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Like Sauvages, the new film by Valaisan Claude Barras, the Swiss presence at the Cannes Film Festival lacks a touch of madness.
Komeok Joe, Sailyvia Paysan, Martin Verset, Babette de Coster, Nelly Tungang and Valais director Claude Barras were in Cannes to present Sauvages, an animated film on which Switzerland has high hopes. © Keystone
Published on 05/21/2024
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Young audience session: this is the small Cannes selection that obtained Savagesthe new animation from Valaisan Claude Barras, long awaited after the success of My life as a zucchini. The Swiss landerneau was hoping for a larger section. After its screening on the Croisette, everyone understood why.
The filmmaker takes up the motif of the solitary child, a little Kéria lost in the forests of Borneo, and, without fantasy, adds a big layer of environmentalist message inspired by the fight of Bruno Manser. Apart from a few funny animals and very neat settings, the story never surprises. There is therefore little chance that the film, like the previous one, will be unanimously appreciated by children and especially adults who, for the most part, will wait in vain for a real touch of madness.
Switzerland and Swaziland!
This audacity was similarly lacking in everything, or almost everything, that Switzerland tried to deploy as part of its invitation to assume, this year, the role of country of honor at the Film Market: subjects of debate which have sometimes brought together ten curious people, memories to forget (necklaces flanked by the word Switzerland), or even a big “party” half deserted and equipped with the worst DJ on the Croisette (only missing Macumba by Jean-Pierre Mader).
No wonder that one of the most consulted catalogs of new releases in Cannes, that of the magazine Screenconfused, in half a dozen films, Switzerland and Swaziland!
Why other films than Savages were they invited to much more prestigious sections? It was enough to see four of them to understand the necessary spice: the real grain of madness. Politeness and friendliness rarely give access to the Palais des Festivals. On the contrary, by twisting the form as well as the content, we must surprise, shake, shock, provoke nervous laughter, even scandalize. And that often amounts to mistreating the human body.
The public against the grain
Just a few months after his Golden Lion in Venice for Poor Creatures (Poor Things), Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos offers, in Cannes Competition, Kinds of Kindness. It is, as its title suggests, about kindness, but not really in the Swiss way. Through three sketches, all played by the same cast (including Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe), Lanthimos constantly turns the audience on its head.
The second of the three parts will remain particularly memorable: a cop, who believes he lost his wife at sea, is convinced that the woman who returned is not exactly his and, therefore, asks her if, for love, she would be d agreement to cut off a finger, then a leg, so that he can eat them.
Politeness and friendliness rarely give access to the Palais des Festivals
Indian quasi-debutant Karan Kandhari saw himself propelled into the Directors’ Fortnight section with Sister Midnight. Told in a series of burlesque sketches, this portrait of a frustrated young woman, who discovers an immoderate thirst for blood, revisits the vampire film by sketching goats, birds, then the poor husband whose body decomposes in their shack in a poor neighborhood in Bombay.
After the fingers and legs at Lanthimos, the public can enjoy the spectacle of a rotten ear detaching from the skull. “I see my film,” comments Kandhari, “like a jar of unstable plutonium that we are about to throw into a movie theater.”
Closing the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, Frenchman Jean-Christophe Meurisse returns with Plastic guns, an absolutely crazy comedy, 100% politically incorrect and inspired by the Dupont de Ligonnès affair. Two years after the hilarious Blood oranges where, among other things, a sexual pervert was forced to eat his own testicles, Meurisse once again delights, including when a duo of “Facebook investigators” decide to gouge out the eyes of a suspect with a spoon.
Wild and cannibalistic
Fingers, legs, ears, eyes, but also everything else, and in joyful jets of blood: for the Frenchwoman Coralie Fargeat, in Competition with The Substancehis second film only (after revenge, where a raped young woman massacred her attackers), nothing in the human body is taboo.
After the fingers and legs at Lanthimos, the public can enjoy the spectacle of a rotten ear detaching from the skull
In this horror comedy full of nods to Kubrick, Demi Moore plays, without any shame, an aging star who, thanks to a revolutionary product, creates a younger and perfect clone than herself. Except that his double doesn’t respect any rules. And the film too: incandescent feminist firework where all the guys are poor guys, The Substance will remain as one of the wildest works ever presented at Cannes. Infinitely more than the Swiss hopes placed in… Savages.
>*Artistic director of the Friborg International Film Festival
