Cannes 2010: Day 2



Aurora (Un Certain Regard), If there were two films that I would have swapped into the Competition, it would be this one and Picco from the Directors’ Fortnight, which I’ll get to later. I have significant issues with both films, but these were the two most provocative films I saw in Cannes, a trait that was missed in the Competition films this year (maybe the Godard would fit that category, too, but I think that one was too baffling to make anyone angry). Aurora, while still very realistic, simple, and in the end grounded in a familial crisis, stands out from most of the Romanian trend in its bleakness, austerity, and (implied) violence. For the vast majority of its three hours, we watch a man doing something. He trades who-knows-what with shady people, collects what appears to be gun parts, and glares vehemently at his co-workers and housemates. A sense of methodical evil and misanthropy is prevalent, but it’s rarely engaging, and often supremely tedious, not only because Puiu is intentionally never letting the viewer in on what the hell this guy is up to, but because this slow-paced rampage is not as chilling or seductive as I felt it aspired to be. It reminded me quite a bit of Haneke in its approach to cinematic violence, and the viewers’ roles as spectators, inquisitors, and investigators, yearning for the motivations and explanations for what drives the character to commit these crimes. Alas, in a scene that formally recalls the ending of Police, Adjective, we get a glimpse, albeit a very, very brief one, of an answer to the question we have been seeking for the last three, grueling hours: Why? The problem, though, is that by the time we’d arrived to this finger-wagging conclusion, I’d long stopped caring. I love that Puiu went all out in attempting to make a film like this, and I have no doubt that it is exactly as it was intended to be, perhaps even how it ought to be. I just wish I felt a reason to see it again, or wouldn’t feel like an asshole for recommending it to someone.



Little Baby Jesus of Flandr (Directors’ Fortnight), one of the big disappointments for me this year (which, really, considering it was a debut student film that took Birdsong and made the wise men three guys with Down syndrome (as well as pretty much every other member of the cast), is pretty inexplicable, I know). The thing is that this kind of twisted religious allegory thing, if done well, is really appealing to me, for the same reason that Birdsong was really appealing to me. Unfortunately, all of the ways that this could have been bad are very much present. The script seems to be improvised by the ‘actors’ on the spot, or were they just dicking around while Van den Berghe filmed them unknowingly? Van den Berghe seems to have spent most of his time behind the camera trying to ape the look and feel of Tarkovsky and Jodorowsky. The film is in black and white except for a non-sequitous, college-level-understanding version of Mulholland Dr.‘s Club Silencio scene that is ‘strangely’ in color. This is the only film of the festival that I was actively embarrassed for during most of the screening, knowing that the filmmaker and his exploited cast were in attendance to hear and feel their project fall flat.



The Housemaid (Competition), it’s difficult to know what to to do with it, especially since I have not seen the original 60s version. I do not know the manner in which Im’s film ‘inverts’ the original scenario (nor how the scenario in Im’s film could be inverted). I can say that its a fun genre film that doesn’t focus too much on big ideas, and goes absolutely bizerk in the final minutes, to the point where I thought I was watching a Sam Raimi film. This is in Cinemax territory in the sex department; and light on dramatic or erotic tension, but it’s amusing and insubstantially fluffy, and something I actually ENJOYED watching (see above…).



More Cannes Coverage:

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11