Cannes Film Festival 2023: 7 things to remember (or forget)

AND another Festival has gone, his music has finished… Last montee des marches tonight for Cannes 2023but it’s already time to take stock. The average quality of the films is quite high (as is the average age of the directors: 65 years old, but let’s not quibble), the biggest stars have arrived and even allowed themselves (look for them in the coming weeks on iO Woman) and, above all, there were moments of real emotion, on stage and in the hall. If you don’t cry for The Old Oak of Ken Loach, of which we cry soils? But let’s go in order…

To remember

Harrison Ford’s Tears

Harrison Ford’s Wet Eyelash. For years we have complained about the poor communication by Harrison Ford. Interviewing the actor-carpenter caused the same emotion as a distracted browse through the film’s press kit. Instead this year, in his fifth test as Indiana Jones, and with the prospect of retiring alongside his popular character, Ford was emotional. The public, together with the festival, decreed him a great tribute, of esteem and affection. If one does that job, it’s probably also because he hopes that the warmth of that collective embrace will in the end be the real, perhaps the only reward (Ford was fond of declaring that he worked “for the money”. This time he didn’t say it.)

Godard according to Godard

Godard par Godard. Cannes could not fail to pay homage to the director who passed away in September last year. He did it with a projection of the Contempt and presenting this documentary by Florence Platarets. Godard par Godard And an archival self-portrait by the author of Until the last breath which traces his story and a unique career, a story that has helped change the history of cinema, made up of tireless research and audacity. A film that tells a life made of cinemathe life of an author who ended up merging with his art: “I don’t make films, I make cinema”.

Iconic Lv

Liv Ullmann, a goddess. The documentary dedicated to her, Liv Ulmmann, a Road Less Travelledin Cannes Classics, has gone almost unnoticed, screening in the secluded Buñuel room, a single passage, inaccessible for many, invisible for almost everyone, in the great tourbillon de la vie of the festival. The movie, which it actually is one series, three chapters, good for arthouse theaters, such as streaming and tv, it would be a fairly conventional biopic if it weren’t for her, ironic, vital, simple (in Hollywood they advised her to wear more make-up, indeed to hire a team of make-up artists, she replies: «I don’t wear makeup, I’m Norwegian”). From tears the archives. To the young man devoted director, Dheeraj Akolkar, the value of research and tenacity must be recognised: «A job of 13 years». Eventually they became friends.

Radiant Ephyra

Gorgeous shining. Virginie Efira continues to amaze us with her credibility (she was in two films and in two very different characters, victim of a toxic love in L’Amour et les Forêts by Valérie Donzelli, mother struggling with social services in Rien à perdre by Delphine Deloget) and her always being cheerful and down-to-earth: she says it’s thanks to the fact that she’s Belgian, not French (and we’d be led to believe her…) but remaining so down to earth is generally characteristic of someone who he achieved success late. He does not shy away from any question, not even those on Blessed, the lesbo-nun who was the (alleged) scandal of Cannes 2023. This time, however, theohhhh more sonorous was aroused by the super belly, which competes with the one shown in 2022 by Michelle Williams: at 45 she will become a mother, for the second time. Her lucky partner is a colleague, Niels Schneider.

Tender Loach at the Cannes Film Festival

86 years of freshness. The youngest character we met at the Festival? No doubt: Ken Loach. A small and very courteous little man who whispers more than speaks, but knows exactly what he is saying. And if he has confirmed that The Old Oak will be his last film, he won’t give up on the commitment for this, urging us to do the same, greeting us with: «Don’t give up!». In this world where thirty-somethings deliver us empty products like The Idol (read below) the only one who can compete with him in terms of energy and desire to make a difference is Marco Bellocchio. Aged 83.

To forget

Mediocrity

average movies, from which this Festival has unfortunately been ballasted. Sections have even been created to contain them, works that weren’t good enough for the competition, not research enough for the side sections, always bordering on sufficient, useful for the presence of stars, useless for everything else. In the section Cannes Première we could mention Le temps d’aimerin Competition Firebrand or Asteroid City by Wes Anderson. AND, of course, the opening film, Jeanne du Barry. Yawn.

Lily-Rose Depp? No

Yawn for it too The Idol. Since last year Cannes has introduced the glorification of a TV series or even (Satan!) of a film that will be enjoyed in streaming but, after all, the purpose justifies the means: if we are still dealing with auteur productions, which risk disappearing in the shipwreck of the cinemas (now semi-deserted), let’s not undervalue the platform too much. Apple finances Martin Scorsese’s first western Killers of the Flower Moon, which is not only well directed but lifts the veil on a repressed episode in American history? That’s okay. In 2022 she showed up to applause the Sky series Irma Vep with Alicia Vikander by Olivier Assayas, an example of meta-cinema? Okay! However The Idol no Please. We understand the need for announced scandals (especially if based on sex), for stars who warm up the red carpet like the poor Lily-Rose Depphowever precisely in Cannes – which claims to be the most important Festival in the world – it is not possible to propose a rehashing of what has already been seen, with dishes ranging from Here is the empire of the senses to Triangle of Sadness. Euphoria of shipwrecks… For us it is no.

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