64 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019The director duo won the Jury Prize for
Bacurau, shared with French filmmaker
Ladj Ly for his debut feature Les Misérables,
itself a tale of uprising. Mendonça said this
was his twentieth time at Cannes (his first
attendance being as a critic—a progression
that he called, you guessed it, a “mind-
fuck”). A word about those awards: these
too were well-received, for a change, most
especially the Palme d’Or to Bong Joon-ho
for Parasite, following lackluster committee-
esque choices over the past decade. But
there was also a faintly amusing, mildly
ironic, or absurd strain to some of the
selections: rewarding director-screenwriter
Céline Sciamma’s strongest directing
effort yet, Portrait of a Lady on Fire,
with a prize for screenwriting; giving
always-a-bridesmaid Almodóvar a nod
by rewarding the actor who plays him in
his movie; or having the second-highest
honor be presented to Mati Diop by an
incongruent Sylvester Stallone (who,
it must be said, comported himself
gallantly, having been honored with an
onstage conversation the day before).
Even presenter Catherine Deneuve was
there to cock an eyebrow when Bong
proclaimed Clouzot and Chabrol as the
greatest. Odd details aside, the proof lay in
the work, and Bong’s film was undeniable
and, like Bacurau, trenchant and scarifyingI
t was an unfamiliar feeling for many critics at cannes: was that contentment,
or perhaps even... pleasure? Yes, there it was, a lingering smile around one week
into the festival—in the immediate afterglow of Parasite and Once Upon a Time...
in Hollywood, and in the longer wake of Bacurau, Pain and Glory, Atlantics, The
Whistlers, Portrait of a Lady on Fire... I could go on, and I will. Sometimes Cannes
can be a question of rhythm—whether it’s the luck of several promising film-
makers being in sync with the festival, or the well-timed landing of crowd-pleasers and
provocations alike at the beginning and middle—and the 72nd edition hit the sweet
spot. Certainly one factor was how many auteurs steered into the pulpy appeals of genre
narratives, their vividness, and their rejuvenating inborn energies. For Corneliu Porumboiu,
a crime drama; for Arnaud Desplechin, a police procedural; for Quentin Tarantino, a
buddy-movie groove, for a while; and for several others—Mati Diop, Jim Jarmusch,
Bertrand Bonello—the undying metaphor of possession (whether zombie or djinn).
I’ll leave behind the site-specific variable of timing in a second, but Bacurau did
give the festival a vital kick in the pantalon early on. Directors Kleber Mendonça
Filho and Juliano Dornelles (the latter previously credited as Mendonça’s production
designer) tear into their dystopian story of a rural community that is being literally
hunted by leisure-seeking tourists. Putting a snap within and between scenes, they
keep raising the temperature of tension under the hot sun of their backcountry
Brazilian setting, until the lurid suspense and dynamic anamorphic frames of their
Most Dangerous Game–esque tale are (finally) surpassed by the torturous struggle of
the realistically beleaguered inhabitants, as they embrace collective action. To a certain
extent Bacurausimply draws out the question of our time: how bad will things get,
or put another way, was any previous progress an illusion? But the centuries-old
inequities of its rural settings also earn the film a place as another inheritor to the
fearless cinematic and sociopolitical brio of Cinema Novo, without feeling like
some modish attempt at same. All that plus Aquarius idol Sonia Braga and trans
performer Silvero Pereira as an indelible cangaceirobandit. With Aquarius and before
it Neighboring Sounds, Mendonça with Dornelles has achieved a truly formidable run.
Their latest inspires an urge to rebellion—the final line being, if my scrawled notes tell
me true, “This is only the beginning”—but it’s conjoined with the terrifying epiphany
that, really, there may not be any option for survival other than uprising.FESTIVALS Cannes
Vim and Vigor
Cannes found a swing in its step this year, with the help of genre’s liberties
BY NICOLAS RAPOLD
Bacurau The Lighthouse