Here to accept for the winner...
Entries from Russia and Iran may not earn awards, but the absence of their filmmakers is an ugly loss.
Russia and Iran are never far from the news these days, but recently they have made headlines in Cannes for the same dubious reason. Both countries have filmmakers represented in the festival’s prestigious competition, and both have refused to allow those filmmakers to attend.
To be clear: The Iranian writerdirector Asghar Farhadi had no difficulty traveling to Cannes for the opening-night premiere of his new film, “Everybody Knows.” But at his news conference, Farhadi expressed sorrow and unease at the plight of his countryman Jafar Panahi, who in films like “The Circle” and “Offside” has been a consistently sharp critic of Iran’s social policies. He was arrested in 2010 and has not been allowed to travel abroad since.
And so Panahi was not in Cannes for the May 12 unveiling of his competition entry, “3 Faces,” an artful, surprising and thrillingly intelligent story about a few women forging bonds of solidarity in quiet defiance of the repressive, smallminded men in their rural village.
Being absent from his festival premieres has become fairly routine for Panahi, who was arrested in 2010 for allegedly making anti-Islamic propaganda and was sentenced to a 20-year ban from filmmaking. That hasn’t stopped him, of course: While under house arrest, he shot the feature-length video diary “This Is Not a Film,” which was smuggled out of Iran on a flash drive hidden inside a cake and premiered to deserved acclaim at Cannes in 2011. Panahi also appeared as himself (or a version thereof) in his next two pictures, “Closed Curtain” (2013) and “Taxi” (2015), both of which screened at the Berlin International Film Festival.
“3 Faces” marks Panahi’s first shot at the Palme d’Or, an award that would give him the European film-festival equivalent of the Triple Crown. (“Taxi” won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2015, while Panahi’s “The Circle” took the Golden Lion at the 2000 Venice International Film Festival.) But the prospect of awards feels especially beside the point with regard to “3 Faces,” in which the pursuit of an artistic calling is shown to have potentially much graver consequences than merely losing a prize.
I’ll be discreet. “3 Faces” may be modest and low-key on the surface, but its surprises are worth preserving, its insights casually profound. At the heart of the story is a mystery: What happened to Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei), a teenage girl and aspiring actress from Iran’s Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan region, who has suddenly gone missing?
Before she vanished, Marziyeh, whose family strongly disapproves of her choice of calling, sent an alarming self-shot video to the famed actress Behnaz Jafari (playing herself). Jafahi was sufficiently rattled by the footage that she has now come to the girl’s village in search of answers, chauffeured by none other than Panahi himself.
Much of this subtly, bracingly pleasurable movie is spent following Panahi and Jafari as they drop in on the villagers and make inquiries. They observe firsthand the environment — largely cut off from the outside world and ruled by small, superstitious minds — that undoubtedly both gave rise to and attempted to suppress Marziyeh’s defiance.
They drive slowly around the hilly, rocky countryside, along winding mountain roads that are often too narrow to accommodate two cars passing in opposite directions — a situation that Panahi turns into an ingenious metaphor for a society mired in tradition for tradition’s sake, unable to see past the end of its patriarchal nose.
A puzzle, a tragicomedy and, by the end, something of a ghost story, “3 Faces” drew sustained applause after the screening for its no-show director, whose seat, marked with his name, was left symbolically empty.
While the specific circumstances are different, Panahi’s plight eerily mirrors that of the Russian stage and screen director Kirill Serebrennikov (“Betrayal,” “The Student”), who in 2017 was detained and accused of fraud and embezzlement.
His many allies in the artistic community contend that the charges are phony and politically motivated, likely in response to Serebrennikov’s criticism of Russia for annexing Crimea in 2014, as well as his support of Russia’s LGBTQ community. (Among the artists who have called for the charges to be dropped: Cate Blanchett, the president of this year’s Cannes competition jury.)
And so when Serebrennikov’s “Leto” premiered in competition on May 9, its 48-year-old director was represented only by a sign bearing his name, carried by his collaborators as they walked up the red carpet and made their way into the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
If Serebrennikov’s absence cast an inescapable pall over what should have been a celebratory evening, it also lent a subdued resonance to his lovely, wistful new movie: Far from an angry political screed, it feels both removed from its fraught larger context and shrewdly, poignantly attuned to it. (The movie was close to wrapping production when the director’s house arrest began, and he was able to oversee post-production during his detainment.)
A sweepingly immersive ode to Leningrad’s ’80s underground rock scene, “Leto” coalesces loosely around the friendship and musicianship of two real-life artists, Viktor Tsoi (a soulful Teo Yoo) and Mike Naumenko (Roma Zver). Their arcs are never cleanly defined in a movie stronger on textural beats than narrative hooks.
It drifts freely from bonfire-lit beach parties to low-key jam sessions to the Leningrad Rock Club, one of the few state-sanctioned venues for rock musicians, where youthful audiences are made to sit still, listen quietly and suppress every head-bobbing impulse.
That’s about as close to oppression as the movie gets — or, frankly, conflict. At one point, Mike’s devoted wife, Natasha (Irina Starshenbaum, excellent), confesses her desire to kiss Viktor; her husband gives her his blessing. There are flickers of rivalry between the musicians, stemming mainly from Mike’s gentle but annoying insistence on “improving” Viktor’s songs, but friendship prevails at every turn.
Both Tsoi and Naumenko died tragically young, but “Leto,” flouting the rise-and-fall conventions of its genre, is insistently a celebration of their lives.
Shot in dreamy black-andwhite but punctuated by an occasional hot burst of color, “Leto” unfolds to the rhythms of its chosen scene, broken by occasional fourth-wall ruptures and archly stylized musical performances. At one point, a group singalong to Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” breaks out on a bus, in a hallucinatory sequence festooned with deliberately crude on-screen graphics.
Most of these surreal interludes lack the go-for-broke audacity needed to pull them off and sweep you up, but they’re endearing even in their awkwardness.
“Leto” is undeniably woozy and borderline self-indulgent, which is to say it pretty much nails its moment.