Cannes is ready for the Palme d’Or after two weeks of eclectic cinema

Author or commercial cinema, historical or intimate, provocative, dreamy or political: the 76th Cannes Film Festival, with 21 films of all formats and lengths, lowers the curtain and awards the Palme d’Or on Saturday.

For nearly two weeks, Cannes has been a privileged showcase for world cinema from all continents.

The closing ceremony will begin at 8:30 PM (6:30 PM GMT), and Jane Fonda will be responsible for presenting the highest award.

– Cinema and relationship problems –

Family and/or marital dramas dominated the competition.

For the intensity of passions: “La passion de Dodin Bouffant” by Tran Anh Hung features two 19th-century chefs who know how to judiciously mix cooking and love.

“Bane et Adama” by French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, is the first film that tells the sensitive yet contained story of a married couple subject to the will of an African village.

Directed by another woman, Justine Tritt, “Anatomie d’une chute” cheekily recounts the trial of a mysterious woman whose depressed husband dies in the mountains under strange circumstances.

German actress Sandra Höller stars in this film, and also emerges as a co-star in a chilling film that shook the competition: “Area of ​​Interest,” about the daily lives of the Nazi commander of Auschwitz and his family, brilliantly filmed by Briton Jonathan Glazer.

“Fallen Leaves” by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki is a romantic comedy that tells the complex story of a couple with few words but with great tenderness.

Todd Haynes’ “May,” with Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, enters a much more complicated terrain: a woman falls in love with a 13-year-old boy, and years later must be held accountable.

“L’été dernier” by Catherine Breillat deals with the same theme but in a moment of sin: a mature lawyer sleeps with a young man, who is also her husband’s son.

Relationships between adults and minors are also examined by the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda, with “The Beast”, which presents a suspense-filled text, and “About dry herbs” by the Turkish Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The volume of emotions rose, the Tunisian film “Les Filles d’Olfa” by Kawthar Ben Hania, proposes a heartbreaking event, the flight of two daughters from a Tunisian mother, mixing drama heroes and professional actors.

Le retour is another powerful ensemble drama, about a mother and her two daughters who return to the island of Corsica after years of a desperate journey, directed by Catherine Corsini.

– Historic and unclassifiable films –

I turn to period or social films: “Firebrand”, the first film by the Brazilian Karim Ainoz in English, to talk about an exceptional woman, the last wife of King Henry VIII, Catherine Parr.

The two Italian directors, veteran directors Marco Bellocchio and Nanni Moretti, were tough with their country’s past: the first with the story of a Jewish boy kidnapped by papal order (“Rapito”), the second playing himself in a movie between the funny and the angry: “Future Sun”.

His compatriot Alice Rohrwasher opted for poetry and tenderness, with “La chimera” about a group of grave robbers.

The complete opposite of Britain’s Ken Loach, in his darkest film, The Old Oak, about the arrival of Syrian refugees in the UK.

The Black Flies, directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauveur, shows that New York is falling bit by bit into crime and decadence.

Austrian singer Jessica Hausner exposed the damage caused by a food teacher to young people with the song “Club Zero”.

And finally, two unclassifiable films and a documentary: Asteroid City, by Wes Anderson, an evocation of the utopian United States of the 1950s despite xenophobia.

Wim Wenders’ “Perfect Days” follows a Japanese man who cleans public toilets and delivers a lesson on happiness.

and “Youth (Spring),” a 3:40 p.m. documentary by Chinese director Wang Ping, about the brutal work environment in his country’s textile workshops.

Hours before the awards ceremony, the International Federation of Film Critics awarded its own awards: to “Area of ​​Interest”, to the Chilean “Los Colonos” by Felipe Gálvez (Un Certain Regard) and the Brazilian “Levante” by Lillah Hala (Critics Week).