Day of excesses yesterday (Monday 12 July), of overabundance, of excesses. Although very distant in style and subject matter, the two films in competition, «The French Dispatch» by Wes Anderson and «Petrovy in grippe » (Petrov’s Influence) by Kirill Serebrennikov opt for the same idea of cinema, that of redundancy and profusion. Think Big, in short.
It may seem like a contradiction to Wes Anderson, master of miniature and detail, but if he multiplies his minimalist alphabet by a thousand (and even more), the saturation effect becomes immediate. As it happens in «The French Dispatch», an elusive English magazine printed in France (homage declared to «New Yorker») that for its latest issue – the death of the editor-in-chief (Bill Murray) means the inevitable closure – publishes some stories that come to life in the form of episodes on the screen.
There is a journey in the company of the Bicycle Chronicler (Owen Wilson) between the different districts of the city that hosts the editorial office; there is “The Concrete Masterpiece” where the critic JKL Berensen (Tilda Swinton) tells how the gallery owner Cadazio (Julian Brody) discovered the art of the imprisoned painter Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro) whose muse is a prison guard (Léa Seydoux); «Revisions to a Manifesto» is the reconstruction that the journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) makes of the student agitations in the city, led by the dreamy Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) and the stubborn Juliette (Lyna Khoudri); and finally Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) reconstructs in “The Private Dining Room” how the commissioner (Mathieu Amalric) solves the case of the kidnapping of his own son.
In short, there is material for three or four films, not to mention a cast mileage that would be superabundant even for a television series, but what tires us above all is the infinite repetitiveness of games and divertissements: each shot is meant to be a quote, a technical feat (which makes extensive use of the animatic), a cinephile homage. And in the end you feel like you are forced to indigestion of a sweet that, in small doses, you might have liked.
Serebrennikov’s film is also lost in memories and fantasies, following the alcoholic New Year of a cartoonist (Semijon Serzin) who intertwines the present with what he experienced as a child. But here, driving the director’s very mobile camera (unwelcome to Putin but blocked at home by old criminal matters) is the charm of the Russian soul, with its melancholy and passion, its dreams and its compromises . The Petrov who goes through the two and a half hours of film with the flu is a champion of dissatisfaction and indecision, who occasionally sees his fears or desires materialize before his eyes and who tries to face life as best he can, between nostalgia for the past and anguish of the present.
July 13, 2021 (change July 13, 2021 | 10:17)
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