“W hich film is this?” the burly US critic asks twice, as the house lights go down inside the Bazin cinema. The first time he’s half-joking, the second time he’s in earnest. His immediate neighbours don’t know, or simply don’t want to tell him.
But now the picture is starting, the festival ident is playing and everybody has settled except for this lone panicked critic. He stands in his row and implores the spectators. He says: “Can anybody please tell me what film I am in?” What film are we in? Does it matter much any more? As the 77th Cannes film festival pitches into its final straight, the tightly packed schedule is a blur and the guests rattle between screenings in search of that elusive late masterwork.
In Cannes years of plenty, everybody’s blissed out. This year they’re like survivors in Furiosa ’s post-apocalyptic Australia. They’re fighting for purchase, seeking an oasis in the desert.
A literal fight almost breaks out before the Parthenope screening. It’s a dispute over seating (it nearly always is) and provides an appropriate warmup act for Paolo Sorrentino’s vulgar, declamatory Neapolitan showboater about a sexy girl in a sexy city; a picture so complacent and silly that it briefly made me question my love for the director’s The Great Beauty (2013) . Parthenope is marginally more dignified than the altercation that precedes it.
But only by a whisker; the two events run neck and neck. View image in fullscreen Mikey Madison in Sean Bake.