Ioncinema

The Double Life of the Voyeurist: Farhadi Fails with Out of Touch Drama

Initially, it would seem Asghar Farhadi’s decision to present a contemporary world littered with anachronistic tendencies in Parallel Tales served some greater narrative purpose. Unfortunately, the end result feels as shockingly out of touch as a principal character’s devotion to a typewriter. Employing his signature elliptical touches to a plot loosely based on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog: Six (which was also the basis of Kieślowski’s feature length A Short Film About Love, 1988), Farhadi assembles several titans of the French film industry who all feel a bit underwhelming in an exercise which eventually seems to be all about the power of suggestion.… Read the rest

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Every Mann for Themselves: Pawlikowski Remains Chilly with Cold War Permafrost

Two iconoclastic German writers are locked in a spiritual duel for relevance at the onset of a tenuous new world order in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, arguably more frosty than his 1950s set Cold War (read review). Set across the span of several days in 1949, Nobel Prize Winning author Thomas Mann has returned to his homeland to attend two separate awards ceremonies to accept the Goethe prize. A controversial figure who left Germany in 1933 at the onset of Hitler’s rise to power, the rumbling drama underlying this return to his native country resides in where the ceremonies take place: Frankfurt and Weimar, West and East.… Read the rest

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After gaining international recognition with Berlinale entries in Silver Bear for Best Director About Elly (2009) and Golden Bear winning (plus Oscar winning) A Separation in 2011, Asghar Farhadi made the move to Cannes with 2013’s The Past (Bérénice Bejo won Best Actress), 2016’s The Salesman (Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini), out of competition Everybody Knows in 2018 and Grand Prix winning A Hero in 2021. His tenth feature in Parallel Tales is loosely based on Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog: Six and has the starry ensemble of Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney and Adam Bessa. This follows Sylvie, a famous author seeking inspiration on the neighbors across the street, who hires the mysterious Adam as assistant, but he quickly turns her life upside down.… Read the rest

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Post My Summer of Love (2004) and The Woman in the Fifth (2011), it’s with his fourth feature where Paweł Pawlikowski become someone to factor as a Croisette conversation whatever future output after showcasing Ida – it garnered 70 international awards, including five European Film Awards and the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. So he would win Best Director Prize at Cannes in 2018 for Cold War (read our review) and so its been a long eight years (some squashed projects) until now. He tends to work on themes of identity and belonging in the wake of historical rupture; the weight of the past — political and personal — on intimate relationships; and a precise, elliptical visual style in which black-and-white images carry enormous moral weight.… Read the rest

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The Story of O: Schoenbrun Approaches the Horrific Desire Inside Us All

The inextricable union of victim, victimizer, and witness becomes a metatextual balancing act in Jane Schoenbrun’s formidable third film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, a gonzo pop art slice of catharsis which works as both a recovery and discovery of the queer gaze in horror cinema. Effortlessly droll in its satirization of the academic approach in our contemporary retrospective drive to cannibalize but correct the formative inspirations of the past as a means to satisfy the demands of an arguably more enlightened generation, there’s a delirious amount of analysis pulsating through every passage.… Read the rest

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With her sophomore feature, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet made her first trip up the red carpet steps today as one of the several competition first-timers. Sshe unveiled her short Pauline asservie at Critics’ Week in 2018, then presented her debut feature Les Amours d’Anaïs as a special screening at the 60th Critics’ Week (read our glowing ★★★½ review). La Vie d’une femme aka A Woman’s Life features players Léa Drucker, Mélanie Thierry, Charles Berling and Laurent Capelluto and follows Gabrielle, 55, a highly dedicated head surgeon at a public hospital whose life is defined by relentless professional commitment, leaving little space for her personal world — including a devoted husband and an aging mother who depends on her care.… Read the rest

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Koji Fukada emerged as one of the major voices of contemporary Japanese cinema through intimate dramas examining social alienation, fractured families and emotional repression but he has not always been a sure bet for Cannes with items finding themselves on the Lido instead. His breakthrough came with Harmonium (2016), which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and pandemic year 2020 saw The Real Thing. land in Cannes 2020 Official Selection label. He was last in Cannes for a Cannes Premiere labeled premiere for Love on Trial. So not only is this his first time in comp, but this year is a special year with three Japanese auteurs in the race joining compatriots Hirokazu Kore-eda and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.… Read the rest

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Things to Come: Bourgeois-Tacquet Explores an Affair to Remember

Crimes of the heart are afoot once more in Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life (La Vie d’une femme), a film which feels a lot less generic than its title suggests (and is no relation to the 2016 Guy de Maupassant adaptation from Stephane Brize, which wielded it ironically). Led by the effortless Léa Drucker, the intensely paced life of a high profile surgeon is suddenly rejuvenated by a surprise affair with a writer shadowing her work at a state-run French hospital, fortuitously when it seems everything else around her seems to be eroding.… Read the rest

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Only the Lonely: Fukada Explores Constructions of Identity

Japanese auteur Kôji Fukada often favors narratives wherein tenuous but comfortable rhythms are suddenly upended by a confrontation with unresolved issues instigated by relationships with new acquaintances or old reunions. Often, these result in drastic, dramatic emotional shifts, such as in Harmonium (2016) or A Girl Missing (2019), or lead to a divine sense of catharsis in 2022’s Love Life (read review). For his latest feature, Nagi Notes, Fukada is perhaps at his most elegantly demure as he juxtaposes two developing relationships rapidly progressing during one week in the titular rural area located in Okayama Prefecture.… Read the rest

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We’re two for two. After nailing both Sundance’s top winner and the Golden Bear with our YouBETcha! predictions, we now turn to the Palme d’Or horse race kicking off today. Out of the 22 Competition titles, two former winners—Cristian Mungiu and Hirokazu Kore-eda—return in pursuit of a rare double Palme, a feat only achieved by greats such as Francis Ford Coppola, Bille August, Emir Kusturica, Shohei Imamura, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach and Ruben Östlund (he’ll attempt his 3-peat next year). Meanwhile, exactly half the lineup are first-timers stepping into competition for the very first time, many of whom will now forever associate their Croisette debut with Saint-Saëns’ Aquarium from Le Carnaval des animaux, the festival’s lingering, almost hypnotic sonic signature.… Read the rest

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