Does ‘Pacifiction’, the new feature film by Albert Serra, have a chance of winning the Palme d’Or? To tell the truth, very few, despite being among the best fictions that aspire to the award this year and being an abundantly captivating work. As anyone who knows the filmography of the director from Banyoles will understand, that it is his most accessible film -if compared to ‘Història de la meva mort’ (2013) and ‘Libertad’ (2019), for example, it can even be said that he proposes a conventional storytelling – does not prevent him from being a true rarity at the same time, especially capable of opposing more than one member of the jury. However, it is not ruled out that he will achieve his well-deserved presence in the list of winners by virtue of a possible Best Actor award for his protagonist, the Frenchman Benoît Magimel, who is at the center of all his scenes and does an enormous job.
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The character he plays is the highest authority in French Polynesia -‘Pacifiction’ was shot in Tahiti-, an enigmatic guy who, throughout the 165 minutes of footage, becomes convinced that the French government plans not only carry out nuclear tests on the archipelago, but even drop the bomb on it and thus wipe off the map a place that they have squeezed dry. As he watches him investigate the matter, the film progresses between decadent cocktail bars and surfing competitions between giant waves and presents us with a large gallery of characters who are much more silent than they say, many of whom end up reunited in the final dance sequence that David Lynch would gladly sign. Meanwhile, she is alternately intriguing, beautiful, disconcerting, tender, melancholic, seductive, absurd and at times hypnotic. What if she has any chance of winning the Palme d’Or? Rarer things have been seen, but few.
The debutante Sorogoyen
If ‘Pacifiction’ is the fourth film that Serra premieres at Cannes -none of the previous ones, yes, had opted for the Palma-, ‘As Bestas’ marks Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s first appearance at the festival, out of competition. “Perhaps it is positive not to compete, because that way I have no pressure & rdquor ;, comments the Madrid native with the resignation of someone who accepts a boat as an aquatic animal. Starring a French couple who have moved to a Galician village and whose conflict with some neighbors experiences a violent escalation, the film plays the clueless. If during its first part it behaves like a relentless rural ‘thriller’, which reiterates the singular talent of the director both when it comes to managing the narrative rhythm and sustaining an atmosphere of growing tension -occasionally with no more elements than a still camera and a conversation at its center-, in the second it is revealed as “a reflection on the different ways of negotiating confrontations, carried out from a gender perspective and linked to the idea of toxic masculinity & rdquor ;, says Sorogoyen.