THE MORNING LIST
It’s the return of cinema with the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Anatomy of a fall, by Justine Triet, about a couple of writers who tear each other apart. Also on the program this week, a Pasolinian portrait of a failed actress with a big heart with Vera, by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, and a vampire with The Last Voyage of Demeter, by André Ovreda, inspired by a chapter of Dracula.
Do not miss
“Anatomy of a fall”: the couple on trial
Remarkable writing, perfect actors, a well-kept secret and a poisonous atmosphere. Yes, everything is there, but there is something more in this Anatomy of a fall, which earned its director, Justine Triet, 45, the Palme d’Or, at the end of the seventy-sixth edition of the Cannes Film Festival. His fourth feature film – after The Battle of Solferino (2013), Victoria (2016) and Sibyl (2019) – examines the horrors of a couple of writers, Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and Samuel (Samuel Theis), the latter dying in the first minutes of the film. Sandra is not long in being indicted. Suicide, murder? We will never know, but the path that leads us to this mystery is a thrilling cinematic precis.
Justine Triet’s films challenge actresses to play impure beings, when the private and professional lives of their characters collide with a crash. And, when it comes to trouble and impurity, Sandra Hüller excels. This is the story of a couple of creators who tear each other apart. We discover it during the trial at the assizes, Sandra recounting the collapse of her couple under the gaze of her son, in a dizzying montage. Samuel doesn’t have enough time for him. Who takes care of the child? Who failed in their duties? Sandra took the liberty of recovering the brilliant idea of an unfinished novel from her husband… Samuel had taken the habit of recording their daily life. The court listens, the spectator discovers the image. Cl.F.
French film by Justine Triet. With Sandra Hüller, Samuel Theis, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner (2 h 30).
To have
“Vera”: a Pasolinian bimbo
Completely redone in her fifties, a bimbo with a black stetson and long peroxide hair, Vera is a failed actress, a bling-bling demi-mondaine who goes to parties and posts the results of her nocturnal excesses on the Internet. The film, on the fringes of documentary fiction, would be unnecessarily cruel if it contented itself with the image that this prologue gives us of its heroine. We take the bet, not a spectator or a spectator will leave the room without being fraternally or sororally, or even more, in love with Vera.
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