Variety Staff
MAY
25, 2015
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Source:
http://variety.com/2015/film/columns/cannes-21-films-that-stood-out-at-the-2015-festival-1201504524/
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Variety critics Scott Foundas, Justin Chang,
Peter Debruge, Guy Lodge, Jay Weissberg and Maggie Lee weighed in with their
choices for the 21 best films at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (listed in
alphabetical order):
1. “Amy”
British director Asif Kapadia followed up his 2010 “Senna” with this even more
daring and revealing portrait of the brilliant but tragic jazz diva Amy
Winehouse. Drawing on a wealth of professional and user-generated video,
Kapadia again eschews the usual talking-heads interview format to keep
WInehouse front and center for two harrowing hours, during which we come to
understand how thoroughly the troubled singer lived her life under the camera‘s
relentless and unforgiving gaze. The result is an unforgettable portrait of the
cult of celebrity in the iPhone era. (Scott Foundas)
2. “Arabian
Nights” Even this year’s most impressive competition films couldn’t match
Portuguese auteur Miguel Gomes’ magnum opus for brazen ambition and conceptual
heft. Screened in three parts across one week in Directors’ Fortnight, this
six-hour allegorical meditation on the current European economic crisis
bristled with invention, ribald wit and flashes of heated fury. Knotting
stories of ghost dogs, mermaids and laid-off shipyard workers into one vast
tapestry, Gomes made one of the festival’s most daunting-looking pics into one
of its most unpredictably entertaining. (Guy Lodge)
3. “The
Assassin” While viewers were rightly mesmerized by the film’s ravishing
visuals and exquisite period details, most have overlooked Hou Hsiao-hsien’s
subtle and timely political allegory on the uneasy yet symbiotic relationship
between Taiwan and China, obliquely yet poignantly evoking the conflicting
loyalties and sense of estrangement felt by Taiwan’s settlers and their
homegrown offspring. (Maggie Lee)
4. “Carol”
The jury may have fobbed it off with half a best actress award (for half its
exemplary star duo, to add insult to injury), but Todd Haynes’ tender take on
Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian romance ranks among the director’s most immaculate
achievements: Though it’s composed and constructed with metric precision, a
raw, reckless heart beats fast beneath its exquisite wintry surface. It also
takes an immediate place in the canon of great melancholy Christmas films; one
hopes and expects that American awards bodies will give generously in the
holiday season. (G.L.)
5. “Cemetery
of Splendor” As familiar as home and as mysterious as a dream, the lush and
hypnotic world of Apichatpong Weerasethakul — let’s call it Joeburg — is a
place to which I always long to return. His latest film, a melancholy melding
of the personal and the political, is a calmer, gentler thing than his previous
films, yet it’s no less remarkable in its ability to find a strange,
otherworldly magic in the everyday. (Justin Chang)
6. “Disorder”
A drum-tight home-invasion thriller fiercely anchored by the increasingly
ubiquitous Matthias Schoenaerts, Alice Winocour’s sophomore feature isn’t a
stunningly original feat, but was still among the most pleasant surprises in Un
Certain Regard: Few would have guessed from the French helmer’s costume-drama
debut, “Augustine,” that she has such tough, tactile genre-filmmaking chops.
Hollywood producers should take note. (G.L.)
7. “Inside
Out” Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen somehow manage to
deconstruct emotion while supplying it in generous measure in this deliriously
funny, intensely cathartic romp through a young girl’s head space. The result
is a wondrous return to form for Pixar, and a welcome reminder that there are
still unexplored worlds waiting to be colonized by the imagination — including,
perhaps, the imagination itself. (J.C.)
8. “Journey
to the Shore” Not since “Truly, Madly, Deeply” has the communion between
the living and dead been depicted with such tenderness and heartache. Kiyoshi
Kurosawa, Japan’s maestro of psycho-horror, infuses this hushed, timorous drama
of loss, regret and acceptance with his signature haunting mood, employing
magical shifts of light and darkness. (M.L.)
9. “The
Lobster” Lonelyhearts who fail to find a suitable partner at a dating boot
camp are transformed into animals, or else forced to hide out in the forest
where they’re hunted for sport, in “Dogtooth” director Yorgos Lanthimos’ jury
prize-winning absurdist social satire. Taking aim at the way modern society
imposes a narrow definition of marriage on everyone, the crafty Greek
allegorist sets out in the darkly comic Bunuel tradition, before turning its
bachelor protagonist (an emasculated Colin Farrell) loose in its unexpectedly
tender second half. (Peter Debruge)
10. “Macbeth”
That Justin Kurzel’s stormy new interpretation of Shakespeare’s punchiest
tragedy was left until the very end of the competition led some critics to
expect a cautious afterthought. What they got instead was an urgent, visceral
update to enthrall the “Game of Thrones” set, unmistakably the work of the same
director who electrified festival auds with “The Snowtown Murders” four years
ago. With arresting performances by Michael Fassbender and a particularly inspired
Marion Cotillard, this spare new adaptation stands worthily alongside
Polanski’s 1971 version. (G.L.)
11. “Mad
Max: Fury Road” Having set the high bar for the modern action movie with
“The Road Warrior” in 1981, George Miller surpassed himself (at age 70!) with
this years-in-the-making “revisiting” of his iconic post-apocalyptic action
hero (Tom Hardy, ably stepping in for Mel Gibson), here paired with a
formidable female ally in Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa — arguably the
greatest female action hero since Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Miller’s
dizzyingly kinetic, color-saturated, wall-to-wall chase sequences kicked off
Cannes with a bang which it never quite surpassed. (S.F.)
12. “The
Measure of a Man” Veteran French leading man Vincent Lindon won a
well-deserved best actor prize from the Cannes jury for this modestly scaled
but powerfully affecting social drama from director Stephane Brize. As an
unemployed factory worker turned supermarket store detective, Lindon appears in
virtually every shot, effortlessly holding the screen with his weary brow and
unassailable humanity. (S.F.)
13. “Mon
roi” While it passionately divided critics, Maiwenn’s power-romance should
be required viewing for all aspiring American indie directors (especially those
of the mumblecore school). The “Polisse” director demonstrates the raw,
heartbreaking emotional truth that one can achieve through personal
storytelling and collaborative improvisation, eliciting career-best work from
Emmanuelle Bercot (who shared best actress honors with “Carol’s” Rooney Mara)
and Vincent Cassel. (P.D.)
14. “Mustang”
Five headstrong sisters in rural Turkey are forced to conform to their
society’s rigid concept of female self-expression in Deniz Gamze Erguven’s
impressive feature debut. Undeniably scripted with Western auds in mind and not
averse to exaggeration, the pic nevertheless boasts energetic performances of
an intriguing nascent sexuality (think “The Virgin Suicides” by way of Sally
Man) and a maturely fluent visual style very much in line with current arthouse
aesthetics. (Jay Weissberg)
15. “My
Golden Days” Arnaud Desplechin imagines the childhood and adolescence of
his cinematic alter-ego Paul Dedalus (first played by Mathieu Amalric in 1996’s
“My Sex Life … “) in this transporting memory film set in the late 1980s, with
Roxanne Shante on the soundtrack and a thick, bittersweet air of first loves,
fractured friendships and lost youth. Denied a slot in competition, “Golden”
was the toast of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight, where it was acquired by
Magnolia Pictures for a U.S. release. (S.F.)
16. “One
Floor Below” Champions of new Romanian cinema long ago cottoned on to Radu
Muntean’s minimalist storytelling, and while he stays true to his style here,
there’s a slightly simmering quality that turns this story of a regular guy
unwilling to finger a murderous neighbor into a quietly tense anti-thriller.
Wrestling with questions of societal responsibility via a protag used to
playing the system, the pic may seem understated, but its themes are weighted
with a moral dilemma of quasi-Dostoevskian proportions. (J.W.)
17. “Our
Little Sister” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s portrait of blossoming womanhood is a
lightweight yet graceful divertissement that, a few arch Ozu-esque flourishes
notwithstanding, reps a companion piece to the hypersensitive feminine
sensibilities and visual luxuriance of Kon Ichikawa’s “The Makioka Sisters.”
(M.L.)
18. “Sicario”
Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin are all aces in Denis
Villeneuve’s serpentine, pulse-pounding thriller, but the film’s undeniable MVP
is the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, in his second visually stunning
collaboration with the director of “Prisoners.” After the likes of “Traffic”
and “Heli,” Villeneuve tells us little that’s new about the horrific cycle of
violence and corruption that has ensnared both the Mexican drug trade and
America’s war against it, but there’s no denying he tells it in muscular,
bracingly cynical style. (J.C.)
19. “Son
of Saul” The most powerful and provocative Holocaust-themed film since
“Fateless” (which coincidentally also hailed from Hungary), Laszlo Nemes’ Grand
Prix winner engages directly with the impossibility that any film could
possibly do justice to those events, while challenging the notion that
consequently none should try. Nemes rejects the melodrama of “Schindler’s List”
in favor of a rigidly formalist approach, one that forces audiences to evaluate
and consider its artistic choices alongside the already profound moral dilemmas
faced by its characters. (P.D.)
20. “Taklub” Brillante Mendoza’s ode to the decency and dignity of ordinary people afflicted by the worst typhoon disaster in Philippine history thoughtfully reflects on the limits of faith, compassion and hard work. A welcome return to the studied simplicity of his earlier works like “Foster Child” and “Slingshot.” (M.L.)
21. “Youth”
Paolo Sorrentino’s most tender film to date is dividing the critics and took
home no prizes, yet its champions are touting the emotional rich way the
bravura filmmaker explores aging via two very different figures in the waning
years of their lives. Selling points include standout performancess by Michael
Caine and Harvey Keitel, a blistering cameo from Jane Fonda, plenty of
eccentric humor, expectedly wide-ranging musical choices and a visual banquet
courtesy of d.p. Luca Bigazzi. (J.W.)
FILED UNDER: Cannes Film Festival
