As usual, I didnt see the movie that won the Palme d'Or, or better said, I went out of the hall, with the clear suspicion that it will be the one, I stayed for two or three difficult to watch films just because I suspected that they will the selected one (Inarritu's Biutiful, the Ukrainian My Joy / Schastye Moe and the Hungarian Frankenstein A Tender Son), so I missed the reason Uncle Boonmee relives his past lives.
Namely, Lung Boonme Raluek Chat / Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by the Thai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who was in competition in 2004 with Tropical Malady and was awarded the Jury Prize.
The Cannes is often a statement of your mood and when you know that youre still waiting to see two movies that day after having already seen 20, when its sunny outside and beautiful and blue, and the film you are watching advances like a snail towards it collector who will show us how he will slit it, and you are half hangover or have a cold, as in the press room as well as the hall there are all sorts of festival people sneezing into your nose and towards the end of the festival coughing became a sound design so you can easily give up on a film that on other occasions would have his chance, such as Boonmee, presented on the tenth competition day - and this time I also got an exotic Boonmee typw virus, as its been four days and I still didnt recover and my ears are still whizzing after a violent flight.
I went out from Ha Ha Ha as well, the Korean which was awarded Un Certain Regard and I didnt stay for the rescreening of the last day, neither for Des Hommes et des Dieux (About People and Gods), Xavier Beauvois's another mood film, to which I could not focus, and about which people kept on saying that it will win a big prize and, there, it got the Jury Prize.
As I did last year with Haneke's Der Weisse Band, which I see quietly in Bucharest, in the opening of the European Film Festival.
Just as I will see these films, but not at the maximum speed of the festival, where you rush giddily to choose between the 100 films screened in different places, while you still need have food, meet people, to write and continue to run, because, if you stop, you might get into fatal fatigue and exhaustion.
Sleeping on films is common practice at Cannes, just as going out, applauding and booing, but especially sleeping, because the only place where you can rest is in the dark privacy of a theatre hall. And that when mobile phones dont glimmer with messages and emails.
It was a poor edition, everybody said it, but it was an interesting edition, perhaps too politicized. Maybe the worst selection in the seven Cannes editions which we lived, an edition in crisis, but which got the films it could have gotten (the new Terrence Malick, wanted at the festival, The Tree of Life, will be in Venice, just as the new Clint Eastwood).
I regret having I missed Armardillo, the Danish documentary on the war in Afghanistan, awarded in La Semaine de la Critique. And Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun Exodus 2. But the series is not finished, and maybe the third will be presented in Venice, and the first part from 1994, I saw about 12 years ago.
But I saw 27 movies, well, saw is a way of putting it, because I slept during some (half of Kaboom for example), from others I went out, six films, which not so much overall, I saw 11 films out of the 19 in the official competition, and saw the off competition official selections, Robin Hood begins, the new Woody Allen, Ujica's Ceușescu, or Rock'n'roll, ... of corse!, a documentary by Lionel Guedj and Stéphane Bebertal on the Corsican guitarist, founding member of The Police, Henry Padovani.
A world preview, preceded by a concert with The Flying Padovani, Henry's group at the Cinema de la Plaje. I liked a lot the new Kitano (Outrage), the new Ken Loach (Route Irish) and, especially La Casa Muda, seen in the Quinzaine des realisateurs, an horror Uruguayan experiment, Gustavo Hernándezs debut film, which I hoped to be awarded the Camera D'or, filmed in one piece on a digital camera.
I am sorry that Cristi Puiu's Aurora was not in the major competition and that it did not get more positive echoes. It is a film difficult to take, a mood film, that in its three hours is a paroxysmal experience, but a film worth seeing, that stays with you, just like My Joy by Sergei Loznitza, beautifully shot by Oleg Mutu, and Mundruczó Kornél's Frankenstein. For the rest, I rest of my case, Burn By The Sun, Burnt By The Cannes ....
