After 6 years of absence and 17 years of sobriety, the Finnish master Aki Kauriosmaki retraces the steps of his famous ‘‘trilogy of the losers’’ (‘‘Drifting Clouds’’ – 1996 , ‘‘The Man Without a Past’’ – 2002 , ‘‘Lights in the Dusk’’ – 2006). He is competing for the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival with ‘‘Fallen Leaves’’, a poignant and melancholic masterpiece about the shattered destiny of two marginalized people who are desperately trying to sketch out a love story in which the burlesque desputes it to the tragic.
What is the most inelegant and unforgivable thing Maïwenn has done? Pulling Edwy Plenel’s hair out or plunging the opening of the 76th Cannes Film Festival with her insipid and very disappointing “Jeanne du Barry”?
This biopic inspired by the life of Louis XV’s last favourite, whose flatness contrasts with the pomp and flamboyance of the Versailles setting, unfortunately failed to embody the complex personality of Jeanne du Barry, who was both light-hearted and non-conformist, audacious and clumsy.
What is the most inelegant and unforgivable thing Maïwenn has done? Pulling Edwy Plenel’s hair out or plunging the opening of the 76th Cannes Film Festival with her insipid and very disappointing “Jeanne du Barry”?
The opening ceremony of the 75th Cannes International Film Festival was marked by a surprise live intervention by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who called on the new generation of filmmakers to confront dictators, as Charlie Chaplin had done with his satire of Adolf Hitler in “The Great Dictator” (1940)
In a poignant speech that marked the opening ceremony of the 75th Cannes Film Festival, French actor Vincent Lindon, who chairs the official competition jury, distinguished himself with an ode to the committed and civic cinema he has described as a “weapon of massive emotion”, whose function is to “awaken consciences and shake up indifference”.
Lindon, who has repeatedly moved the Croisette through social and militant films – from “La Loi du marché » (The Law of the Market), 2005, which won him the Best Actor Award’ to ‘’en guerre’’At War), 2018 – urged the cinema to “speak loud and clear the voice of the voiceless”, saying that “even if it amounts to scooping, with a thimble, the hull of a ship which fills up in waves, our strength is is that we believe in it, and that your works are immortal”.
Here is the full verbatim of this speech which will remain, for a long time, in the memories of festival-goers and lovers of the seventh art.
