Icy survival thriller received warmly at Cannes
CANNES, FRANCE— It would be easier to count the words spoken in Joe Penna’s survival thriller Arctic than the number of beats your heart skips while watching it. Few of the former, many of the latter. But it’s not all jump scares in this smartly executed
spoken, with Brazilian director/co-writer Penna allowing the fierce landscape and Mikkelsen’s expressive facial reactions to carry the lean but eventful narrative. We don’t know the pilot’s name or where exactly he’s been stranded, apart from the title locale.
At first it seems his plight is serious but not desperate. His airplane is damaged but not destroyed; he’s using it for shelter. He’s a resourceful guy, obviously no stranger to rugged work or harsh environ- ments. He’s fashioned a giant “SOS” in the snow and he’s using ice-fishing techniques to catch enough food for his needs. He also has medical and map-reading skills.
“It’s OK,” he keeps telling himself. Help is surely on the way. The pilot also has a supply of emergency equipment, including a hand-cranked signalling device for summoning assistance. Which, sure enough, arrives like the cavalry in an old western — but then a tragic turn of events forces the pilot to choose between making a perilous trek across mountainous terrain for potential salvation, or remaining where he is for an equally unsure outcome.
That’s all the set-up you need for this highly involving saga. It gives Mikkelsen, who has often been the bad guy in a career that includes Casino Royale, Doctor Strange and TV’s Hannibal, a chance to play a virtuous and resolute character.
The Danish star approaches action-hero status in the taciturn role of the pilot, whose grit in increasingly dire circumstances is something to behold. Mikkelsen’s performance summons comparisons to Robert Redford’s tough sailor character in All Is Lost, an ocean survival film that premiered here five years ago.
Arctic is bizarrely premiering out of competition here in the Midnight program. It has much broader appeal than that. It would make a dandy gala for TIFF in September, but it also seems a good bet for summer multiplex crowds. Either way, it won’t be left on ice after its enthusiastic Cannes premiere. Music to my ears: It’s still early days in the Palme d’Or competition at Cannes 2018, but there’s a mini-trend to report in that two of the bestreceived Palme contenders seen so far involve music and tangled romances.
From Russia comes Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, a.k.a. Summer ( they can’t seem to make up their minds), a rock musical of sorts set in the Leningrad of the early 1980s. The kids there are as crazy about the Beatles, David Bowie, T. Rex and the Velvet Underground as kids are everywhere. The difference is that the local rock club has an uptight manager and a Commu- nist Party censor who are eager to clamp down on music they deem to be contrary to the public good.
This doesn’t stop popular rocker Mike (Roman Bilyk), a singer/guitarist who’s like a cross between John Lennon and Lou Reed. What does give him pause, and also fascinates him, is the rise of a cool younger rocker named Viktor (Teo Yoo), who catches the eye of Mike’s girlfriend Natasha (Irina Starshenbaum), a character based on a real person, whose autobiography informed the screenplay.
Rock fans will love the music — which includes ironic fantasy musical montages — but the love-triangle angle is so sedate it just seems square.
From Poland comes Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War, the better of the two musically alert Palme contenders and the only film I’ve seen here to date that offers a serious threat to take the top prize at festival’s end on May 19.
A border-hopping love story set in postwar Poland and Paris, it stars Polish actors Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot as singer/dancer Zula and musician Wiktor, two people in love who can’t quite stay together. Something is always pulling them apart, including the tug between the capitalist West and the communist East.
Zula’s expressive songs, beautifully rendered, often seem to mirror the drama. Director/cowriter Pawlikowski shrewdly maintains suspense until the end, with a movie superbly executed in form, story and performance.
It’s shot in lustrous B&W, just like Ida, the family secrets quest that won him the 2015 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Pawlikowski remains a director to watch and Cold War is a film to watch again and again.