One of the characteristic features of the current Cannes is the chameleon genres. The artist will take the canvas of a horror movie or a melodrama, a biopic or a psychological drama. Yes, and he will sew it beyond recognition, but if he wants to, he will completely turn it inside out.

One of the characteristic features of the current Cannes is the chameleon genres. The artist will take the canvas of a horror movie or a melodrama, a biopic or a psychological drama. Yes, and he will sew it beyond recognition, but if he wants to, he will completely turn it inside out.

Ballet in black

The most sophisticated fighter of the "correct cinema" is the cult Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam. He blew the monster horror stereotypes to dust. His Kafkaesque comedy " Borgman " is made in Warmerdam's trademark puzzle style (although there are references to "Theorem", and "Funny Games", and "Antichrist"), and therefore involves many interpretations, moves in such zigzags that none of the most insightful the viewer does not guess the development of the plot. The first episode: the priest takes communion, takes off his vestments, takes a gun, the hunt begins ... for Borgman and his associates who have taken refuge underground. Exiled for no reason, they find refuge in the villa of a prosperous bourgeois family ... You ask, who is Borgman? Do not ask, even after the credits you will have many versions of this.

Absurdity, buffoonery, gloomy eccentric live in perfect harmony with a motivated, filigreely written psychology of the characters, restrained acting. Warmerdam knows there are skeletons dancing among the coat racks in every safe family closet you can see. He plays risky with mythology, pictorial, literary, biblical motifs. Crawling out of the ground, Borgman at first clearly resembles Christ (who is denied by the rich owners of the house - and even cruelly “beat” him), but then turns into the devil. Together with friends and girlfriends, periodically turning into hunting dogs, this company destroys the apparent harmony of the house, reveals secret boils. Murders alternate with home ballet performances and dances. Moreover, Warmerdam himself performs in black packs. Soon, in the courtyard of the house, instead of flower beds with the owner's money, the excavator will dig a foundation pit so that the owners of the house can bury it there, and sow the lawn from above. Do you want a new cherry orchard?

Of course, the film pulsates with irony, a mockery of the stereotypes of bourgeois society and its values, including the system of personal prosperity, the cult of the family and social elevators. But all this effortlessly, without effort, on light montage pointe shoes.

Fathers and… sons

One of the most famous modern Japanese directors, Hirokazu Kore-eating, uses a serial plot about a baby swapping in a maternity hospital to emotionally investigate the true and imaginary bonds that hold the family together. " What a father, such a son " - a chemical analysis of the concept of kinship. Melodramatic intonation disappears from the first frames. The protagonist is a representative of the Japanese establishment, creates ideal conditions for the baby son (music lessons, good manners, a luxurious apartment resembling a five-star hotel). He is forced to break away from his career in order to solve a problem - which is more important: the voice of blood or the life spent with a child? Which of the two sons is "one's own" and which one is "alien"? It’s not about the simple message “the main investment in a child is the time spent in your life.” The merits of a solid but drawn-out picture are in a different plane, in the “overtextual” space of halftones, glances, intense internal conversation. In the ambiguity of meanings that flash either red or green on the way of the hero to his son. It turns out that in the territory of feelings, children are often older than their infantile parents.

Matryoshka from an Indian tribe

" Jimmy Picard " is the name of a soldier, an Indian from the reservation (Benicio Del Toro), who returned after the Second World War, suffering from post-traumatic schizophrenia - in any case, this is the verdict of the doctors of the Topeka Military Hospital in Kansas. Just in case, they still call an expert in ethnopsychoanalysis Devereux (Mathieu Amalric). The “doctor-patient” relationship becomes the basis of an intellectual detective story, into which the director Arnaud Deplechian turned the famous book by the American-French scientist Georges Devereaux. The doctor, that is, the observer, according to Devereux's method, must place himself at the center of the patient's confessions and memories. Together they unravel tightly tied knots of memory. And in order for the viewer to better understand the idea, the director in one of the scenes of "Jimmy Pickard" shows how the matryoshka is assembled: here the soul is placed in the heart, the heart - in the mind, the mind - in the body. And only a fully assembled doll embodies the human individuality. It is difficult to agree with him - there are a lot of perfectly assembled and even originally "mounted" matryoshkas around. And there are only a few individuals among them. The film by regular regular and Cannes laureate Arnaud Deplechian is reminiscent of many works on the same subject, such as A Dangerous Method or A Frank Confession. Yes, and "Jimmy Picard" itself is compiled according to all the rules of smart psychological cinema. As reason, not only the works of Devereux are involved, but also research in the field of structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, there are even references to the analyst of Roland Barthes ... In addition, Amalric sparkles as always unpredictably and delightfully. He is definitely the heart of the film. That's just somehow boring, what's missing? Souls, probably.

From a cat's point of view

After screening the vintage musical drama Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coens, some of my co-workers wailed, “Can this bauble compare to masterpieces like The Big Lebowski and Fargo? But the Coens did exactly what they wanted. Under the guise of a biopic, together with the composer and their regular music producer T Bon Barnet, they composed a melancholic movie blues.

Diving into the waters of a bygone era is terribly difficult. In addition to the visual entourage, you need something else, like a spacesuit, to breathe at a depth of half a century. The Coens found such a spacesuit - folk music of the so-called Renaissance, the time before the "Bob Dylan" industry. Live music, cool and stupid, drowning in puffs of cigarette smoke in the film is exceptionally abundant. The Coens come up with the collective character Llewyn Davis (one of his prototypes is Dave van Ronk), a talented singer and songwriter who dreams of a solo career. A leisurely road movie moves along with Davis (Oscar Isaac) trying to make his way onto the stage from Greenwich Village, icy New York to Chicago, from cafe to cafe, from one apartment of friends where he “rents” a sofa to another. From reality to surreal nooks and crannies. To the lapel ... around every turn. A guitar, a light jacket, a ginger cat accidentally inherited under his arm - this is Davis outwardly. The cat carefully looks at the musician, who is not smiling at fortune. The Coens make movies "from the point of view of a cat." Top-class directors have not tried to please them for a long time. Violating the canons of the "portrait hagiographic film", they slowly reflect on the destination, the price for uncompromisingness. Keeping the trademark irony, they decide on a minor movie about a loser. The odyssey of a nonconformist musician is like a swing: hope for success is disappointment, the possibility of engagement is failure, laughter in the auditorium is silence ... And songs, as proof that inside Lewin is music, it is the soul of the film. The authors do not hold out a saving straw to the hero: "He just happened to be at the wrong time and in the wrong place." That's why nobody will buy the "Inside Llewyn Davis" record. By the way, the Coens are in the right place at the right time today. Therefore, their film in the festival rating "Screen" is on the first line (followed by "The Past" by Farhadi and "What a Father, Such a Son" by Hirokazu Kore-food).