The Italian director Nanni Moretti bathed in melancholy this Wednesday with the film “The Sun of the Future”, in competition for the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
At 69, Moretti is a regular filmmaker at the French festival, where he won the award in 2001 with “The Son’s Room”, a film with a much more somber tone.
Moretti has made a specialty of playing himself, and in this new opportunity he not only questions himself as an artist, as a father and as a husband, but also shoots his darts against Italian politics, online film platforms and even the cinema of others.
A somewhat maniacal author prepares a film about a local communist leader in Italy in the 1950s, but his obsessions prevent him from completing the shoot.
Back in Cannes this year, a “film within a film”, mixing reality with fantasy.
“There is no sadness” in the film, this veteran director, who some define as a European Woody Allen, assures AFP. “There is joy in creating things, in imagining them, and humor,” he adds.
“I hope it’s not a will!” he exclaims in reference to this film.
Cannes has welcomed several creators this year in the fall of their respective careers, such as the Italian Marco Bellocchio, or the British Ken Loach.
“The Sun of the Future” questions in particular the role of the Italian Communist Party in the face of the Soviet repression of Hungary in 1956, although Moretti’s attitude towards the communist ideal itself is ambivalent throughout the film.
An elderly man in crisis, Moretti breaks into the shootings of other filmmakers to give lessons, exasperating his wife, who plans to leave him, while the daughter appears before her parents with a most peculiar boyfriend.
The jury for the Palme d’Or (21 films in competition) will give its verdict on Saturday, May 27.
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2023-05-25 00:30:07
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