You among 21 competitors for top honour 2 master directors, reminiscing & seething
■ Pain and glory, Sorry we missed
Cannes, May 18: Among the 21 films in competition for the Palme d’Or this year, six are by master directors, all of whom are also old Cannes loyalists and favourites. Of these men (yes, all are men), two have won Festival de Cannes’ top prize twice; three have won it once while the sixth one hasn’t won a single one.
To put things in perspective, the sixth one is Spanish auteur Pedro Almodavar who was nominated six times but the award has not come to him, yet. On Friday night, Almodóvar presented Dolor Y Gloria (Pain and Glory), starring Antonio Banderas, Penelope Cruz and Asier Etxeandia, at Cannes, and couldn’t stop talking about the long standing ovation it received.
In the film, Almodovar’s 21st feature, Banderas plays Salvador, an ageing film director who is struggling with an exhaustive list of ailments of the body and soul. The pain is now centrestage, pulsating in the fading glow of glory. The film switches between sunny memories of Salvador’s childhood spent with his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz), of cinema — movies of his childhood, he says, smelled of piss, jasmine and the summer breeze — as well as of sexual desire, regret. And then, a chance meeting with an old lover, brings back other heady feelings, and a breakthrough… Pain and Glory could well be called, Reminisces Sublime, Mostly in Colour Red.
On the other hand, English director Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You, is a very serious contender for the top prize. Set in Newcastle, it tells the story of a family of four struggling to survive but repeatedly coming undone under the pressure of the “gig economy”.
Ricky (Kris Hitchen) and Abby (Debbie Honeywood) have two children — Seb (Rhys Stone) and Liza Jane — and many bills to pay. A school emergency and a mugging shows how predatory the “gig economy” is.
And the film, which was slowly walking towards this moment, pauses here for soft-spoken Abby to have an outburst. The audience spontaneously broke into an applause, finding a voice, perhaps, for their own seething, choking rage.