the swedish director Ruben Östlund calls for auteur cinema that is capable of entertaining and, after winning this Saturday with ‘Triangle of Sadness’ his second Palme d’Orpointed out the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel as a reference artist.
When I was studying cinema, from 1998 to 2001, I thought that auteur cinema ‘had become a bit boring by dealing with important issues in a serious way’, but the Spanish films, he pointed out at a press conference, “were entertaining at the same time.”
Bunuel (1900-1983) won in Cannes the Palme d’Or ‘ex aquo’ in 1961 for ‘Viridiana’; the award for best direction in 1951 for ‘Los Olvidados’; the International Prize in 1959 for ‘Nazarín’ and the distinction of international critics in 1962 for ‘El Ángel exterminador’.
For Östlund, his Palme d’Or at the closing this Saturday of the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is the second, after ‘The Square’ in 2017. He obtains it with a scatological and incorrect comedy that serves as a satire against capitalism, luxury and the obsession with image.
‘Someone said that the first Palme d’Or could be an accident, but the second…’ joked the director, who in the Un Certain Regard section, the second most important at Cannes, also presented ‘De ofrivilliga’ (2008) and ‘Snow Therapy’ (2014).
Movies set in luxury ski resorts (‘Snow Therapy’), in art galleries (‘The Square’) or on exclusive cruise ships (‘Triangle of Sadness’), attractive places with which he said he wanted to draw the public’s attention.
In his next film, of which advanced that it will be called ‘The Entertainment System is Down’play with those aspirational enclaves.
It will take place on a long flight whose crew calls for an emergency landing because the entertainment system has gone down and he realizes ‘how dangerous this lack of stimuli is at the moment’.
‘You take the public to an attractive place and force them to discuss those issues’added the filmmaker, who finds it interesting how the change of context changes behaviors, influences hierarchies and can force them to be rebuilt.
Östlund also recalled that he grew up in the seventies and that at home they were frequent political discussions in a world that was divided between two blocs, East and West. “It was like having two soccer teams, you belonged to one or the other instead of taking the good of each system,” said the director, a supporter of “overcoming that thinking of the two teams.”