31ª Mostra Internacional de Cinema

Jornal da Mostra

Subscribe here the 'Jornal da Mostra'

STYLISH FILMMAKERS WITH SHADY COLOURS

After the impact of BLINDNESS and WALTZ WITH BASHIR, let’s check out the synopses of the films seen in the several screenings of the two first days of the 61st Cannes Festival.

LEONERA (competition), by Argentinean Pablo Trapero, takes us into a female prison to follow the drama of women detained with their children, who have the right to keep the children until they are four years old. A legal inheritance of the Argentinean military dictatorship. We follow Julia’s (Martina Gusman) tragedy, accused of killing her boyfriend. The one accusing her is Ramiro (Rodrigo Santoro), who used to promiscuously live with the couple. Julia’s conflict with her mother (Elli Medeiros), a political refugee who ended up living in Paris, restarts when she tries to take her little son out of detention. Trapero deserves our special attention for all the radiographic films he makes (MUNDO GRUA, EL BONAERENSE, FAMILIA RODANTE, NACIDO Y CRIADO). His last films have the sympathy of Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, who co-produces them with his VideoFilmes.

Another somber film in competition was ÜÇ MAYMUN/ THREE MONKEYS, by Turkish Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a filmmaker who drags his coded language close to Michelangelo Antonioni’s incommunicability. This time his heavy clouds drift above the terrace of the house of a driver who serves a province politician full time. The politician accidentally runs over someone, hits and runs and asks his employee to take his guilty and condemnation, for more money. Nine months later, the driver leaves the prison and is thrilled with horror. His wife is betraying him with the politician and his only son failed in school. The potential and real violence will little by little have to define which path to follow. Like clouds of an announced storm, it promises to vanish soon. There are other more deranging details left in this Turkish torrent, as stylish as a good Mexican drama of the 50’s.

UN CONTE DE NOËL/ A CHRISTMAS TALE, by Arnaud Desplechin (competition), is a family picture through three generations, in the best French cinema style, with tragedies and romance, all brushed with frivolity and a certain blasé air.
Catherine Deneuve plays Junon, the matriarch forever marked by the death of her first son, at the age of six, of leukemia, when medicine didn’t have as many resources against cancer. Now it is her time to manifest the same disease and the medullary transplant brings the family together again. It is Christmas time and there is some tension about who the donator will be and about meeting each other again. The medical choice will be between the renegade son and the mentally handicapped grandson. Just like in his previous film, L’AIMÉE, old family pictures help decipher many enigmas of family relations.

CZTERY NOCE Z ANNA/ FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA, brings back the Polish veteran Jerzy Skolimowski, 17 years after his last film, associated to Portuguese producer Paolo Branco. The opening film of the 40th Directors’ Fortnight also came full of dark colors. We follow the obsession of a simple employee in a village hospital, in charge of the incineration services. One day he witnesses the violation of a nurse, Anna, who he starts to stock and spy. He then plans to make her sleep to invade her room. The plan works out. The spectator is the one who judges his daring and dangerous act.

English version: Laura Rebessi

More infos. About Cannes Film Festival in :

	www.festival-cannes.com