The Festival de Cannes is only nine days away and Rialto Channel is celebrating! Throughout May Rialto Channel is screening an eclectic collection of award winning and critically acclaimed feature films that have screened in competition at Cannes recently, such as the Oscar nominated films The Great Beauty and Omar, Abdellatif Kechiche’s three-hour French lesbian love story, Blue is the Warmest Colour as well as the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize Like Father, Like Son.
Each Monday I’ll be giving you a rundown of the top five must see films of the week, so clear your diary, snuggle up and enjoy Cannes Month on Rialto Channel.
The Festival de Cannes is only nine days away and Rialto Channel is celebrating! Throughout May Rialto Channel is screening an eclectic collection of award winning and critically acclaimed feature films that have screened in competition at Cannes recently, such as the Oscar nominated films The Great Beauty and Omar, Abdellatif Kechiche’s three-hour French lesbian love story, Blue is the Warmest Colour as well as the winner of the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize Like Father, Like Son.
Each Monday I’ll be giving you a rundown of the top five must see films of the week, so clear your diary, snuggle up and enjoy Cannes Month on Rialto Channel.
Monday 4th May, 8.30pm…. The Past
The week starts off brilliantly with Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s latest film The Past, the follow up feature film to his Oscar nominated A Separation. Farhadi specialises in intimate domestic dramas that are filled real people trying to deal with real, complex situations. Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes 2014, The Past is another superb example of this, as Farhadi takes us into the lives of a separated couple that re-unite to finalise their divorce. When Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) arrives in Paris from Iran, he finds his estranged wife Marie (Bérénice Bejo) engaged to another man and strung out over the behaviour of her teenage daughter Lucie. Marie asks Ahmad to talk to Lucie, but as Lucie begins to reveal her concerns about her mother’s new partner, relationships both past and present are put under the microscope. It’s makes for an emotionally draining couple of hours, but this cleverly told, multilayered drama is worth catching.
Wednesday 6th May, 8.30pm…Homeland
Another story featuring migrants to France, Homeland is the debut feature film from Franco-Algerian director Mohamed Hamidi. The only Algerian film to be screened at the Festival de Cannes in 2013, Homeland tells the story of a young Frenchman who returns to his father’s hometown in Algeria for the first time to save in order to save their family house from being demolished. It’s a story about identity and immigration, and is influenced by Hamidi’s own life experiences of rediscovering his father’s homeland Algeria when he was in his late 20’s. While he always dreamt of filming in his father's houses in Mzaourou and Nedroma, a lack of industry infrastructure in Algeria meant Hamidi had to make do with filming his small budget feature in the more film-friendly Morocco. Regardless of where the gorgeous scenery comes from, Hamidi’s message of the importance of legacy comes across loud and clear.
Thursday 7th May, 8.30pm…Weekend of a Champion
For as long as I can remember, my father has watched Formula 1 car races. It’s something he’s done largely on his own as the rest of us deserted him in preferences for less repetitive and noisy pursuits. However, after watching Roman Polanskis’s Weekend of a Champion, I have a whole new respect for, and understanding of motor racing. Weekend of a Champion was made in 1971 when Jackie Stewart and his wife Helen gave their friend Roman Polanski access to their lives over the weekend of the race. Stewart is affable and open, and happy to talk forever about the art of motor racing, and the footage shot from the vehicles around the track is thrilling, even by today’s standards. This restored and re-cut version was re-released in 2013, and Polanski has added a present day chat between himself and Stewart on at the end. Regardless of how much you like or dislike Formula 1, there’s something charming and exhilarating about Weekend of a Champion.
Friday 8th May, 8.30pm…Stranger by the Lake
It wouldn’t be the Festival de Cannes without some explicit sex scenes and director Alain Guiraudie’s erotic thriller Stranger by the Lake delivers. Like a Greek tragedy, most of the action takes place in one location, a summer cruising spot on the shores of a lake in rural France. It’s here our protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) falls in love with the mysterious and mustachioed Michel (Christophe Paou), who becomes a person of interest in a murder investigation. A chilling, surprising psychological drama, Stranger by the Lake very smartly begs the question, how far will you go for love and lust and is it worth it.
Saturday 9th May, 8.30pm…We Are What We Are
Director Jim Mickle’s remake of the Mexican horror Somos lo que Hay premiered at Sundance Film Festival’s midnight section, before traveling to Cannes where it screened in the Director’s Fortnight. A slow burning, cannibal creeper that’s as much a drama as quietly unsettling horror film, it tells the story of a reclusive, close knit family living in the Catskill mountains. It stars two fabulous young actresses, Julia Garner (Martha Marcy May Marlene) and Ambyr Childers (The Master), as sisters struggling to cope with their psychotic father, who also confront a unique family tradition that dates back to the 1700s. Mickle adapted this film with writing partner Nick Damia; I doubt they’ll ever write another ending quite as unexpected and twisted as they have here.