The race for the Palme d’Or wound up with a bang on Friday with the screening of escaped Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”, adding a geopolitically charged red-carpet appearance to a 77th Cannes Film Festival that has delivered several strong contenders for the top prize but no outright favourite.
Rasoulof’s Cannes premiere came just days after the director’s hair-raising escape from Iran, setting the stage for an unprecedented showdown with the Islamic Republic, which had pressured him to withdraw his film and then sentenced him to jail.
The award-winning director held up pictures of cast members Soheila Golestani and Missagh Zareh, who are still in Iran, as he walked the red carpet accompanied by his daughter Baran and Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who has lived in exile in France for over a decade. He was greeted with a lengthy standing ovation inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
Made underground in Iran on a shoestring budget, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” tells the story of a judge's struggles amid political unrest in Tehran. FRANCE 24’s culture editor Eve Jackson described the film as “extremely powerful” and her pick for this year’s Palme d’Or.
An outspoken critic of Iran's rulers, Rasoulof has already served two prison terms over his previous, political movies and had his passport revoked in 2017. In an interview with Deadline magazine, he said it took 28 days on the road, moving on foot between border villages, to escape the country as he faced another eight-year-prison sentence and flogging for “collusion against national security”.
Ahead of the premiere, the festival’ artistic director Thierry Frémaux said he shared the joy of “all festivalgoers and all freedom-loving Iranians” over the director’s arrival in Cannes.
India’s blazing comeback
Rasoulof’s Cannes appearance follows the screening of Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light”, the first Indian film to feature in the festival’s main competition in a staggering 30 years.
A poetic tale of love and loss, Kapadia’s movie follows three small-town nurses who find themselves adrift in the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai. It earned glowing reviews from critics in Cannes, surging to the front of the pack in a wide-open Palme d’Or race.
True to form, the French Riviera gathering has showcased a broad palette of cinematic genres, from gritty social-realist dramas to gonzo body horrors. Judging by the critics’ reviews, Kapadia and Rasoulof join a crowded field of potential Palme d’Or winners – bearing in mind that jurors and film critics seldom think alike.
Baker’s ‘Anora’ dazzles
A relatively late entry in the contest, Sean Baker’s “Anora” has been celebrated almost unanimously by the international press in Cannes. It centres on Ani, a Brooklyn stripper turned call girl who marries her client, the son of a Russian oligarch. The fairy tale turns sour when the young man's parents turn up to have the marriage annulled, though Ani is not the type to give in.
“This is one of the best films by Baker, whose motto could be: never underestimate anyone,” said British journalist John Bleasdale, a film critic for Variety, Sight & Sound and CineVue, at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. Chinese critic Ziyue Zhang agreed: “This film deserves to win because it's a very emotional story that resonates with everyone, across all cultures.”
Audiard’s outlandish musical
Until “Anora” came along, Audiard’s musical melodrama “Emilia Pérez” had been billed as the critics’ favourite. A Spanish-language debut for the veteran French helmer, with a preposterous pitch, it tells the story of a ruthless cartel boss who hires a lawyer to arrange his gender transition.
The French director remains a serious contender for the top prize, according to Italian critic Gabriella Gallozzi, a Cannes regular who would readily hand the director of “Dheepan” (2015) his second Palme d’Or.
“It's an elegant, post-modern film that experiments with new languages and can speak to young people,” she said. “It’s the perfect embodiment of the new political cinema.”
‘The Substance’ serves up gore and Moore
The home country, which picked up its 10th Palme d’Or last year with Justine Triet’s Oscar-winning “Anatomy of a Fall”, has another challenger in Coralie Fargeat, whose gleefully gory “The Substance” provided the shock of the festival. A thrilling and bloody body horror satire, it stars Demi Moore as an ageing and fading Hollywood star who undergoes a mysterious cloning procedure to avoid being axed by her callous producer.
An outrageous follow-up to her grisly debut “Revenge”, Fargeat’s first competition entry stunned festivalgoers, impressing critics with its stylishness and creativity. It features terrific performances by Moore and fellow lead Margaret Qualley, who plays Moore’s younger self. But many wondered whether Cannes jurors would be inclined to reward another body horror just two years after Julia Ducournau’s “Titane” emerged as a surprise winner.
The outsiders
This year’s outsiders in the Palme d’Or race include “Grand Tour”, the latest black-and-white reverie by Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, a beguiling Asia-set travelogue tracing a low-level British diplomat as he flees his fiancé across a crumbling empire.
Some critics have thrown their support behind Chinese veteran Jia Zhangke’s “Caught by the Tides”, an epic chronicle of the social and economic upheaval that has swept China over the past two decades. Others have opted for Ali Abbasi’s timely Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice”, which earned mixed reviews and a threat of legal action from the former US president and current Republican candidate in the upcoming November 5 vote.
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Of course, much will depend on what type of movie Greta Gerwig and her fellow jurors will be most inclined to reward. It is no secret that the “Barbie” director has a keen eye for powerful female characters and films that subvert patriarchal domination. Films ticking those boxies also include Agathe Riedinger’s influencer-themed debut “Wild Diamond”, Magnus von Horn’s chilling abortion drama “The Girl with the Needle”, and Andrea Arnold’s social-realist drama “Bird”, an early critics’ favourite.
“From Greta Gerwig, I’d expect a fairly consensual choice like ‘Bird’, which is a good, if fairly classic, film,” said Bleasdale, the film critic. He suggested Riedinger’s “Wild Diamond” would be “an interesting choice as it is the only first film directed by a woman and also has a very strong female character”.
