The Un Certain Regard jury of the 70th Cannes Film Festival—Uma Thurman (president), Mohamed Diab, Reda Kateb, Joachim Lafosse, and Karel Och—have announced the winners of this year’s awards.
Un Certain Regard Prize: Mohammad Rasoulof’s A Man of Integrity. At the House Next Door, Simon Abrams tells us that the film is “a character study about one man’s quixotic struggle to get revenge or monetary compensation after his fish nursery is poisoned by an unnamed corporation,” and it’s “defined by a righteous kind of fatalism. That tenor is apropos given that the film was shot by Rasoulof in secret, while he waited for his prison sentence of six years—later reduced to one—to be carried out.”
“Rasoulof (The Twilight, Iron Island, Manuscripts Don’t Burn) returns to the theme that underlies all of his work,” writes Alissa Simon for Variety: “the means by which an authoritarian regime succeeds in silencing independent voices. A Man of Integrity is a tense, enraging drama about corruption and injustice, set in a small village. The essence of the plot—‘in this country you’re either the oppressed or the oppressor’—provides a scathing critique of contemporary Iranian society.”
“A few mid-section pacing issues not withstanding, this is a satisfyingly gritty addition to Iran’s tradition of humanist cinema,” writes Wendy Ide for Screen. More from Barbara Scharres (RogerEbert.com) and Deborah Young (Hollywood Reporter).
Best Actress: Jasmine Trinca in Sergio Castellitto’s Fortunata. Screen’s Tim Grierson: “Luckless characters populate Fortunata, a fervent melodrama in which overblown emotions engulf everything in their path—including audience empathy. Director Sergio Castellitto tells the story of a single mother fighting to realize her modest dreams, and Jasmine Trinca portrays the indomitable heroine with raw passion. Yet, despite the clear compassion the filmmakers have for the title character and those in her orbit, the result is an oddly alienating movie that treats every plot point with hyperbolic life-or-death stakes.”
Best Poetic Narrative: Mathieu Amalric’s Barbara. We have an entry on Barbara here.
Best Direction: Taylor Sheridan for Wind River. The film premiered at Sundance and James Kang has been gathering reviews at his excellent Critics Round Up.
Jury Prize: Michel Franco’s April’s Daughter. “No cinephile will mistake a film from Mexican director Michel Franco for a comedy, and that trend continues with his latest feature,” writes Boyd van Hoeij in the Hollywood Reporter. “Franco is most famous for his 2012 Un Certain Regard winner After Lucia, about teenage bullying in Mexico, and 2015’s Chronic, which cast Tim Roth as a Los Angeles palliative care worker with some strange compulsions . . . But April’s Daughters, which Roth executive produced and which explores the prickly complexity of motherhood and filial attachment, is most closely related to Franco’s little-seen 2013 drama Through the Eyes, which also explored motherly devotion gone wrong. Again minutely observed and framed with great precision, this finally has a few too many characters and twists to become a fully satisfying drama.”
April, “the mother from hell,” is “played by Emma Suárez,” notes Jordan Ruimy at the Film Stage. “While she reached new attention with Pedro Almodóvar’s Julieta, her latest role confirms we’ll be hearing her name much more in the coming years.” More from John Bleasdale (CineVue, 3/5) and Allan Hunter (Screen). And John Hopewell and Emilio Mayorga talk with Franco for Variety.
Cannes 2017 Index. For news and items of interest throughout the day, every day, follow @CriterionDaily.
from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2qqhB6q
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento