Well time for Takashi Miike to find some competition. Suicide Club is an insane flick as you won’t often see one. Nowadays Japan is shocked by a wave of kids' suicides. Audiences too since the opening sequence : 54 students jumping in front of a train with happy faces just before being squashed by the train and fulfilling the air with gallons of blood. There’s many other moments and sick ideas in Sion Sono’s film. But the most disturbing is not in what is seen on screen but was is told by her about the state Japanese society is living in today.

In some ways this is the most provocative film I’ve seen since Fukasaku’s Battle Royale. Too bad the explanation of why these mass suicides happened is some psycho-wacko babbling about “feeling connected with self”. Nonetheless this contains some real crazy moments, as this scene where some young thug dressed in glamrock star calling himself some new Charles Manson , performs a song during one of his pals rapes before killing by knife a girl trapped in some bag…

Insane…

Day 7

Once upon a time in the Midlands

More than ever it seems that there’s only two ways of describing contemporary british society in films : a la Ken Loach and his longlasting social worker style (I’m fed up with that since My name is joe. So I’ve absolutely no need to see Sweet sixteen, screened here in Competition. I will go back to Loach when he’ll have something to say that England is under a SNAFU situation) or by doing some twisted comedies like Danny Boyle's or Shane Meadows. His third film isn’t so bad, but it all has a taste of déja vu : some sympathetic thug comes back to his abandoned love, but she’s been with someone else for years now. Pals of the thug, angered because he stole money form their last looting, also coming in town… By the first scene, as the first word is pronounced with an heavy accent, all is recognized : you’re in a production by Channel 4 or BBC films made for export, with nothing new but exploiting some clichés who can sales the film to foreign countries… Of course, it ain’t so bad, situations are fun, acting is good (Rhys Ifans as usual steals the show as a lousy guy), but that’s just a clone of so many films seen before… With so little new ideas in directing or plot (by the way, the only one – some Western Spaghetti references- isn’t exploited until the quite end of third act)… Guy Ritchie, where are you ?

Spider

I always thought David Cronenberg has to fail one day. The guy who done so many important films couldn’t always go one step further than his previous. Not that I hope that, but I kind of felt it.

Well, it is done with Spider. Many people here thought that it was too far away for his universe. Wrong, this story of a madman reviving his past, living again the death of his mother isn’t so far off from his themes, when this guy has a very strange relationship to his body. Though there are no organic stuff like the Canadian loves to usually explore, but some very deep unease with his body.

The only one brilliant idea (the guy being outside and inside his past, as if he’s a stranger to himself) and the way Ralph Fiennes moves is very great at expressing that. Too sad his mumbling jumbling makes one of the worst composition of loony nuts seen in movies. Sad also to see a so predictable script, anyone able to guess ten minutes before what’s gonna happen. Pity when Miranda Richardson is amazing in a triple part, and when the directing is absolute masterful, many of the scenes being treated as real painting compositions.

In fact it’s quite fortunate, to me, that Spider is a bad film: it allows the next Cronenberg project, Painkillers, with a deep truly Cronenbergian topic this time ( it’s about some artist who suffers from unstoppable headaches entering a group of activist performers), to be kind of new stair for this brilliant filmmaker to climb.

Man-rak transistor

Last year with Tears of the black tiger, was the first time a thai film was showing in official selection in Cannes. Second is this year with Man-Rak Transistor which is in the same mood (and by the same crew). Asianfilmfans know for years there’s some wonderful thai movies like Nang Nak. But seen from here it is resumed as huge official stuff like Bangrajan and others a la Braveheart epic or to those two bittercomedies screened in Cannes This misadventures of a poor wannabe singer are colorful, very enjoyable to watch but with a strange taste of the exotic for foreign audiences. Even very sweet, the entertaining clichés about thai culture, lets the feeling of some festival films not to conform to the today’s Thai cinema. That’s not the fault of the moviemakers who have done this film in homage to some singing and movie tradition from the 50’s. But since not quite any western audiences have seen it (If as it was scheduled, Tears of the black tiger has been released in France last, it would have been the first thai film ever to be there) it can be understood as the latest mood of this cinema. Which it isn’t at all.

La chatte à deux têtes

The daily life in some theater specialized in showing porn films. Tranvestites selling blow-jobs, guys wanking in seats, and the female cashier chatting with everybody. Jacques Nolot second picture is daring in showing without compromise or emphasis this kind of underworld for love. Quite all is happening in the theater, wandering between the seats and the toilets, from male hookers being gangbanged to close encounters.

It’s gross, raw and provocative but comes deep from the heart to tell about the loneliness. First part is maybe too long and too repetitive but gives some astonishing moments, like this fat guy in female dress singing a classic opera aria before giving a blow job to some guy who seems absent. And suddenly characters begin to speak, to reveal their hearts in brilliant soliloquies, as moving as funny. (“Psychanalysis isn’t worth having a cock in the ass. Since I don’t go anymore to the shrink, I feel way much better”). Even if it shows sex in some real ways, that’s not or about pornography but about the difficulty of loving. Of course that’s real auteur stuff and sure reserved to some niche audience but worth having a look.

Day 8

L’imbasalmatore (The taxidermist)

Each year got the same tune in Cannes : “oh the Italian cinema is in so bad shape, except Nanni Moretti and Roberto Benigni, we’re still waiting for a new breed of Italian filmmakers to rise. But we gave a shot to a new very promising guy this year”. Last time it was Alex Infascelli’s ALMOST BLUE (some well intended but very lousy giallo) who was supposed to be the Italian savior of the day, this year it’s Matteo Garrone’s Imbasalmatore.

Well I guess the selection’s crew are doomed by some bad juju unless they got a bad spy in Italy. Imbasalmatore isn’t the film that will make famous again Italian cinema. Just a strange little film, mixing thriller and psychological study. Peppino, a dwarf working as a taxidermist hires Valerio, a young guy to help him. That’s a beginning of a close friendship, the new employee soon thrown away by his family, he is moving to his friendly boss, who teaches him not only the way to embalm dead animals, but also invites him to parties with girls they fuck together. Then we’ll get to know that Peppino is tied to Camorra who asks him to works on human bodies to hide in’em some drugs. He doesn’t tell Valerio. On a trip, they meet a beautiful girl. Valerio’s in love. They’ll bring her back, trouble happens, Valerio and the girl leave. Months later, Peppino finds them back as she’s pregnant….

Imbasalmatore is a good try in mixing genres, but fails by blurring the borders. First hour is a too long exposition of characters, second is way better when the truly will of Peppino is revealed, entering a battle in this weird love triangle. But even then, Garrone will never trespass the limits, never explore the danger zone. Except for some scene where anger and hate are about to explodes, they never really set on fire. If more provocative, more bleak, this could have been a very powerful disturbing film.

In that shape, it’s just a too shy attempt to convince.

About Schmidt

At last, a second good film in official competition ! Least to say is that I went to see Alexander Payne’s film with not many hopes, not only because the mood of this year’s competition is to get very average movies but also because for more than ten years, Jack Nicholson has become to me just an overacting puppet, believing that raising his famous eyebrows or giving grinning smiles was enough to pretend he’s acting. Well, Jack’s back. Maybe because Payne gave him here a part very related to what he did in Bob Rafelson’s pieces like King of Marvin Garden or Five easy pieces.

About Schmidt is about a just retired soon to be widower guy whose life is breaking apart. By going to his daughter's marriage he’s entering a journey towards wisdom, but a cruel one as it reveals to himself that he’s a failure… Like in Election, Payne’s dealing here with the contained anger of the American male in American society, with the fact they’re just a piece of daily life but never quite living their own life.

In that way it’s very nostalgic of some disillusioned American cinema from the late 60-70’s. Of course Rafelson’s but also Bogdanovich’s. In fact About Schmidt is very close to being some EASY RIDER for the fifty-sixty something generation. Of course, nothing to do with Hippies (even if Kathy Bates character is sometimes in that mood), but just about getting knocked off by daily reality. There’s so much brilliant work here, but the most enjoyable is this tone, really mean and heartbreaking in the same time, maybe more than in Election or Citizen Ruth. About Schmidt is for sure funny but isn’t a comedy at all, the more it progresses the more it becomes poignant until this really moving end.

Remember twenty years ago we thought with The Big Chill that Lawrence Kasdan might well be the perfect storyteller to show how a generation works. Well, with this films Payne is keeping that promise well alive by being better than Kasdan. Before telling about Nicholson’s work, I want to say that all the cast is absolutely perfect, even the little parts are wonderfully acted and it’s often a labour of love when some parts (like Dermot Mulroney’s or Hope Davis’s ones are about some irritating people or real morons ). As for Jack. Well, if we were used to seeing him playing old grumpy guys, he gives to his Schmidt’s composition some real thickness, sometimes just by a look or a simple move. He’s absolutely amazing here. Damn the jury if they don’t give prizes to this film. And they got choice : best actor or best screenplay.

The man without a past

One of the main explanations running of why the films of this Cannes are so-so is because this year again we found in competition works by filmmakers that already often went here before. We’re just so used to Mike Leigh’s, Ken Loach’s, Marco Bellochio’s, Manoel de Oliveira’s, Alexandr Sokourov’s, Amos Gitai’s and others universes than they don’t surprise us at all. Ok they’re all worthy filmmakers but the worst is that they got nothing new to say. Maybe that explains too why the most appreciated films here are made by people introduced to Cannes as Elia Suleiman (Divine Intervention. Sorry I didn’t catch the screening of what seems to be by word of mouth the best film here so far), Michael Moore or Alexander Payne.

Aki Kaurismaki is an important director, but as with some others, is missing of new stuff or a new purpose in his latest film. Of course, this story of a guy suffering from amnesia finding a new life with the help of a salvation army’s girl is very well made. It’s funny and bitter, very out-of-time, close to silent cinema. In a word : pure Kaurismaki. But exactly looks the same as his previous works (except maybe for a darker vision of world, going back to the despair of his firsts films). It’s fur sure enjoyable but with the sad taste of pasteurization, of getting folklorized. Always sad to see a filmmaker doing nothing else than becoming just a trademark of himself…