For all the talk about how this was a mediocre year at the Cannes Film Festival, I think I personally saw a higher ratio of good to garbage than is my festival norm. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna-ish; maybe I just went in with lower expectations. Regardless: though certainly I saw films too mediocre to merit mention, it seemed like every day brought at least one new movie that deserved to have the living hell championed out of it. The following list is thus not ranked necessarily by absolute quality, but by how fervently I feel the need to shout the praises of the film in question––in some cases, in opposition to overwhelming derision or indifference.
1. Everything is Fine (above) — This French-Canadian drama, about a suicide pact between four teenage friends and the enigmatic boy left behind, was the true undiscovered gem of this year’s Market. Both cautiously romantic and devastatingly sad, its greatest achievement is the way in which it naturalisticaly depicts a teenager’s personal tragedies (those legitimately large and those that just seem that way) without condescension nor nostalgia. As far as I know, it left the Marche without any form of U.S. distribution.
2. Frontier of Dawn –– It wasn’t the most maligned film in competition––nothing could top the press corps’ universal disdain for Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting––but Philippe Garrel’s richly-layered story of the ultimate doomed romance may have been the most misunderstood. Those who complain of the supernatural turn taken by Garrel’s epic in its third half (and, particularly, the silent-era effects used to achieve it) mostly refuse to engage with the film on its own terms. See my full review here.
3. La Vie Moderne — James Toback’s conceptually repulsive Tyson got all the attention, but Raymond Depardon’s third portrait of French dairy farmers was Un Certain Regard’s truly worthy non-fiction standout. See my full review here.
4. Un Conte De Noel –– The biggest knockout at Cannes in terms of sheer filmmaking virtuosity, the film otherwise known as A Christmas Tale almost certainly would have been the press corps’ choice for Palme D’or if we had been given a vote. With its extended opening setpiece of expository whimsy, Arnaud Desplechin’s tale of a dysfunctional family full of geniuses somewhat reluctantly thrust together by a parent’s illness seems like it’s dancing dangerously close to French Royal Tenenbaums territory. But even as Desplechin’s stylistic tics travel beyond immediately explicable territory, it’s ultimately his phenomenally layered characters that stay with you and, even after 170 minutes, make you long for more. There’s so much going on in this film that I need to see it again before I can write a full review; in the meantime, check out collated coverage at GreenCine Daily.
5. Summer Hours – Assayas paradoxically manages to say more about contemporary global capitalism’s erosion of Frenchness in this tender, wistful family drama than in any of his recent films overtly concerned with techno-multiculturalism. See my full review here.
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