Sand the poster of the 79th edition portrays two iconic women, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, protagonists of Thelma and Louiseon the third day of the festival we already have two films at the center “women who lived twice”: Parallel Tales by Asghar Farhadiin competition, and the opening film, the Vénus électrique by Pierre Salvadori, Waiting Amarga Navidad by Pedro Almodóvar which will go into competition on May 19th to be released immediately in cinemas.
Vertigothe film by Alfred Hitchocock which in the Italian version is titled The woman who lived twicehe put on stage the “creation” of a double, of a simulacrum of the beloved woman (Kim Novak in two roles), by the protagonist (James Stewart).
In Parallel Tales, Virgine Efira, brunette and blonderepresents two women, one “real” and one only imagined, or rather remembered by the protagonist of the film, Isabelle Huppert, writer intent on putting shreds of her past on paper (“I called her Anna because her visa reminds me of my mother’s” he writes, loudly tapping the keys of his electric machine, a true vintage piece. Be careful, sound is at the center of Farhadi’s film…).
Anaïs Demoustier, protagonist of La Vénus électrique.
In Vénus électrique Anaïs Demoustier, mystifier, fake psychic, she discovers in the diaries of the artist’s dead wife that he would like, thanks to her, to find a channel of communication with the afterlife, a truth that plunges her into a life that is not hers. Finding reasons in the past to free yourself from guilt and create a new beginning. A rebirth. Electric. Almost like in Frankenstein.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Chinese boxes
It’s also there in Pedro Almodóvar’s film a writer, a screenwriter in crisis (Leonardo Sbaraglia) who is clearly a double of the director (in France the film is released with the title Autofiction), but who also has his double in Monica, the creature he is giving life to through writing. Monica is also a screenwriter. Who, just like him, he vampirizes the lives of those around him in the name of creation.
The protagonists of Amarga Navidad, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Bárbara Lennie.
And he also talks about portals that contain other portals, about Chinese boxes in which films are mirrored in other films the opening film of Un certain Regard, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasmaby Jane Schoenbrun, with Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, a Queer and Woke rewrite of a series of slasher films from the 80s (a very fertile period for the genre, from Friday 13th to Sleepaway Camp). Past and present are also reflected here, in the gloomy and deserted campsite where she lives, retreating, in Norma Desmond mode, the only surviving girl from that glorious season. Sunset Boulevardwhen is the remake?
