Skin 2022: We saw David Cronenberg’s return to horror, Bac Nord director’s new film, and Korean romantic thriller

David Cronenberg’s Future Crimes (Official Competition)

He was not sure he would make movies again. However, 8 years after the presentation of the Maps stars in 2014 – still in Cannes -, David Cronenberg come back. This time not a film noir or a psychoanalytic drama, but a science fiction story about the body, its evolution and a future where pain no longer exists. In Crimes of the futureHe leads – for the fourth time – Viggo Mortensen, Who plays Saul, an extreme performance artist who is publicly removed by the authorities. Without a doubt, we are with Kronenberg.

As always in the case of a filmmaker, the case is not gratuitously shocking, but rather questioning the viewer in the world around him. The history of immense wealth is full of subjects: extreme art and its liberating power, the quest for freedom, but also the state of the world left at the end of life in the hands of an already condemned young generation. From its opening scene, David Cronenberg challenges.

He is surrounded by his two most dedicated collaborators, Viggo Mortensen – in the role of excellent and magnetic performance vision – and also Howard Shore, who creates excellent music. Lea SeiduWho enters the “Cronenberg” world, impresses and fills his role with an adequate amount of sweetness and mystery.

The 79-year-old director once again manages to surprise with a film that deserves a few watches. A modern, sulfurous and definitely transgressive proposition. We need it.

Thomas Desroches

November by Cedric Jimenez (out of competition)

After the huge success of Bac Nord, Cedric Jimenez Is back with a new muscle thriller on an even more powerful and delicate theme. November Returns, as its name suggests, the attacks of 13 November 2015 that shook France, and especially the police services that were mobilized on that tragic night and in the days that followed.

The film tells the story of an unprecedented hunt for PJ (Sdat) anti-terrorist units to find and destroy those responsible for the massacre. Then we are immersed in various specialized teams who have worked tirelessly to identify the terrorist cell at the beginning of the attacks. With his fifth feature film, Cedric Jimenez proves once again that he is the director of detective films and November radiates urgency, breathless rhythm and adrenaline.

He does not forget to be so annoying, obviously with his subject, but also with some of his characters, especially the characters of Lina Khudri and Ana Demustie, who are with absolute precision and humanity. The two actors bring great thickness to the film, of course, imbued with certain moments of emotion, but ultimately quite factual and cold in what it tells us.

Megan Shock

Park Chan-wook decision to leave (competition)

Six years after Madame, Park Chan-wook He is finally back at the Cannes Film Festival and he returns with a delicious and amazing proposal. His new film, The decision to leave, Followed by He-jun, an experienced detective, investigating the suspicious death of a man on a mountain top. His meeting with the deceased’s mysterious Chinese wife, Sor, will destabilize him so much that he suspects him at the same time when he is attracted to her.

The South Korean screenwriter and director is having fun mixing impossible romance and dark thriller with this new film and providing clever and intoxicating fun with the summoning of Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher. The meticulous, accurate, and hilarious staging of the decision to leave depicts a burlesque, sentimental, and tragic love game between this investigator and this suspect, portrayed by the excellent Park Hale and Tang Wei.

Thanks to a subtly written script that leaves no details to chance, we quickly capture this elegant and fun story that shares a strong sense of love, an obsessive passion, and one that eats us from within. This novel, recorded in a thriller, with magnetic photography and an orderly soundtrack, takes on a whole new dimension and quickly becomes exciting when it is impossible and always subject to twists.

Megan Shock

The Five Devils of Leah Misius (Directors’ Biweekly)

Five years after her first film Ava, Leah Misius completely changed her landscapes and replaced the beach and sand in the mountains and woods at Les Cinq Diables. The screenwriter and director, who has collaborated with Arno Desplecchin, Jacques Audar and Claire Dennis, in his second feature film tells the story of a family and a broken love by mixing drama and genre film.

With fantastic and 35mm film-enhanced kits that bring in thickness, warmth, and an almost magical texture, Leah Mission offers her characters a mystical and intricate aura. Five Devils tells the story of how Vicky, a strange and lonely young girl, uses her over-developed sense of smell to shift her memories of her family, village, and existence, while the arrival of her aunt upsets everything in her balance. Unconditional love for mother Joan.

In addition to the disturbing atmosphere that is perfectly embedded in the images that remain in the mind, Leah Mission argues for a more political purpose that emphasizes the invisible and the oppressed. He also questions the racism, fear of others, fear of madness and homophobia in this suffocating and moralizing little village, which has exacerbated the weakness of its inhabitants, but also sees the rebirth of love from its ashes. Special mention of Adele Exarchopoulos, still so magnetic, and Sally Drama, a true revelation.

Megan Shock

Jerry Lee Lewis: Ethan Cohen Trouble (Special Testimonials)

You no longer call them the Cohen brothers. So far at least. Before Joel signed the solo and black-and-white adaptation of Macbeth, which went online on Apple TV + earlier this year, Ethan’s turn to go alone. A rock documentary dedicated to Jerry Lee Lewis, one of the last living legends.

The role of Dennis Quaid in the 1989 feature film Jerry Lee Lewis is as famous for his songs and stunning performance as when he hit the headlines by marrying his then 13-year-old cousin. So many aspects of his career and life are not spared in a feature film called Trouble in Mind, in particular, he boasts a place for interview excerpts in which the main stakeholder reacts to the facts.

If a character has a place in the Cohen brothers’s filmography because of his humor and colorful side, a documentary can disappoint the scholars who can not learn much from it. But it’s fun to see that the feature film connects the two selected films: Elvis as the King is quoted by the killer (as well as his manager Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks Buzz Lurman). And Top Gun Maverick, as Miles Teller covers “Great Balls of Fire,” a Jerry Lee Lewis tube played by Anthony Edwards in his first opus.

Maximilian Pieretti

Super 8 years (two weeks of directors)

“In reviewing our Super Eight films from 1972 to 1981, I thought it was not just a family archive, but a testament to social class tastes, hobbies, lifestyles and aspirations for the next decade of 1968. Mute pictures, I wanted to integrate them into the story of history. , At a social as well as intimate crossroads, using my personal diary over the years. ” – Annie Erno

The directors’ two-day show offered the audience a real naggle: the first film made by director Annie Erno, with her son, David Erno-Briot. Super 8 Years is like opening a time capsule, with its archives depicting family life 50 years ago. Annie Erno’s voice and words accompany all these pictures, so intimate, but at the same time so universal, a witness to the era. We smile, we get nervous. And for the readers of Annie Ernaux, this documentary is exciting because it shows her life when she was about to be first published. Edition: December 14, 2022.

Bridget Baronet

Worst (in some respects)

Filming will take place with a quote from Picasso, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, northern France. During the casting, four teenagers are chosen to play in the film, Lily, Ryan, Miles and Jesse. Everyone in the neighborhood wonders: Why did you take only the “worst”?

Les Pires is the first feature film by Liz Acoca and Roman Guret to be featured in the short film Chasse royale (awarded in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2016) and the series You Prefer for Arte. Les Pires is consistent with these previous projects, again with this mistake of shooting these shots that leads the viewer behind the scenes of creativity.

With a realistic approach, with a moving camera, the duo of directors takes on the codes of social cinema, like the Darden Darn movie. There are many lives, the scenes are sometimes fun, sometimes more dramatic. We will quickly hook up with these characters and the young actors they will reveal. The distribution also includes Johann Heldenberg, who is particularly visible in Alabama Monroe. Edition: November 23, 2022.

Bridget Baronet