Cannes Film Festival kicks off with Zelensky, Cruise and African heroism

Volodymyr Zelensky was always going to be a tough act to follow. The Ukrainian president’s surprise appearance via video link at the opening ceremony of the 75th Cannes Film Festival was a chastening reminder of ongoing tragedy from a man who started in comedy. Invoking The Great Dictator, he called for “a new Chaplin who will prove once again that cinema is not silent” and asserted his conviction that “the dictator will lose”.

Alas, the film that followed was not only not up to that daunting task but failed even in its primary role as an amuse-bouche before bigger things to come. Final Cut was dead on arrival, a French entry in the already saturated sub-genre of the bloody zombie comedy (see 2019 Cannes opener The Dead Don’t Die; better yet, avoid). With this one, from the hand of Michel Hazanavicius, it’s hard to fathom that such a fatuous and unfunny remake of a Japanese B-movie about a schlock horror set beset by actual zombies was made by the man who once quietly charmed us with The Artist.

The first day proper brought the first films vying for the Palme d’Or, including one from Russia, Cannes having eschewed a blanket boycott. No one would question the credentials of Kirill Serebrennikov, a dissident film-maker who spent 18 months under house arrest for dubious fraud charges, though the fact that the film was partly funded by sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich has caused consternation. It is possible to discern dissent in Tchaikovsky’s Wife — a tale of suffering at the hands of a cruel and selfish Russian tyrant — but in truth the crimes depicted here are marital rather than martial. The biggest imponderable is why the great composer, who avowedly had no interest in women, ever entertained the advances of his infatuated former student Antonina Miliukova.

At first her romantic overtures are met with a frosty reception before he suddenly relents, sensing an opportunity to quash “foul rumours” surrounding his sexuality and bolster his finances. For Antonina (well acted by Alyona Mikhailova) consummation proves elusive, her beloved Piotr Ilyich only showing interest in activity between the sheets when they are of the musical variety. The film’s approach is not always subtle — Tchaikovsky’s flame literally goes out during their wedding ceremony; a fly buzzes through domestic scenes as if around rotting fruit. There are no ups and downs, only downs, so what follows is an enervating tale of increasing desperation as the devoted Miliukova stubbornly refuses divorce.

Ken Russell has been here before, telling the same story in 1970’s The Music Lovers. Given the British director’s unabashed taste for garish visual excess, that film was a white-knuckle ride of lurching camera angles and lurid hysterics; this one is more of the white-gloved variety, elegant and darkly poised before beginning its final descent into madness. However, it is a more complete portrait of Miliukova, more suited to our age, and another reminder that behind many a great man is a greatly unhappy woman.

Hollywood duly landed on the Riviera in the form of Tom Cruise and the out-of-competition Top Gun: Maverick (more on that from Danny Leigh next week), accompanied by a surprise fly-past by the French Air Force that had red carpet arrivals ducking for cover. The organisers may need a separate hangar to accommodate the star’s ego. When a moderator dared ask him why he does his own stunts, Cruise shot back: “Would you ask Gene Kelly why he does all his own dancing?” 

It was back to the serious business of the main competition for Armageddon Time, an easily watchable but also mildly cloying portrait of white privilege set in a middle-class Jewish family in early 1980s Queens, New York. Sixth-grader Paul (Banks Repeta, a latter-day Anthony Michael Hall) is a redhead with an artistic bent and a smart mouth that earns him stern looks from his indulgent mother (Anne Hathaway) and occasional beltings from his explosive father (the shoe on the other foot for Succession’s Jeremy Strong). The only one who can get through to Paul is his twinkly grandpa (Anthony Hopkins), who comes loaded with jelly beans and stories of his mother’s flight from the Cossacks.

The family dinner table serves up a steady diet of lox bagels, yelling and casual racism while in the background Ronald Reagan promises prosperity for all and new perils from the east. At his public school, Paul is not so different from class-clown Jonathan (Jaylin Webb), except for their colour. While the two get into scrapes together, it is Paul who invariably avoids serious consequences (mom is head of the PTA; dad once fixed the cop’s boiler). For the parentless and penniless Jonathan there is no way out; for Paul there is the exclusive and private Forest Manor, where future Trumps are groomed and dark skin clashes with the uniform. The social commentary might as well be lit up in neon.

Writer/director James Gray (Ad Astra) fashions a partly autobiographical story that’s easy to swallow but somehow sits uncomfortably. Ironically for a film with such noble intentions, it devotes most of the screen time to the white characters, Jonathan’s home life amounting to just one shot of his grandma and her peeling wallpaper, his sole interaction with other African Americans a group of hostile youths on the subway. Compared with the 1980s coming-of-age movie of old this may be progress of sorts, but there is still some growing up to do.

It’s all rude awakenings for Bakary (Omar Sy, solid) and his teenage son Thierno (Alassane Diong, even better) in the well-shot war drama Father and Soldier. Barely has their village in Senegal been colonised by French forces than they are dispatched to the front line of the first world war. Yes, we have seen other films about 1917, but not from this perspective. Confusion reigns as Bakary finds himself a stranger in a hostile land, fending off hostilities and unexpected threats before he has even met the enemy. What could easily have been another tale of white oppression and black humiliation is elevated by a script (co-written by director Mathieu Vadepied and Olivier Demangel) that weaves in internecine conflicts among the African conscripts and a paternal pride that threatens to drive a dangerous wedge between man and boy.

The fact that the film is showing in the second-tier Un Certain Regard section is a reminder that at Cannes sometimes the best films are squirrelled away. And with the festival barely under way at press time, the real treasures are likely still to be revealed.

To May 28, festival-cannes.com