.G.great responsibility rests on the Cannes 2022 festival which is about to open its doors for the 75th edition, tomorrow Tuesday 17, with the screening of Coupez!, by Michel Hazanavicius with Bérénice Bejo. (Film he had to change the title at the last moment from Z as Z under the pressure of the tragic actuality. “Bad timing” say the British and the French, masters of double meaning – Z as a Z series and as a Zombie – if they are right).
“Coupez!”
The responsibility that this gigantic event that mixes glamor and cinephilia shares with the other Serie A festivals – Venice, Berlin – it is not just that of bringing people back to the hall. But that of to make the audience fall in love with auteur cinema again, the cinema that Cannes promotes and researches. The data is disheartening. Self Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness grossed $ 450 million in just one weekend, confirming the trend already evident with the success of Spider-Man: No WayHome And The Batman, cinema that has no superheroes on its side languishes. Between a quarter and a third less in France, and here the situation is certainly no better.
The reasons are mainly personal. But not only. This is demonstrated by the idea of which Thierry Fremaux is standard bearer and that with this edition is manifested more clearly: a certain porosity between the screens of cinemas and the domestic ones.
Cannes Film Festival 2022: Marco Bellocchio and Assayas
Marco Bellocchio and Olivier Assays are two authors who will accompany their television series at the festival, in the section Première, both inspired by their past films. The relationship between Good morning night (2003) by the Italian director and the series Night exterior (which will arrive as a film in Italian cinemas in two partsthe first from 18 May, the second from 9 June, and will then be broadcast in serial format on Rai 1 next autumn) is strong and is an unprecedented choice for Bellocchio.
The French filmmaker, on the other hand, had already measured himself with seriality (Carlos In 2010). And he is certainly not the first author a modular cinema and tv (Jane Campion, Bruno Dumont, David Fincher, and before them Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder). The novelty if anything is the revival in a contemporary key and with the star of Tomb Raider, Alicia Vikander, del 1996 film made «pour zéro franç zéro centime» with Maggie Cheung, a Hong Kong star whom the director later married. Interviewed by Les InrockuptiblesOlivier Assayas summed up the creative process as follows: «I do everything I didn’t do in the original film».
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Who perhaps can’t do everything he wants is the director of Cannes, Thierrry Fremaux. Which, having cinema exhibitors on the festival’s board of directors, he is forced to protect the rule that requires going out in theaters in order to compete for the Palme d’Or. With a window of 15 months, which we dream of in Italy. Which made Lido della Croisette much more attractive for platforms like Netflix.
As Assayas stated this is it a moment of mutation and you have to take advantage of it to blow up some rules. And it is certain that many will soon jump. “That of the duration of films, for example. Overcoming the hour and 50 is a problem ». The typical conflict between producer and director, and then between distributor and producer, is so easily allayed. With the 8 episodes of the Hbo series Irma Vepwhich in Italy will be broadcast by Sky, the director of Sils Maria he found a way to satisfy her desire “to tell a story that lasts longer”. Meanwhile, tomorrow the festival is showing the restored version of La maman et la putain by Jean Eustache (1973), a (beautiful) film of 3 hours and 37.
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