Only three days to go until the jury’s verdict and still too many movies to watch. Yesterday evening some heavy rain refreshed the Croisette. While many cinephiles were disappointed by the cancellation of the evening public screening of Strictly Ballroom by Baz Luhrman on the beach, the premiere’s spectators walked safely on the red carpet, at most disturbed by a shower of flashes. On the big screen of the Grand Theatre Lumièere, they had the chance to enjoy L’innocent by Louis Garrell and Nostalgia by Mario Martone.
Despite the fear, today, the return of sunshine blessed the traditional mayo’s lunch for the press. In the old uptown square, under the shade of the maritime pines next to the old clock tower, a Provençal meal was accompanied by the local marching band strumming some scores of the most epic movies of all times. And after two glasses of rosé wine, the danger of closing the eyes in the darkness of the screening room was real. However, Leila’s Brothers, the third narrative feature by the young Iranian-born director Saeed Roustaee, magnetized everyone’s attention.
L’innocent by Louis Garrel
With L’Innocent, Louis Garrel masters a romantic thriller with the lightness typical of French comedies, without ever descending into the yet too common, for this genre, sexism or racism. In this by now typical one-man show, where he is not only directing but also writing the script and acting, Louis Garrell plays Abel, a depressed control freak trying to protect his mother, and himself, from life. To get him out of this (un)comfort zone, there are three powerful “therapists”: his mother Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg) married to Michel (Roschdy Zem), a convicted theatre student of hers, and Abel’s hilarious best friend Clèmon (Noémie Merlant). Based on Garrell’s personal experience, the spectator often wonders how much of the movie is fiction and how much the actual director’s personal cathartic process. L’innocent is playing out of competition, while Garrell also stars in Les Amandiers by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi competing for the Palm d’Or.
Nostalgia di Mario Martone
Napoli, Rione Sanità. After forty years abroad, Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) goes back to the neighborhood he grew up in, only to realize that nothing has changed. Or maybe this is only his wish. In a parallel and non-linear process of redemption/damnation, the protagonist is hunted by the ghosts of the past. However, among the tight alleys of his beloved Sanità, he will also find motley humanity ready to welcome and protect him. Those secondary characters are actual inhabitants of what is considered one of the most degraded urban areas of Italy. In Nostalgia, based on the homonymous book by Ermanno Rea, Martone’s documentarist approach blends poetically into an homage to Italian neorealism. Especially in some very delicate scenes, like those when Felice takes care of his old, almost blind, mother. Thus, as well as the mastery in switching from an Arabic-echoing Italian to a tight Neapolitan dialect, at times even within the same sentence, prove Pierfrancesco Favino’s actorly maturity.