Skin 2022: These are the films that deserved an official competition

12th Night by Dominic Molly

You need to arrange the right ingredients to make the thriller worthy of the name and Dominic Molly (Harry, A Friend Wishing You Well, Lemming, Only the Beasts) was able to stand out. As one of the last films announced at the Cannes Film Festival, La Nuit du 12 was not added to the competition but to the Cannes premiere section and it is a shame.

Because this feature film turned us upside down with a rough and unresolved investigation by the judicial police. This investigation into the murder of Clara, a young woman who was burned alive one night when she was returning home after a party, goes deep into Johann, the investigator in charge of the case.

Despite the brutality and violence of the murder at the center of the investigation – the story of which is based on part of Pauline Guena’s book “18.3 – The Year in PJ” – La nuit du 12 is imbued with true sweetness and greatness. The sensitivity that arises from its main performer Bastien Boulogne. As the list of suspects grows, the investigation will delve deeper into the policeman in his flesh and question him about the world around him and the constant violence against women.

Each stage of the investigation hinders him a little more and also brings us back to a bitter taste and a sense of helplessness in the face of the singularity and charm that constitutes an unsolved criminal case. Thanks to good writing, hypnotic staging and a sincere and involved actor, La nuit du 12 turns out to be a sensitive, visceral and engaging thriller.

Megan Shock

Alex Garland Men

Selected for “Only” Directors’ Monday Special Screening, Men Could have taken a wonderful place in the official competition after the Golden Palm branch awarded to Titan by Julia Dukurnau last year. Because director Alex Garland, to whom we owe Ex Machina and Annihilation, returns with a new radical and controllable proposition that combines fantasy and psychological drama with body horror.

The British film director could be named after David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future in Competition” by Harper, a woman who went out of solitary confinement to England to build herself after a personal drama that would be followed by weirdness. Being .. what should have been a time of peace and stability is becoming a real nightmare.

Alex Garland once again offers a shocking and imaginative cinematic experience, with symbols mixed with horror and fantasy, metaphors and legends to unravel the relationship between violence between a man and a woman. In addition to his work and very graphic re-imagining and physical and mental reproduction, the filmmaker directs his stunning actors Jesse Buckley and Rory Kinnear in a highly inspired and fascinating film.

Megan Shock

Chronicle of Temporary Relationship by Emmanuel Moretti

Due to the absence of the festival, The Things We Say, The Things We Do was granted only the Cannes 2020 label. Two years later, Emmanuel More is on the cruise, with a new study of the tenderness of the menu that we like. See in the competition: Temporary Case Chronicle. “The title is a show because it also contains an ending,” said the director and screenwriter while announcing the project, which also discusses “Scenes from Life Without Marriage.”

The director does not fail to openly quote Ingmar Bergman’s classics, the shadow of which swirls in this story, where, as always, words and feelings predominate. And where the chemistry will explode between Sandrine Cyberlen and Vincent McCain. From the first scene, their complicity is striking, their energetic resistance (its sparkling side against its inconvenience) seduces and further complicates this inevitable end, around which Emmanuel More builds a punitive sentimental.

A chronicle of a lively, fluid, and engaging, passing connection, it leaves the lives of its protagonists off-screen to focus on their interviews, which are built around a place, an idea. Often very funny, always very fair. Cannes 2021 had Julie (Chapter 12), another fragmentary story of feelings. With laughter, reactions and applause, the 2022 edition may have found an equivalent … and its many features may offer it a place in the competition.

Maximilian Pierretti

Return to Seoul by Dave Chow (Un Certain Regard)

Six years after Diamond Island, his first fictional feature film, it’s time to prove Dave Chow. Still in Cannes, but in the official selection (in unspecified terms) and not at Critics’ Week where he deserved the competition. And it was enough to get on the list. Travel to Korea, where the protagonist of the return to Seoul, Freddie, begins a whim in search of his origins. Without knowing that this search pushes him to question his identity.

The story spans a decade and begins in 2011, the year Dave Chow went to the Buzan Film Festival to present Le Sommeil d’Or, his first feature film, born in South Korea but adopted in France in the company of a friend. At the age of one year. And it was after meeting his biological father and grandmother that he decided to make one of the most beautiful films of this edition.

Easily moves from one emotion to another and knows how to make us laugh and warn us without losing the journey of his hero, impresses the director. Well helped by its lead actor Gin Park, a true discovery whose talent shines especially brightly on the dance scene, in the face of which it is difficult to hold back tears. In 2021, Dave Chow was the producer of Onoda, who opened Un Certain Regard and who regretted a lot for not being in the competition. Featuring one of the best soundtracks heard since the release of this release, Retour à Seoul clearly joins it in this category.

Maximilian Pieretti