Cannes: Day Two
A recap of my second day in Cannes, covering racy period drama Benedetta, a Q&A with an Academy Award-winning director, and almost being hit with a rose thrown by Bill Murray.
After a whirlwind first day of screenings – the 9am Uber dash to the new Cineum complex for Red Rocket, experiencing the red-carpet and Casablanca Beats world premiere, and peeling off a sweaty tuxedo post-premiere – I was ready for day two to be a bit more relaxed.
In line with my ‘try to see some films that might not normally appeal but fit into the typical Cannes mould’ policy (need to get a snappier name for that policy), the first screening that I booked for day two was Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, at Les Arcades cinema. There was considerable buzz about this film – from the people I’ve spoken to at the festival and in the 3 jours à Cannes WhatsApp group – and it’s easy to understand why everyone was scrambling for a ticket to this screening.
Benedetta is a ‘true story’ about a Nun in 17th century Italy who joins an all-woman church convent, which leads to some interesting lifestyle developments: she discovers her homosexuality and begins a raunchy lesbian relationship with another member of the convent, and she experiences religious hallucinations and unexplainable injuries that resemble those that our old friend Jesus Christ suffered when he was crucified. These injuries convince the other members of the convent that she is a spiritual figure, chosen by God to represent him and his wishes on earth. It’s a rollercoaster few months for our young nun protagonist; a lot of change to deal with. It reminded me of 2015, when T in the Park moved from Balado to Strathallan Castle. Very overwhelming for any young person to carry the weight of. Review below (of Benedetta, not T in the Park 2015).
I grabbed lunch in the hour that I had free between the lesbian love story and my next event: a Q&A with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen, best known as the director of 12 Years a Slave. The Q&A was part of the Rendezvous series organised by the festival, where notable actors and filmmakers appear to talk about their careers and take questions from the audience. Alongside McQueen, this year’s Rendezvous line-up featured Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, and Marco Bellocchio.
McQueen was extremely engaging as he discussed his filmmaking process, his inspirations and influences, and his views on some of the current film industry hot topics. He’s incredibly straightforward and direct, and he avoided giving clichéd or formulaic answers to the questions asked by the Canal+ interviewer and audience members. And no, I didn’t ask him anything.
After the daily COVID test, I was back at my apartment to finish my summary of day 1 at Cannes with one eye on the clock. I was in such a rush that I even had to resort to something that I would never do outside of the most dire of circumstances; something to save time that would otherwise be spent making dinner or eating in a restaurant. I got a kebab. And it was goooood.
You’ll be relieved to know that I made it on time for my final screening of the day: the world premiere of New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilization. Rather than a work of fiction, New Worlds is a concert film that shows the final show from the European tour of a very unusual musical quartet: actor Bill Murray, world-renowned cellist Jan Vogler, violinist Mira Wang and pianist Vanessa Perez. Murray sings and performs readings while he’s backed by the trio of world-class classical musicians, mixing virtuosic musical performances with comedy and fun.
To call the night a unique experience would be massively underselling it. Bill Murray has a close association with Cannes, so the festival used the premiere as a chance to honour the man himself, calling the night A Tribute to Bill Murray. Murray and the rest of the band arrived to a standing ovation from the crowd, taking their seats about 20 feet away from mine. After what looked like an uncomfortably long time waving to show his appreciation for the applause for the famously down-to-earth Murray, we took our seats and watched the performance.
After the film and another standing ovation, Cannes festival chief Thierry Frémaux appeared on stage to announce the night’s worst kept secret. Given the news had already been announced on the Festival de Cannes’ Facebook page and that the musicians had walked in carrying their violin and cello cases, Frémaux seemed to be the only one who still thought the news was a big secret. Not that I was complaining: the quartet would be performing on-stage.
The performance on-screen was one thing, but seeing – and hearing – this unconventional-yet-breath-taking approach to live performance was really something else. A genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Only in Cannes.
Benedetta
Benedetta – from Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven – follows young nun Benedetta (Virginie Efira) as she joins a nun convent in 17th century Pescia, Italy. She is devoted to her faith, demonstrated by her obsession with mentioning the Virgin Mary constantly throughout the opening of the film. Benedetta’s obsession with all-things religion continue as she begins to have hallucinatory experiences involving Jesus, which impact her both physically and mentally; her mind is no longer present in the room, yet her body is moving in the same way as she thinks she is in her visions.
These prophetic moments continue and eventually leave Benedetta in pain, as she physically bares the injuries that she suffers in her visions. This leads some of the nun convent to become convinced that Benedetta has been sent by God himself, that she is blessed; Saint Benedetta.
Benedetta’s injuries mean she requires close care, and new convent resident Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) volunteers for the role. She has joined the church after being raped by her father and brothers, and lusts after Benedetta. While Benedetta becomes a prominent figure in the convent, the pair quickly risk everything to break the ultimate 17th century taboo – a same sex relationship.
But not so fast… the current top dog of the convent is the Abbess (which I assume is a word for female-convent-priest-boss?), played by Charlotte Rampling, who isn’t convinced by Benedetta’s seemingly holy calling. Her daughter (Louise Chevillotte) is equally suspicious, and the pair look to thwart Benedetta’s rise to Saint status, and expose the lesbian lovers.
As you may have gathered from the above – this film is ridiculous. I haven’t checked what is true in this apparent ‘true story’, but I have to assume it ends with a nun named Benedetta and the fact that religion and the bubonic plague did exist in 17th century Italy. The good thing is that Verhoeven simply can’t be serious with this film, so if you treat as a light-hearted satire, then it’s a lot of fun.
And it must be satire. There’s no way that the split-second pause before a ridiculous punchline isn’t intentional. There’s no way this isn’t a tongue-in-cheek look at the traditional, dry period dramas that viewers may be used to. There is practically a wink directly into the camera when a character justifies anything they do or say by claiming it is the ‘will of God’, something that nobody has a rebuttal for in this world where religion trumps all else.
If it isn’t a satirical look at Christianity and costume dramas, Benedetta comes close to full blown comedy. The lesbian references border on the ridiculous, as Verhoeven frames Benedetta’s introduction to the possibility of an interest in women as she is crushed by a Virgin Mary statue and the statue’s breast lands right in front of her face. That’s about enough, right? Nope – young Benedetta puts her lips around the statue’s nipple.
If you’re still not convinced, all I’ll say is this. A foot-long statue of the Virgin Mary is carved into the shape of a dildo.
If that’s not comedy, then what is?
Rendezvous avec Steve McQueen
As part of the festival’s Rendezvous avec series, Cannes played host to a Q&A session with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sir Steve McQueen.
Born in London in 1969, McQueen’s creative career began as a virtual artist; he gained recognition by making abstract short films that were show via projections on to art gallery walls. In 1999, McQueen was awarded the Turner Prize, a prestigious yet polarizing award presented to honour a British artist’s achievements in visual art. McQueen was stationed in Iraq as an official war artist in 2006, and a year later released a collection of stamps that honoured British soldiers killed in the Middle East – a project titled Queen and Country.
McQueen shifted his focus to feature films, and in 2008 he directed and co-wrote Hunger; a drama about the hunger strikes of imprisoned Irish republicans during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Hunger gave viewers their first look at a Steve McQueen feature film, and their first look at Michael Fassbender – a frequent McQueen collaborator who has appeared in three of his four films – as Bobby Sands. The film premiered at Cannes and was critically acclaimed – McQueen was awarded the Camera d’Or, the festival’s prestigious prize for first-time filmmakers. Shame – about a sex addict (again played by Michael Fassbender) whose life is impacted by the reappearance of his estranged sister (Carey Mulligan) – followed three years later.
Hunger and Shame expertly deal with the complex human issues that each film focuses on, and McQueen’s next release continued along the same path. 12 Years a Slave was released in 2013 to near-universal acclaim, winning Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards and making McQueen the first black person to win this award as a producer. The film – which won 3 Oscars in total – is based on the 1853 slave memoir of Solomon Northup, and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a black man living in America who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. This was clearly McQueen’s most personal project to date; he stated during his Q&A that he is a direct descendent from African-American slaves and had his own experiences with racism whilst growing up as a black man in England.
In 2018, McQueen released Widows – a heist film set in Chicago starring Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez – which featured on several year-end Top 10 lists and earned Davis a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress. His latest project is Small Axe, a five-part collection of films focusing on the various experiences of West Indian immigrants living in England in the 70s and 80s. McQueen received a knighthood in the Queen’s 2020 New Year Honours list for services to film.
The Rendezvous avec session was hosted by a journalist from Canal+, who asked McQueen about an array of topics before opening up to the audience for questions. A key thread throughout the session was McQueen’s process for making films and how he actually makes sure they get released, given their often-serious and controversial subject matter. He feels that Obama being elected as US president paved the way for 12 Years a Slave, and it’s extremely eye-opening to think that it took a black man being elected to the highest office in America for film studios to be willing to make a film with a black protagonist. McQueen honed in on this point – highlighting how films with black protagonists were very rarely being made before 12 Years a Slave made $200m at the worldwide box office, proving that people would actually be interested in seeing them. He highlighted films like Selma and Moonlight, which he felt wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for 12 Years a Slave paving the way for more black-centric films. It wasn’t something I had considered before, but it’s hard to think of many films that focused on black experience and received the critical and financial recognition that they deserved before 2013.
McQueen also covered his background in visual arts and revealed that his next film will be set 60 years ago, so likely sometime in the 1960s. He talked about his love for Cannes and lamented his experience at the festival in 2008, saying he genuinely misses that period of his life; an introduction to the highest echelon of cinema and the premiere of his first feature film. The director said that the moment he knew things were different at Cannes was witnessing a fistfight between two festivalgoers over a passionate disagreement about their contrasting opinions of a particular film.
McQueen left us with one message, a simple mantra that pushed him into feature films: if you sit still, nothing happens. If you move, something will.
To be sitting in the same room as McQueen, having started this website in February – those words resonated with me.
New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilisation
Where to begin with this. The world premiere of New Worlds: The Cradle of Civilisation doubled as a celebration of Bill Murray, a tribute to a Cannes favourite. That said, you could call Bill Murray an anywhere favourite; the world’s favourite.
New Worlds is a concert film which captures the final show of the European tour of one of the most unique and interesting musical quartets the world has ever seen. World-renowned cellist Jan Vogler is backed by the equally world-class violinist Mira Wang and pianist Vanessa Perez, as they churn out recognisable classical pieces from the likes of Bach, coupled with string versions of popular music hits, and even some Broadway musical numbers. Seeing these three perform would be worth any entry fee, but they are there in a supporting capacity - as a backing band for actor Bill Murray.
Murray sings, recites sections from famous books, and tells impromptu stories of his own. Given his background as an actor and comedian, these recitals are not dry, run-of-the-mill readings. Murray voices the characters from each piece with his own version of their accents, he makes jokes in-between songs, and he walks through the crowd with a large bouquet of roses, throwing them into the audience.
A particular highlight was his recital of a passage from Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. I’m not going to pretend I’d recognise every Hemingway passage – I got lucky; A Moveable Feast is the only Hemingway book I have read. The book covers Hemingway’s time living in Paris in the 1920s, when the French capital was the centre of the creative universe. Figures like Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Claude Monet all lived in the city during the roaring twenties, moving in the same circles, loving, hating, and warring with one another. Murray recites a comedic passage about Hemingway meeting artist Jules Pascin while he has dinner in one of Paris’ hottest cafés with two sisters; giving a voice to each of the three other characters and making each punchline jump from the page.
To add an extra layer of genuine amazement at what we are seeing on screen, the unusual combination of creative output on stage is filmed against the backdrop of the three-thousand-year-old Pantheon coliseum in Athens, Greece. Has there ever been a more unique concert committed to film?
Having entered the Debussy Theatre to a hero’s welcome, then received a hero’s ovation at the end of the film, Murray, Vogler, Wang, and Perez walk on stage to another rousing reception. A Steinway & Sons grand piano has been wheeled on stage and the others take their places in the same formation as we have just seen on screen.
Then we see it all over again.
Witnessing this performance in the flesh, feeling the acoustic instruments instead of the film’s recorded audio from the theatre’s speakers, and hearing Murray’s jokes that were tailored for Cannes took things to a new level of excellence.
A completely unexpected rendition of ‘Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond’ was undoubtedly the highlight of the night. It was genuinely emotional, though understandably so given the affinity any Scottish person has for the song that gets wheeled out at every wedding, birthday party, or Hampden half time. The song always resonates with a proud Scot, but this rendition was different – being backed by the haunting solo cello of a world-famous classical musician, the feeling of being on my own in Cannes, the backdrop of being abroad during COVID and the hope that the world is nearly out of this mess, and even Murray delivering the vocals in an Irish accent. It was spine tingling.