POMO

The autobiographical story of a young Sorrentino? A nice film about growing up and the effect that a terrible family tragedy has on a young man’s adolescence. In the first half, even the quarrels and friction between the characters are lightened with typical Italian humour and the film is a likable view into a Neapolitan banker's family with funny characters and moments. The second half aptly depicts the emptiness and fumbling of a teenager who has had independence thrust upon him, without the support and love of his parents. Sorrentino with a clearly comprehensible story, without metaphorical embellishments or visual eccentricities. But also with a generally well-worn story.

A slick Hollywood adventure with nicely constructed ape characters featuring flawless digital rendering of their facial expressions. And a screenplay rich in plot development in a beautiful, varied setting. But toward the end, there are some things in it that don’t make sense, that don’t correspond to the preceding meticulous narrative and the building of relationships between the characters or their logical behaviour. It seems as if there wasn’t time to polish the last few pages of the script.

The story of Furiosa and her anticipated revenge, with more looks into the Citadel, is dramaturgically richer than the endless chase in Fury Road. Despite that, it’s not emotional even in the cruellest scenes and hints of feelings. And mainly it doesn’t have Tom Hardy. However, the character of Furiosa, who since childhood has been shaped by violence, inhumanity and filth, is a strong enough draw, the film’s dynamics are incredible from the opening scene and, together with the visuals and the details contained in them, those insane masks and costumes are absolutely amazing. A filmmaking highlight of scenography and creation of an original fantastical world. But I had trouble fully believing Chris Hemsworth as the demented villain.

Extremadamente delicada, tranquila y lenta, es una película con un alma pura y melancólica. Comienza como un retrato de la Mumbai abarrotada y lluviosa, con una visión de la vida de dos amigas en ella, y luego se traslada a un lugar más tranquilo. El debut en ficción de una documentalista experimentada recuerda con qué interés y atención se pueden tratar los sentimientos de los personajes en los dramas indios autoriales de calidad. Para profundizar su impacto, la directora agrega un entorno socialmente hostil y una vida difícil en él. Ser feliz aquí significa vivir en una ilusión. [Cannes FF]

Si no lees nada sobre la película de antemano y no ves el tráiler, es perfectamente impredecible no solo en términos de trama, sino también en términos de género. La seriedad de la situación en la que se encuentra la protagonista puede pasar fácilmente de una comedia intensa a un drama cruel. Y la película equilibra magistralmente esta delgada línea, divirtiendo con risas fuertes y al mismo tiempo manteniendo la tensión y la preocupación. Sean Baker es el Steven Spielberg del cine independiente, un guionista y director excepcionalmente innovador con un sentido único de la sociología, que sabe contar historias sobre personas y sus almas como nadie más. Anora es una comedia que no se hace y un drama que desnuda el corazón de donde menos te lo esperas. Un golpe absoluto y conmovedor. Gracias. [Cannes FF]

Don’t be put off by the shallow premise and the B-movie stylisation. The reflection of the rules of television show business is deliberately superficial. Those past their prime must be replaced with young people with perfect bodies. And because of that, celebrities are willing to do anything to their own bodies. For roughly the first one hundred minutes, I didn’t want to believe that such a cheaply stylised trash flick could appear in the competition section of the Cannes Film Festival. Of course, Coralie Fargeat has a grander plan for us and takes it in unexpected directions with the inner psychological conflict of the main character and, in terms of genre, with a nod to Peter Jackson’s early splatter flicks. This is taken almost to the point of a transcendental body horror spectacle in which the director doesn’t shy away from humorously using the music of Herrmann from Vertigo and Strauss from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Demi Moore is cast perfectly in the role of a fading celebrity, and Margaret Qualley excels as the up-and-coming star of a television show.  Qualley, incidentally, is enjoying a truly golden period in her career, as she also appeared in Lanthimos’s new film Kinds of Kindness in this year’s Cannes competition. Tarantino deserves thanks for discovering her! If the film hadn’t worked so clearly and predictably with B-movie elements in those first hundred minutes, I would have given it five stars! ___ It occurs to me that female directors are starting to show far more female nudity in their films than their male counterparts. I can cite two examples of this phenomenon just from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, namely Les Femmes au balcon and this film, The Substance, where we see both Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley’s breasts up close, not to mention their curves in leggings. Yum! [Cannes FF]

An entertaining portrait of young Donald Trump as a go-getting property developer with an enormous appetite for business. Not as a politician. Trumps first wife, Ivana, his father, mafioso Tony Salerno, Andy Warhol and especially attorney Roy Cohn, who helped Trump break into the real-estate elite of New York – the important characters in Trump’s life are depicted with refreshing authenticity and documentary-style veracity, in 4:3 television format, often even with VHS tape noise in the picture, giving us that exact feeling of the eighties and nineties that we haven’t had in any feature film for a long time. Director Ali Abbasi takes the characters on a journey through the megalomaniacal American Dream, without pointing a finger at any of them, but rather taking them as people with their own specific priorities and weaknesses. Sebastian Stan is good as Trump and Jeremy Strong is excellent as Cohn. Just don’t expect Scorsese, who’s better suited to the glamorous veneer of Casino. The Apprentice has the nature of a made-for-TV movie. [Cannes FF]

A stultifying and unappealing directorial debut. Needlessly drawn-out scenes with feeble directing (half-baked details in the actors’ behaviour), empty and restrained psychological moments with the main character’s monologues, which don’t take anything anywhere and only to serve to further drag out the film. Trying for a mysterious atmosphere where there is none, dream sequences that we’ve already seen from David Lynch, copying of Memento. And an unoriginal plot with an uninteresting main character. [Cannes FF]

La poesía visual de Sorrentino que rinde homenaje a Nápoles y la belleza femenina (cómo no). En el primer tercio, una exposición hermosa de personajes, entre los que destaca no solo por su actuación, sino también por su carácter, el escritor Gary Oldman. Más tarde, cada vez más fragmentos emocionales cuyo contexto y significado en la trama se me escapan. Lo que hace que disminuya la emoción por la forma en que se presentan. ¿Qué demonios significa ese personaje de "la bella y la bestia", un sacerdote feo digiteando a Parthenope en una iglesia?? **1/2 [Cannes FF]

A young, novice actress’s whining that shooting an intense scene for a butter commercial with Bernardo Bertolucci and Marlon Brando ruined her life. Without mentioning that it also made her a global star (which she definitely didn’t want). The first half of the film with Matt Dillon as Brando provides an interesting behind-the-scenes look at the filming of Last Tango in Paris. In the second half, however, Being Maria is a boring, artificially dramatic film that uses a well-known event from the history of cinema to raise the profile of its creator in the post-Me-Too era. The only thing that we learn in the second half of the film is that Maria Schneider let another guy tempt her into heroin and that she found refuge in a lesbian relation (which wasn’t her first). [Cannes FF]