Cannes: Day One
A recap of my first official day of the 74th edition of the Festival de Cannes, covering screenings of Red Rocket, Verdens Verste Menneske, and Casablanca Beats.
With last night’s first post nerves out of my system, it’s probably worthwhile explaining the 3 jours a Cannes accreditation in more detail. My pass gives me the same level of access as the standard accreditation that’s given to film industry professionals and press, with the only difference being that I’m only permitted to attend the final three days of the festival, rather than the entire fortnight.
The festival screenings are split across three locations. The Palais de Festivals is the Festival de Cannes headquarters; a semi-modern building made of glass and white concrete that sits on a piece of land that flanks one side of the town’s Croisette beach. On the opposite side from the beach is a marina, where millions of pounds worth of boat and yacht sit proudly, flaunting themselves to people like me as we walk past to get to the festival’s accreditation office. The Palais is the centre of the Cannes universe, and is home to the biggest theatres used during the festival. Its crown jewel is the 2,300-seater Grand Théâtre Lumière, which is accessed via the red carpet and normally hosts three world premieres per day during the festival. Screenings at the Lumière are exclusive, and I need to request a ticket, rather than simply book one with instant confirmation like you can for the rest of the screens.
The ticket booking system opened a week before the festival kicked off and I was able to request tickets to the world premieres that would be taking place while I was at the festival, but there is no guarantee you will successfully be granted any tickets. Typically, conflicting advice had been swirling around the 3 jours à Cannes WhatsApp group. Some people say that you should only apply for one or two at most, because your application is given more weighting for the smaller selection of screenings that you have requested. Others say apply for as many you want – go wild – because it gives you a better chance.
After researching the films that would debut while I was at the festival, I decided to apply for three premieres: France, from Bruno Dupont; Casablanca Beats, from Nabil Bayouch; and Emergency Declaration (Bisang Seoneon), from Han Jae-rim. Based on the limited information available, three very different films; the trusty ‘throw enough darts and you will hit a bullseye’ approach in full swing.
As I was lying on the beach yesterday, the day before my first scheduled screenings, an email came through to confirm that my request to attend the Casablanca Beats premiere had been accepted. The red carpet would be conquered. The tuxedo would make an appearance. The £17 Marks & Spencer shirt would have its big day in the sun. More on Casablanca Beats below.
Also accessible with my pass is Les Arcades, a smaller, old-school theatre complex a few blocks away from the Palais. Screenings at Les Arcades are exclusively for people with the 3 jours a Cannes accreditation, and they are a useful way to catch films that premiered earlier in the festival.
New for this year (he says as if he has been before) is Le Cineum, an ultra-modern complex built in 2020 to allow the festival to screen even more films each day. It is located about 2 miles from the centre of Cannes and is accessible via a shuttle bus that is free for accreditation holders. It’s by far the plushest cinema I’ve been to, and that’s where today’s journey began. But before actually catching any films, there was some unfinished business to attend to.
Gainsbourg, me, Brigitte
Picking up where we left off last night, I caught some of the Bastille Day fireworks and arranged to meet up with our friends Gainsbourg and Brigitte at the same – *gulp* – Irish bar as last night. Listen – in my defence, it’s convenient, it’s normally pretty quiet, Wes Anderson (or a lookalike benefitting from the COVID mask policy) was at the bar, and most importantly, Wednesday night is Aperol Spritz night. I’m a sucker for the orange stuff. Sue me.
The one problem with hitting Aperol Spritz night with your new American pals is that you are guaranteed to struggle to make your 9:30am screening the following morning; especially when it’s at the new Le Cineum complex; a 20-minute drive away. Predictably, I didn’t wake with a spring in my step and a sprightly lust for life. I barely made it, and had to forgo the free shuttle bus for an Uber, because I was running late.
So what was the first film I managed to see at Cannes?
Red Rocket
Red Rocket centres on ex-pornstar Mikey Saber, who returns to his home town in Texas after a successful 17-year stint working in the adult film industry in Los Angeles. He rocks up at the home of his estranged wife and mother-in-law, convincing them to let him re-enter their simple life, which revolves around watching TV, struggling to pay rent for their two-bedroom trailer-slash-home, and smoking the odd crack pipe.
Saber comes across as a loveable schemer who charismatically manipulates those around him to get what he wants: a place to stay, a car ride into town, or for another person to take the rap for a terrible crime that he’s been involved in. You know, standard stuff.
He is played by Simon Rex, who isn’t a household name, but you might recognise his face. Take a closer look – can you remember where you know him from?
That’s right. Scary Movie 3. I’m not sure how things came together for Rex to be cast in this film, but he nails the performance. Rex’s Sabre has the right amount of delusion, confidence, and neurotic energy to be fully convincing as someone who has dominated the porn industry (five AVN awards, as he keeps reminding everyone) yet managed to do something that sees him end up back in Texas City at the start of the film.
As he starts to settle back into life in Texas, Saber meets a nearly-18-year-old redhead working in the local donut shop, and he believes he has seen the future of porn. He befriends young Raylee (played by Suzanna Son), whose nickname, Strawberry, further convinces Saber that this girl is destined for a career in the adult film business (‘she already has the name!’).
On the surface, Red Rocket is a funny, quirky film that draws on aspects of everything from Lolita to Clerks 2, yet Baker’s decision to set the plot against the backdrop of a Southern industrial heartland during the 2016 US presidential election allows him to thread a subtle commentary on some of the current issues faced by working class Americans. As the third act throws in a moment completely from left field – or the left lane (you’ll understand when you watch it) – the film reaches a satisfactory conclusion that avoids some of the usual corner-cutting and sugar-coating that can often be found in the ending of films with unusual plotlines.
I originally gave Red Rocket five stars, in what would have been a first perfect score in Sound:as history, but took a few hours to calm down and talked myself off of the ledge. Five stars needs to be reserved for your all-time favourite films and iconic classics only, but Red Rocket nails everything it tries to do: it’s funny yet tense, has perfect pacing, and is beautifully shot against the backdrop of Texan sunshine; that Deep South heat practically oozing from the screen. Or maybe the air-con in the Cannes theatre was acting up.
Verdens Verste Menneske
(The Worst Person in the World)
Joachim Trier’s latest film follows Julie (Renate Reinsve) as she navigates through her late twenties, making life decisions that seem like the right ones in the moment, but that always seem to end up making her life continue to crumble to the ground just a little bit quicker.
The film is packaged as a prologue, 12 main chapters, and an epilogue. In the prologue, we meet Julie as she studies medicine at university in Oslo. But then she realises she doesn’t want to study the human body, she wants to study the human brain, so she switches her university studies to psychology. A while later, Julie is flicking through the pictures on her iPhone and realises she really likes the visual medium; the enjoyment of perfectly framing your subject matter in a picture. So she scraps psychology, and trains to become a photographer.
The prologue is designed to show us Julie’s impulsive nature; how she can jump between things easily. These impulsive career changes conveniently set us up for the main 12 chapters of the film; which centre on Julie entering a relationship with a man about 15 years her senior, cartoonist Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie). Though they are ostensibly happy, they often battle over their different views on their approach to life and what they want for their future: whether they want kids, what they do for fun, and how they socialise.
A chance encounter leads Julie to meet Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) at a party. Eivind is the same age as Julie, and they spend the night falling for each other by exploring every possible conversation topic and silly game to keep them occupied without actually cheating on their respective partners. They agree to withhold their last names, so neither person can seek the other out on social media, meaning they can keep the night as a fond memory without the temptation for anything more.
As you would expect, that’s not how things pan out, and another encounter results in Julie leaving Aksel for Eivind. After that moment, just about everything starts to go wrong for everyone involved.
It’s not that there’s any suggestion of some sort of supernatural force of karma that is punishing Julie – it’s the opposite. Trier’s film is blunt in its position that this is just how life works. You do things that seem like the right idea, and they can backfire. Good people can get hurt. Good people can get ill. Good people’s lives don’t always pan out the way they want them to.
Verdens Verste Menneske started brilliantly, moving through the prologue and first few chapters with impressive style. The soundtrack can set a film apart and take it to a new level, and the first hour of Verdens Verste Mennesk contains a constant flow of upbeat popular music that perfectly supplements Julie’s actions on screen. The film peaks as Julie decides to end her relationship with Aksel and pursue something with Eivind, as Trier deploys a freeze-frame/still-life effect, with Julie running through Oslo while everyone else around her is frozen in time. It’s not the first time we’ve seen it in a film, and it won’t be the last, but it’s executed perfectly here.
Up until this moment, I was daydreaming about recommending this film to friends and family; a genuine belief that it would resonate with virtually anyone who watched it. Unfortunately, Verdens Verste Mennesk never returns to the slick style that lead up to that moment. It’s understandable that Trier leaves more of the light-hearted elements behind as aspects of Julie’s life begin to unravel, but it makes the second half of the film a bit of a slog, and fun pop music moments and quick camera cuts make way for longer conversational scenes. I’ve got a feeling that this was a bit of film fatigue setting in; maybe it would be different on a rewatch.
I was disappointed – but also relieved. My initial five star rating of Red Rocket was still intact as I was watching Verdens Verste Mennesk, and the first 45 minutes of the film had me worried that I was going to have to issue two five star reviews having never broken the four out of five barrier before.
The old ‘waiting for a bus and then two show up at once’ patter. It wasn’t to be.
Casablanca Beats
Nabil Ayouch’s latest film is a semi-fictional story centring on an arts centre in Morocco, where teenagers from a notorious neighbourhood known to have produced terrorists and suicide bombers use rap and hip-hop to take a different path in life. Ayouch draws from his own experience in Morocco, and real kids and young adults from the neighbourhood of Sidi Moumen play on-screen versions of themselves. Real-life rapper Anas Basbousi plays an ex-rapper, also named Anas, who has taken a job as a teacher at the town’s arts centre, but still lives in his car out of necessity.
Casablanca Beats is not the Moroccan version of School of Rock; it does not swap Dewey Finn’s obsession for classic rock for Anas’ passion for hip-hop and rap. Light-hearted comparison aside, my issue with the film is that it doesn’t feel like there was any notable character arc or development of the young students’ skills from the beginning of the film up to its conclusion. There is no introduction of hip-hop and rap, no scene that shows Anas demonstrating why this is the music they should listen to and make; they are already rapping when he walks into their lives.
Ayouch has said that he didn’t want to make a documentary, so decided to transpose the real-life experience of these kids into a fictionalised account of the work they are doing in Morocco. The problem for me is that the film is presented as a fictional film but doesn’t show the kids’ transition from pre-rap, to them getting on board and honing their talent, and then being fully-fledged. The ideas seem under-developed, with some individual moments where the classroom rapping is presented as something with a much bigger production – almost what the kids see in their head when performing – being highlights, but this approach isn’t used enough.
I feel bad for the low score and think part of it is the difficulty with lyrics resonating with you when they are in a different language. Reading rap lyrics as subtitles and being unable to appreciate the actual delivery - unable to feel the emotion or have the punchlines land instantly - stunts the enjoyment of the musical moments as a non-Arabic speaker. Clearly that’s on me and shouldn’t detract from the film itself, but it left Casablanca Beats feeling very empty to me. The lyrics weren’t good enough to be effective when you are only reading them at the bottom of the screen.
Casablanca Beats does succeed in opening your eyes to the very real struggle that millions of young adults in the Middle East face. You normally have two traditional choices; follow religion in an appropriate yet-restrictive way, or follow it in a fundamentalist, aggressive way. What Casablanca Beats shows us is that there is an alternative to this, that you can strive for something different, via your love of music.
Aside from the disappointment of Casablanca Beats as a film, the premiere itself was a surreal experience. Shuffling through the red-carpet security and then walking past the gang of photographers and up the steps to Cannes’ biggest theatre – it’s not something I thought I would ever have the chance to do.
There is a strict no pictures policy on the red-carpet so I don’t have much to show for the walk itself, though I might have snuck a sneaky five seconds of video that may make it into a post-Cannes video that could be in the works. Stay tuned. Dear Cannes security: if you are reading this, the above is a parody. Please don’t revoke my access.
As for day two, I've got two words for you: Bill Murray.