{"id":20226,"date":"2023-05-29T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-29T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=20226"},"modified":"2023-05-28T18:18:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T01:18:41","slug":"max-borgs-cannes-film-festival-2023-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/max-borgs-cannes-film-festival-2023-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Borg\u2019s Cannes Film Festival 2023 Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Following two extra-large lineups in 2021<\/a> and 2022<\/a>, partly motivated by a desire to support films ahead of their theatrical release in France (most movies playing at the event already have distribution before the premiere), the Cannes Film Festival stated its intention of scaling things back for 2023, with an Official Selection more in line, in terms of quality, with pre-pandemic years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this was technically true, one key detail quickly revealed the flipside of the statement: by virtue of having a few too many films clocking in at 150 minutes or more, the available slots were roughly the same as in the previous two years, with scheduling proving to be a bit of a nightmare in some venues: the Debussy theater, home to the official screenings of Un Certain Regard and Cannes Premiere as well as several press screenings (some of which were supposed to start at 11 PM), was particularly beset by delays on a daily basis throughout the first week of the festival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such an arrangement ended up doing little favors to the films themselves, and even some of the directors spoke out on the matter. Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice went as far as publishing an open letter explaining his choice to be absent at the premiere of his fourth feature film (and his first since 1992), the magnificent Close Your Eyes<\/em><\/strong>. A moving meditation on time, friendship and the impact of movies, even in an unfinished state (complete with scenes extolling the virtues of the preservation of physical film prints), it was by far the best work playing at the festival overall. Which meant, of course, it was excluded from the main competition, relegated to the by now cumbersome Cannes Premiere sidebar.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar fate befell Takeshi Kitano, who was back in Cannes for the first time in thirteen years with the gloriously violent samurai epic Kubi<\/em><\/strong>. His customary knack for on-screen carnage was transposed from the crime genre to the costume drama, with more than enough decapitations to make up for the dense plotting, which may prove a bit hard to follow for anyone who isn\u2019t a Japanese history buff.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that the Competition didn\u2019t boast a few strong entries in its own right. While I didn\u2019t see four of the big winners (including the Palme d\u2019Or), I was among those who readily embraced Aki Kaurism\u00e4ki\u2019s Fallen Leaves<\/em><\/strong>, which won the Jury Prize and would make for a perfect double bill with Ken Loach\u2019s The Old Oak<\/strong>.<\/em> Both filmmakers have a recognizably unfussy style, deal with the underdogs of society, and use drinking establishments as key locations. But whereas Kaurism\u00e4ki used his new film to come out of retirement, Loach has stated this is his swansong, so the bittersweet conclusions \u2013 another hallmark of both directors \u2013 hit very differently at the end of each screening.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, one wonders what Jean-St\u00e9phane Sauvaire\u2019s Black Flies<\/em><\/strong>, a meandering drama about paramedics in New York City, was doing in the Competition lineup (beyond the obvious answer that festival head Thierry Fr\u00e9maux is tight with lead actor Sean Penn). What made it stand out like even more of a sore thumb was its standing beside the other two U.S. contenders for the Palme d\u2019Or: Wes Anderson\u2019s Asteroid City<\/em><\/strong>, which adds a creative crisis angle to the usual take-it-or-leave-it quirky shenanigans (personally, I took it, at least for now), and Todd Haynes\u2019s May December<\/em><\/strong>, a clever analysis of media scandals and the relationship between truth and fiction, with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore as an increasingly brilliant double act.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cannes Classics strand, which showcases restored films and documentaries about cinema, scored the festival\u2019s biggest coup with the world premiere of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s final work, a posthumous short film that, in true Godard fashion, is pitched as a trailer for a different film that will never exist. Less poignant, but interesting nonetheless, was the documentary Room 999<\/em><\/strong>, a sequel to Wim Wenders\u2019 1982 effort Room 666<\/em>. This time around, the German director was one of the interviewees on the subject of the future of cinema. A repetitive exercise, with streaming singled out as the main culprit should the art of motion pictures die out, but select answers were more thought out or just admirably weird, such as Kirill Serebrennikov\u2019s completely wordless take on the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of streaming, HBO Max (or rather, just Max) was also in the Cannes Classics program with the first part of its tribute to Warner Bros\u2019 100th<\/sup> anniversary, but the real oddity was the surprise comeback of Netflix. Famously barred from the Competition due to a 2018 clause that makes it mandatory for all entries to have a traditional theatrical release in France, the company was one of the producing partners involved in this year\u2019s opening film, Ma\u00efwenn\u2019s Jeanne Du Barry<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And giving the opening slot to that movie, a confused period piece that tries to be irreverent and conventional at the same time, was the perfect metaphor for the festival\u2019s current condition, as it tries to embrace modernity while staying true to its decades-long traditions. Johnny Depp, a major talking point prior to the premiere due to his troubled recent legal history, was surprisingly subdued both on and off screen, underplaying as Louis XV (probably because he had to deliver his lines in French) and then putting his supposed comeback in perspective, showing a more realistic worldview than his most ardent fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the closing screening, that honor went to Pixar\u2019s Elemental<\/em><\/strong>, a charming, funny, and visually ambitious animated adventure that harkens back to the feel of simpler days for the Emeryville studio, back when Disney didn\u2019t treat its crown jewel \u2013 animation \u2013 as though it were just a content farm for streaming platforms. As such, there\u2019s a certain romantic mindset in the choice of giving the festival\u2019s final slot, in the prestigious Grand Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Lumi\u00e8re, to a film that is likely to face an uphill battle at the box office as a result of two years\u2019 worth of destructive business decisions for Disney\u2019s two animation studios.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mouse was also present with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny<\/em><\/strong>, which managed to pull off the near impossible task of making some attendees nostalgic for the Cannes screening of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull<\/em> fifteen years ago. And yet, James Mangold pulled off the kind of old-fashioned adventures the previous installment had partially undermined with its CGI excesses, giving our favorite archeologist the send-off he deserves.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it would have been nice to let as many people as possible partake in that joy, but another casualty of the festival\u2019s programming bulimia was Indy\u2019s curtain call having only two screenings, as opposed to the usual four or five. Granted, everyone will be able to see the movie a month from now, but the idea of Indiana Jones being a niche phenomenon in the context of the world\u2019s most prestigious film festival sort of says it all about how the event has become too big for its own good. It\u2019s no longer about promoting cinema as a versatile art form, it\u2019s about having the largest collection possible, viewers be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The French festival was supposedly back to basics this year, but was that really the case? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":20228,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416],"tags":[1419],"class_list":["post-20226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","tag-film-fests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}