Glamor and politics: Cannes sent a message of support to filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, banned from leaving Russia, before a bus crammed with stars, from Tilda Swinton to Adrian Brody via Lyna Khoudri landed and set the carpet on fire red for Wes Anderson’s latest film.
It is indeed on board a bus that the headliners of “The French Dispatch”, in the running for the Palme d’Or, arrived. On the red carpet, Bill Muray, Panama on his head, Timothée Chalamet in an indefinable silver suit with pink iridescence, or Tilda Swinton in an orange sheath dress, fitted pink suit jacket and gold sleeves.
Léa Seydoux on the other hand, tested positive several days ago for the coronavirus, was unable to come to Cannes for this film, the first of the four that they must present there this year.
The film, applauded for more than six minutes at the gala session, will delight admirers of the work of Wes Anderson, a filmmaker with an unparalleled universe, renowned for his obsession with detail and symmetry and whose works such as “On board the Darjeeling Limited “,” Aquatic Life “or” Isle of Dogs “spread a sweet and tender melancholy.
“The French Dispatch” features a collection of stories taken from the latest issue of an American magazine, published in a fictitious French town of the 20th century, and is the occasion for Wes Anderson to express his love of journalism and France – postcard version from the 1960s.
Empty chair
The mood was quite different a few hours earlier, with the screening of the other film in competition, “Petrov’s Fever”. In contention for the Palme d’Or but blocked in his country due to a criminal conviction, Kirill Serebrennikov was unable to walk the red carpet.
Its actors climbed the famous steps with their chest adorned with a red badge bearing their initials, “KS”, as a sign of support, and were welcomed at their summit by the President of the Festival Pierre Lescure and the General Delegate Thierry Frémaux who also wore.
“I love you, I am proud to be in your film,” actress Chulpan Khamatova said on the red carpet, stressing that the film swings “between the Soviet past, the future, and what is happening now. “. During the screening, the hit armchair of the Russian director, considered one of the most daring of his generation but punished for his effrontery, remained empty, as in 2017 during the presentation of “Leto” – he was at the period under house arrest.
“I would like to thank everyone who is here. This is the first time that I am showing my film. I am obviously delighted and I am celebrating this 21st century which, thanks to new technologies, allows us to be together”, reacted to at the end of the screening the filmmaker, to whom the floor was given in the room via a very short live video.
For “Petrov’s Fever”, the filmmaker had to spend his days in a Moscow court for his trial, which he describes as “Kafkaesque”, and was filmed at night. The result is a long, alcoholic stroll through a city plagued by a flu epidemic. Visually very rich, with feverish editing, with sequence shots that are a feat, the film combines a raw look at the violence of contemporary society, towards its children and foreigners in particular, and a form of nostalgia for the past, discussed in black and white sequences.
We meet, pell-mell, a librarian who fights like in The Matrix, a hearse whose dead person does not keep still, and quantities of drunkards …
In the evening, the show will finally be on the beach for fans of stunts and chases, with the screening, two days before its French release of “Fast and Furious 9”, the new opus of the motorized saga with Vin Diesel. And because life in Cannes isn’t all about the movies, the police have announced that they are investigating a theft of jewelry from a hotel room from British actress Jodie Turner-Smith. The value of the loot is still unknown.
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