Cannes 2022: we saw a genius in Mad Max’s dad, a funny donkey and the return of Marion Cotillard

Three Thousand Years Waiting for You by George Miller (Out of Competition)

A post-apocalyptic western, a fantastic comedy with witches, an animated film about dancing penguins… George Miller has always distinguished himself in radically different genres. Before Furiosa – the prequel to his Mad Max: Fury Road – the director continues his exploration. In Three thousand years waiting for you, he draws inspiration from myths and tales to deliver a work somewhere between intimate drama and epic film.

On a trip to Istanbul, Alithea (Tilda Swinton) acquires a blue bottle in a Turkish bazaar. Arrived at her hotel, she discovers that the object contains a djinn (Idris Elba). To preserve his freedom, he must grant three of his wishes, but that does not seem to impress the woman in front of him. To convince her, the genie will tell her about his past, thousands of years ago.

There are two movies in one Three thousand years waiting for you. The first is behind closed doors: the spectators witness the meeting between the two heroes, locked up in a hotel room. The second is a fantastic adventure, visually inventive with many special effects, where creatures meet figures from mythology, such as the Queen of Sheba or King Solomon. George Miller goes to the end of his concept, even allowing himself a few absurd turns, without ever falling into ridicule.

Thomas Desroches

Brother and sister of Arnaud Desplechin (Competition)

The pact

Rumor announced her as president of the jury. It is ultimately “only” in Competition that Marion Cotillard will shine this year. And, for the third time in his career, in front of Arnaud Desplechin’s camera, after Les Fantômes d’Ismaël (opening of the festival in 2017) and Comment je me am disputed (my sex life), one of his first roles At the movie theater.

Dispute, it is still a question here. But in the family sphere, as in A Christmas Tale. With perhaps even more violence and words that hurt while we play a role to keep up appearances. On stage for her, actress. In public for him, teacher turned writer. But where does this a priori irremediable hatred between Alice and Louis come from? Can a tragic event allow them to reconnect with each other?

From its opening scene, Brother and Sister strikes hard and announces the color, very dark, of what is to follow. But the sequel only manages to live up to it in small touches. When the two main characters are confronted with the accident of their parents for example. If he quickly puts words to the origin of the break between Alice and Louis, with his very marked literary style, Arnaud Desplechin will be able to disappoint with the resolution, despite the raw compositions of Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud.

Maximilien Pierrette

A Beautiful Morning by Mia Hansen-Love (Directors’ Fortnight)

Diamond Films

There is a lot of sweetness, melancholy, sadness and instinct for life in this chronicle of the daily life of a young woman, who endures the serious illness of her father suffering from neurodegeneration, at the same time as she lives a passion sometimes hindered but nevertheless saving.

Under the direction of Mia Hansen-Love, the icon Léa Seydoux is unrecognizable, a normal mother, a woman of duty and no longer an object of desire, a heroine torn apart by her contradictory emotions. At his side, Pascal Greggory is stunning, in the skin of this diminished ex-philosopher, whom his brain and then his body have let go.

A story of mourning that the director has personally experienced, which also speaks of transmission and renewed awakening. Special mention to Nicole Garcia, in the shoes of a pragmatic, funny and committed mother.

Laetitia Ratane

Le Petit Nicolas by Amandine Fredon & Benjamin Massoubre (Special Screenings)

Film Tray

So here’s Little Nicolas again! Just a few months after the live-action feature film directed by Jean-Paul Rouve and Audrey Lamy, the hero of Goscinny and Sempé returns to the cinema… in a most surprising animated film. Because it is not so much a pure adaptation as a story that looks back on its creation, and where Alain Chabat and Laurent Lafitte lend their respective voices to its two creators.

Described as a hymn to childhood and subtitled “What are we waiting for to be happy?”, the feature film is therefore a film about Le Petit Nicolas coupled with a tribute to its creators, and to comics in general. All in a visual style ultra-faithful to that of its model, which is sure to delight fans, young and old. But this alternation between the two levels of stories would have required a more sustained rhythm, because the passage from one to the other makes the whole uneven at times even if the emotion wins in the end. And that the result, as the hero would say, is above all “funny owl”.

Maximilien Pierrette

The Night of 12 by Dominik Moll (Cannes Premiere)

High and Short

Thriller like no other, which risks turning things upside down, The Night of 12 is the new film by Dominik Moll (Harry, a friend who wishes you well, Lemming, Only the beasts), who has chosen to send us on a sordid investigation unresolved 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

Bodice by Marie Kreutzer (Un Certain Regard)

AlamodeFilm

She is no longer the perfect princess embodied by the divine Romy Schneider. Nor is she the heroine in full awakening of the senses of the recent series of TF1. Under the watchful eye of Marie Kreutzer, Sissi is aged and scrutinized, still overwhelmed by the mourning of her child years before, by Franz’s resentment and the obligations of her rank, by the heaviness of her bulky dresses and chignons.

But she is also in the rebellion phase, lying on the ground, smoking and even insulting, ready to flee and fleeing at any time. Iconoclastic and feminist, this fantasized portrait of the Empress of Austria is quite simply delightful, embodied by an explosive Vicky Krieps, who hasn’t finished blowing us away.

Laetitia Ratane

There are always two faces. The director Marie Kreutzer leaves aside the radiant Sissi, illustration of the perfect princess. She prefers the rougher, nonchalant Sissi, who constantly has to deal with judgments about her weight and age. Oppressed, the Empress stands up. She disobeys, invents discomfort, like a teenager at war with authority.

In this new version of Sissi, Vicky Krieps confirms his great talent. She transforms a character known to all and revisited many times to offer another reading, which fits perfectly into our time. Impossible not to think of the rock’n’roll portrait of Marie-Antoinette signed by Sofia Coppola in 2006, but the filmmaker offers a style that is always personal and not without humour.

Thomas Desroches

Goutte d’or by Clément Cogitore (Critics’ Week)

2021/Laurent THE CRAB/Kazak Productions

Ramses, 35, runs a fortune-telling practice at the Goutte d’Or in Paris. A clever manipulator and a bit of a poet on the edges, he has set up a solid consolation business. The arrival of children from the streets of Tangier, as dangerous as they are elusive, disrupts the balance of his business and the whole neighborhood. Until the day when Ramses will have a real vision.

For his second feature film after the fascinating war film Ni le ciel, ni la terre, Clément Cogitore, also a visual artist, changes his universe and immerses us in a noir and urban film with Goutte d’or. Its plot, rich in twists, surprises and captivates at all times. Karim Leklou (seen in Bac Nord and Le Monde est à toi) impresses in this dense and exciting role. We should also underline the plastic beauty of the film: Paris is filmed there as rarely, with very beautiful nocturnal shots. Release: soon.

Brigitte Baronet

El Agua by Elana Lopez Rivera (Directors’ Fortnight)

It’s summer in a small village in southeastern Spain. A storm threatens to cause the river that runs through it to overflow again. An old popular belief assures that certain women are predestined to disappear with each new flood, because they have “the water in them”. A group of young people try to survive the weariness of summer, they smoke, dance, desire each other. In this electric atmosphere, Ana and José live a love story, until the storm breaks…

El Agua, carried by the incandescent Luna Pamies, whose first role in the cinema, gave us to see a story of popular belief, of which we cannot say if it is pure fiction or inspired by real events. The director explains that these stories had been told to her by her grandmother. “It’s a fiction that I grew up with. I believed my grandmother because she told me about it”, explained the director on the stage of the Directors’ Fortnight.

Filmmaker Elena Lopez Riera explains that she “grew up with these mythologies, with this kind of love-hate water and everything that goes with it”. “I was lucky to be raised by women like that and women I met,” she adds. The form of the film is interesting on several counts, in particular for its insertions of sequences face-camera with women evoking this popular belief. The love scenes between the characters of the heroine Ana and José are also very beautiful. Release: soon.

Brigitte Baronet