On this last day of Competition, the Festival de Cannes presented on May 18 Ayka by Sergey Dvortsevoy (Russia) and Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Poirier) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey). Yann Gonzalez’s Knife + Heart plunged Vanessa Paradis into a police investigation in a sulphurous Paris in the late 1970s.
After Tulpan, awarded in 2009 in the Un Certain Regard selection, Sergey Dvortsevoy is competing this year for the Palme d’Or with Ayka, following the path of a young woman disoriented by the aridity of life. Four years after his Palme d’Or for Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan returned to the Croisette with Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Poirier), staging a young writer who returns home and finds his father riddled with debt. Yesterday, Yann Gonzalez‘s Knife + Heart took the festival-goers into a baroque and scary Paris world, served by a brilliant staging.
An urban, dark and flamboyant universe
The peroxidised blonde Anne (Vanessa Paradis), a colorful figure, is producing gay porn movies in Paris in the late 70s. Her companion Lois (Kate Moran), who edits his films, breaks their relationship, leaving Anne distraught. In an attempt to win her back, Anne undertakes a more ambitious filming project with her eternal accomplice Archibald (Nicolas Maury). But the murder of her actors puts Anne and her entourage under the menace of a wild masked killer (Jonathan Genet), a homophobic psychopath who stabs with a flick dildo (!) Anne embarks on a hunt for survival in an urban and baroque universe, both dark and flamboyant.
Permanent maximum intensity
After Tourbillon de la vie, sung in duo with Jeanne Moreau in 1995, her jury mission in 2016, this is the first time that singer-actress Vanessa Paradis is presenting a film in Cannes in competition. Platinum blonde, blue eyelids, dressed in a green vinyl trench, with leather skirt, red boots, the loving Anne finds herself in a strange investigation amidst a mosaic of characters intermingling in the anguish of violent murders, and in pileups permanently on a maximum intensity, with Yann Gonzalez’s very attractive staging, spieced with the excellent soundtrack signed M83, a band formed of Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau.
Knife + Heart by Yann Gonzalez
1h40 – Color
The Red Carpet of Ahlat Agaci by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
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