness that we would have liked to see in Competition: Chronicle of a temporary affair. “The title is a program because it also contains the end,” said the director and screenwriter when announcing the project, which he also considered calling “Scenes from Extramarital Life.”

The director does not fail to openly quote Ingmar Bergman’s classic, whose shadow hovers in this story where, as always, words and feelings prevail. And where the chemistry between Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Macaigne sparks. From the first scene, their complicity is eye-catching, their energetic opposition (her sparkling side to her against his clumsiness) seduces, and makes this inevitable end all the more difficult, around which Emmanuel Mouret builds a suspense sentimental.

Lively, fluid and engaging, Chronicle of a Passing Liaison leaves the lives of its main characters off-screen to focus on their interviews, built around a place, an idea. Often very funny, always very fair. Cannes 2021 had Julie (in 12 chapters), another fragmented story of feelings. In view of the laughter, reactions and applause, the 2022 edition may have found its equivalent… and its many qualities could have offered it a place in Competition.

Maximilien Pierrette

Return to Seoul by Davy Chou (Un Certain Regard)

Diamond Films

Six years after Diamond Island, his very noticed first fiction feature, it’s time for confirmation for Davy Chou. Still at Cannes, but in the official selection (in Un Certain Regard) and not at Critics’ Week, where it would have deserved the Competition. And had enough to be on the list. Head for Korea, where the heroine of Return to Seoul, Freddie, goes on a whim in search of her origins. Without knowing that this quest will push her to question her identity.

A story that spans a decade and begins in 2011, the year in which Davy Chou went to the Busan Film Festival to present Le Sommeil d’Or, his first feature documentary, in the company of a friend born in South Korea but adopted in France at the age of one. And it was after being moved by a reunion with his biological father and grandmother that he thought of making one of the most beautiful films of this edition.

Passing with ease from one emotion to another and knowing how to make us laugh as well as move us, without losing sight of the journey of his heroine, the director impresses. Well helped by its main actress Ji-min Park, a real revelation whose talent shines in particular in a magnificent dance scene, in the face of which it is difficult to hold back tears. In 2021, Davy Chou was producer of Onoda, which had opened Un Certain Regard and which many had regretted the absence in Competition. Equipped with one of the best soundtracks heard since the start of this edition, Retour à Seoul clearly joins it in this category.

Maximilien Pierrette