IviDvo

The Seed of the Sacred Fig is an intimate but powerful family drama. In the first part, we gradually get to know all the members of the family. How social events in the country affect them, but also the more personal changes brought about by the father's job promotion, which means the family is more careful, vigilant and deliberate about who they associate with, who they say what to, etc. The family seems to be living a quiet life until the day they have to treat a friend of one of their daughters who has been seriously injured while attending a demonstration. This sparks the first rift between mother and daughters, but everything is kept from the father, who is rather absent in the first part of the film. In the second part we follow the hunt for the truth about the missing service weapon. Slowly the character of the father is revealed as he suspects his daughters and slips into the interrogation practices he has adopted from his work. In the finale, it then feels a bit like a kind of Iranian version of The Shining. This transition could have been a great idea, but unfortunately it didn't really work for me because the characters stopped behaving logically. I don't understand why everyone involved let it go so far, their actions didn't seem rational at all, on the contrary it was completely unnecessarily escalated. If they had shortened the first part and given more space for us to get to know the father figure more deeply, maybe everything would have made a lot more sense. But at the same time, the first part of the film is much more interesting because it holds up a mirror to society. It reveals the differences between the older, more conservative generation, for whom God is the law, and the younger generation, who yearn for more freedom, a more meaningful system and justice. Had this been the main theme of the film, I think it would have had a much greater and stronger impact. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

I don't think I can give you a better assessment of Grand Tour. I'd like to blame it on fatigue or excessive air conditioning in the hall, which made the experience a bit unpleasant, but I don't think that's entirely it. The content lures the viewer into the story of a man who runs away from his fiancée just before their wedding and embarks on a harrowing journey through Asia, but also the story of the fiancée herself, who wants to get married at any cost, so she determinedly travels in his footsteps to find him. What the content doesn't already tell you, however, is that this story, which is fiction but also largely just narrated, makes up about half of the film. In fact, the whole thing is interspersed with essentially old, but also more modern "documentary" footage, collages of ordinary life, culture and everyday customs from the places the ex-fiancés have just arrived. I guess I can understand the Cannes award for Best Director, because this concept is unprecedented... but I didn't like this composition, or I haven't yet matured to the point where I am able to understand and appreciate this art form. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

In All We Imagine as Light, we follow two protagonists, colleagues and roommates, who couldn't be more different from each other. Prabha is devotedly waiting for her husband, who is abroad and whom she hasn't heard from in a year. She is very serious, orderly, and rejects her colleague's romantic courtship, though it is clear that she also has some affection for him. Anu, on the other hand, is a cheerful free spirit who rejects arranged marriage, and tries to steal every spare moment to spend time with her lover, which is not exactly easy for them, as they don't have many places to go or ways to be alone. I think Prabha is envious of Anu's freedom and free-spirited nature, which is putting a bit of a damper on their relationship. And that's about all that happens in the film... I heard conflicting opinions from all sides at the festival. Some called the film the best this year, and others didn't understand what all the fuss was about, and I'm in the latter group. I don't want to say that the film is bad, because it is not, but it is terribly tedious, I felt that it dragged on for at least three hours. I didn't really like the female leads either, they didn't draw me into the plot that much, so I didn't feel like I was rooting for them, that I cared about them in any way. Honestly, I liked the Indian film Santosh better, which was also screened at Cannes this year, but in the Un Certain Regard category. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

I don't read the synopses in advance during the festival because I don’t want to know what the films are supposed to be about. I like the element of surprise. And this was definitely the biggest surprise of the main competition. A trans-cartel musical? Throughout the film I was wondering how on earth they thought to put this together, and in the end I have to say that as unexpected as it was, the final product is really a very unconventional and original combination that I'm careful to say really won't suit everyone. But I liked it, the film has a flow, the songs are melodic, the choreography is impressive. The story is unpredictable, at times very dramatic, at times funny and entertaining, at times touching to the point of pathetic... I think it has everything a musical should have. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

Oh, Canada starts off very promisingly, with our last interview with Leonard Fife (Richard Gere), a famous documentary filmmaker who fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. It's very important for him to have his wife present for the interview because he wants to share what he hasn't shared yet. And so he begins to tell his life story. What we gradually learn about him is actually not entirely flattering, and his wife doesn't like the new revelations either, so he blames it all on his medical condition and the side effects of his medication. What's true, what's fabricated, what's distorted, what does Fife himself remember differently than it really was? It's all done quite engagingly, with a great soundtrack and great actors, but gradually the pace somehow slows down, the ideas become more and more obscure, the questions mount, and suddenly it all fizzles out into a bland, unfinished ending... and I don't know what the poet was trying to say. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

The Apprentice offers a dispassionate look at the rise of Donald Trump and his transformation from a naive and bland underdog to an egotistical, spineless, narcissistic monster. Sebastian Stan, as Trump, is absolutely superb in his role, but perhaps even a hair better is Jeremy Strong as the lawyer Roy Cohn, to whom Donald objectively owes his rise, even though he is probably a stranger to the word "owed". Jeremy Strong was a great choice, this type of role suits him, as we could see already in Succession. The film is engaging and doesn't bore for a second, but I do have one huge complaint, and that is the choice of actress Maria Bakalova for the role of Ivana Zelníčková. I understand that we all sound the same to westerners from the east, and probably look the same... but I just found her Russian accent and appearance off-putting. And it was so confusing at times, I was like, wait a minute, is that supposed to be Ivana? Don't tell me it couldn't have been otherwise... [Festival de Cannes 2024]

Having parents as famous as Chiara Mastroianni has can't be easy for life. She herself has a successful career, but one day during filming, the director asks her if she could play a scene more like Marcello Mastroianni than Catherine Deneuve, which awakens an identity crisis in Chiara... Marcello mio is an entertaining comedy full of famous French actors playing themselves, or rather their alter egos. There is no shortage of humour or touching scenes that seemingly let you see into the souls of these actors when they are not in front of the camera... who are they and what should they be? [Festival de Cannes 2024]

I'm not a big expert on westerns, because I'm not really into this genre, but recently I've had the opportunity to see some interesting films that have made me gradually grow fond of the wild west theme. I'm glad that Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga is one of a very narratively and visually engaging film. And most importantly, you can feel and see how lovingly the director approaches the theme, and that he does everything as honestly and sensitively as he can. I think Horizon is his life project and he gives it his all (including his money and possessions). Of course, there is no shortage of great shootouts and nerve-wracking "who'll come out of this alive" scenes, but at the same time the film is full of unusual and simple scenes that bring the everyday life of the settlers to life. How, for example, people newly arrived in the wild west had to get used to the different mood, different routines, discomfort and danger that this inhospitable environment brings. This may seem boring or unnecessary to many, but I appreciate this aspect of the film because it is simply human. For me personally, it helped me to become even more immersed and empathetic to the stories of the mostly female protagonists, who are given a huge amount of space here, which again is very unusual and endearing, as up until now the classic western has been a predominantly male affair. The first part of Horizon sets up several plot lines, introduces a myriad of interesting characters that I assume will intertwine in the later parts, and I'm looking forward to that. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

Touda is a bold, principled and above all very talented singer who longs for a better life for herself and her son. In a small town, she is confronted with meanness, rude behaviour, harassment and humiliation. She dreams of earning admiration and respect in a big city like Casablanca with her truly amazing voice, which makes the film's finale all the more impressive... because people are the same everywhere. [Festival de Cannes 2024]

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most distinctive directors of our time and his unconventional work entertains, shocks and divides into two camps. I'm a huge fan of his recent Poor Things and probably less of a fan of Kinds of Kindness. I really like the concept of three different stories with the same and excellent actors in different roles, but it lacks more coherence between them, and as a result it's just three more or less bizarre stories side by side. I'm not saying it’s bad, I think there's a lot of truth in the absurdity too, and some scenes are chilling in their realism, others are shocking in their rawness and cruelty, while there's a lot of humour, but as a whole it's kind of disjointed. The film is accompanied by the now very typical and recognisable soundtrack (if you can call it that) by Jerskin Fendrix, which adds to the bizarre and mysterious atmosphere. Despite the fact that I wasn't as impressed with this Lanthimos film as some of his previous ones, I will always look forward to his future work. [Festival de Cannes 2024]