Day 2 at the Cannes Film Festival was filled with drama and excitement. People were still reeling over Megalopolis, disappointed that Jacob Elordi didn’t show up and Nicholas Cage screams ‘EAT THE RAT’ in a manner that will never leave me. But we plough on. Here’s what happened on day 2:
The Surfer – Dir. Lorcan Finnegan
An Irish-Australian co-production, Lorcan Finnegan directs Nicholas Cage in The Surfer, as a man that returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son, but is humiliated by a group of powerful locals and drawn into a conflict that rises with the punishing heat of the summer and pushes him right to his breaking point.
What is immediately clear is how distinct, and beautiful the colour grading of this film is. It has a gorgeous vibrant, and sun drenched colour palette, and I know this because Finnegan made a car park near a beach look beautiful. He did not make Nicholas Cage beautiful however, as his character is deliberately taunted by a group of locals who gradually and insidiously strip him of his possessions and his morals. The spiralling in to madness was to be expected, but it is supported rather maddeningly with a desert mirage subplot that is never fully resolved. And maybe that’s why it worked? The fact that you could take this film seriously or very unseriously was somewhat refreshing Nic Cage screaming ‘EAT THE RAT’ will never leave me, but I do feel like Cage was not at full capacity because he has definitely been more deranged before.
Kinds of Kindness – Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
Not supported by the Irish film board, but very much an Irish film with Dublin-based production company Element Pictures is Kinds of Kindness, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film. This UK/US co-production hot on the heels of Poor Things, another exceptional film that only just finished its extensive Oscars campaigning a little over a month ago. Kinds of Kindness is a triptych fable as one of the most hotly anticipated films at the festival, it certainly delivered. While Poor Things was experimental for Lanthimos, Kinds of Kindness is very much back at his usual wonderful and weird style of the past.
Oh, Canada – Dir. Paul Schrader
Richard Gere’s performance as a deeply imperfect but remorseful man is electric, and his younger counterpart Jacob Elordi is a surprise delight. Gere’s character is staring down the barrel of the camera like he’s staring his own choices down, just as his wife Uma Thurman is his witness, deliberately seated sideways like a confessional pod. He’s so sure and yet so confused about the countless faces he has scorned, and the amount of bodies he has come into contact with that in recollections they are all intertwined together in a tapestry of indifference and neglect. Schrader’s direction is exquisite, but of course it is his writing that stands head and shoulders above the rest. He’s still got it.
FILM FOR THOUGHT 