CANNES, France — On the second night of the Cannes Film Festival, director Thierry Frémaux introduced a gala presentation of a film he hailed as an example of “le cinema universal” and “un classique.” It was a 25th anniversary screening of “The Fast and Furious.”
In the summer of 2001, that modest hit about hot cars and cold Coronas did not premiere at Cannes. Back then, anyone suggesting it should or would someday play the Grand Auditorium Louis Lumière might be accused of sucking nitrous oxide from a tailpipe. Yet, it was no hallucination to see Vin Diesel strutting the red carpet in a custom blazer with rhinestones spelling out “Fast Forever,” the 11th and final installment, scheduled to be released in 2028.
“I’m only here once in my whole life,” Diesel said when he finally made it inside the theater after taking selfies with an army of fans. Technically, Diesel has been here twice. Back in 1995, Cannes screened Diesel’s debut short “Multi-Facial,” which he wrote, directed, starred in and produced for roughly the cost of his spangled jacket. That short led Steven Spielberg to cast Diesel in “Saving Private Ryan,” which led to everything else, so arguably, the road to the $7 billion “Fast” series really did start in the south of France.
I’m old enough to remember when “The Fast and the Furious” was merely marvelous summer trash, a tacky racing flick crammed with techno beats, booty shots and clumsy dialogue about tuna sandwiches. Yet, from the literal heights of the Grand Palais’ top balcony, it did feel like a classic — a throwback to an era when movie theaters were full of mid-budget crowd-pleasers shot on location in Los Angeles. Plus, when you’re settling in for a week of delicate, overlong dramas that don’t have a passionate reason to exist, like Kōji Fukada’s “Nagi Notes” and Asghar Farhadi’s “Parallel Tales,” it’s nice to see a movie that opens with a semi-truck getting harpooned.
Still, it forces the question: What is Cannes for? The immediate answer is that several of next year’s Academy Award nominees are starting their long Oscar seasons at the splendid opening-night banquet where truffles adorned both the sea bass and the ice cream.
But I also adored that Frémaux was so clearly tickled to valorize an audience-thrilling blockbuster, because Cannes can do that, too. After all, this is also the place that invited “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” to the Cote d’Azur back in 1975 and, more recently gave prestige to Demi Moore’s back-breaking lead actress campaign for “The Substance.” Moore is here once again to serve on the jury to award this year’s Palme d’Or.
Sandra Hüller in the movie “Fatherland.”
(Festival de Cannes)
Expect to see Paweł Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland” mount a strong effort. Set in 1949 Germany, it follows the Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler of “Munich”) and his adult daughter, Erika (Sandra Hüller), who serves as something of his press agent, as they visit their home country after a decade and a half in exile in California. They immediately regret the trip. In this divided post-war world, Mann feels as though he’s being forced to choose between swearing allegiance to “Stalin or Mickey Mouse,” as another character puts it. He wants to believe in the glories of German culture as a unifier; everyone else from the Americans to the Soviets to the international press corps uses culture as a cudgel for their own interests.
During the #MeToo years, we endlessly debated how to separate art from the artist without ever coming to a consensus. (That last month’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” grossed over a half-billion dollars suggests the question is moot.) “Fatherland” is a warning to prepare for a pending political reckoning. Here, Hüller’s Erika slaps a successful Third Reich actor who claims he never went out of his way to befriend Hermann Göring — that murderer was just a fan. Each awful encounter on the father and daughter’s journey dims their faith in humanity. Only art itself can restore it and the scene in which it does is a stunner.
Hüller’s Oscar-nominated performance in the 2023 Palme d’Or-winning “Anatomy of a Fall” vaulted her from Cannes renown to international stardom. Her upward career trajectory (there’s been “Project Hail Mary” too, and a Tom Cruise movie on deck) represents America’s warming enthusiasm for international fare. A decade ago, Hüller’s kooky Cannes hit “Toni Erdmann” was rewarded by the announcement that Paramount was going to do a remake and recast her part with Kristin Wiig. That never happened but if it did, it feels more likely that today, they’d keep Hüller in the cast or just give her version a stronger push.
Yet the fact that Hüller is one of the bigger names at this year’s Cannes also underscores Hollywood’s absence. Last year’s festival launched titles by Spike Lee, Ari Aster, Wes Anderson, Kelly Reichardt and Richard Linklater, plus the directorial debuts of Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart and a little art-house film called “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.” This year, the American director that critics are clamoring to see is Jane Schoenbrun who, despite the cult status of their indies “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” is currently a name that would stump normal people at a bar’s trivia night.
Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” will change that. Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”) stars as a rising filmmaker named Kris, a Schoenbrun avatar of sorts who is unsure of how nervous, nerdy obsessions slot into the modern movie business. Enlisted to reboot the fictitious “Camp Miasma” franchise, a beloved ’80s teen slasher series now deemed “problematic,” Kris treks to meet the first film’s star, Billy Preston (Gillian Anderson), these days a recluse who lives on the movie’s campground set. Anderson’s eroticized grande dame prods this geek to stop liking horror at a cerebral remove and simply admit she loves the thrill of a jiggling nubile girl. Einbinder melts beautifully.
Until now, Schoenbrun has specialized in stories about pop-cultural disassociation, people so isolated by their niche fandoms that they spend more time fixated on fictional characters than living their own lives. “Teenage Sex and Death” is a bold step forward. It’s got bravery and heart and a masked killer costumed like an air conditioning vent. Ultimately, it’s about challenging yourself to get vulnerable, which means many things to Kris, including the courage to stick up for a movie regardless of its current standing in the zeitgeist.
Billy, the heroine of the original “Camp Miasma,” claims its appeal is simple: flesh and fluids. Vin Diesel might insist on fast and furious. Regardless, with another full week of Cannes screenings to come, the hope is we’ll find more movies worth celebrating, even if it takes a couple of decades to give them their due.
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