Leto by Kirill Serebrennikov, Leningrad Calling

L’équipe de Plaire, Aimer et Courir Vite ©YesICannes.com

The third day of Official Competition at Festival de Cannes saw the screenings of Plaire, Aimer et Courir Vite by Christophe Honoré (France) and Cold War by Pawel Pawlikowski (Poland). The russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was supported on the Red Carpet.

Plaire, Aimer et Courir Vite by French Christophe Honoré stages a (necessarily) fast love affair between a young provincial and a writer at the end of his life. Cold War, by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, who won an Oscar with his recent film Ida, tells an impossible love story between two people from different backgrounds in the Cold War. Yesterday, rock riffs resounded in the auditorium Lumière with Leto, a musical full of nostalgia and energy, by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, currently under house arrest in Moscow.

festival de cannes 2018 leto kirill serebrennikov

Roman Bilyk & Irina Starshenbaum – Courtoisie Festival de Cannes

Leto, the nostalgia of Rock

Leto (Summer in Russian) is directed by Kirill Serebrennikov as a musical in Leningrad in the early 80s. Rock, considered subversive by the communist power, contaminates a youth threatened by unemployment, alcoholism and the convocation to go to the front to fight in the quagmire of Afghanistan.
Although “music of the enemy”, the rock is confined in a Rock Club, managed by the Communist Party, whose iron gates open from time to time to let play a “Soviet rock which must seek the light in Man” and stigmatize the bourgeois plagues of materialism, parasitism or alcoholism. The groups play in front of a young audience who must sit quietly, with no dancing or even moving.

Courtoisie festival de Cannes

Desire for freedom and creation

However, nothing can hinder the desire for freedom and creation of a youth that is both carefree but full of energy and whose spirit buzzes with creations, music and lyrics. Kirill Serebrennikov’s Rock and Pop fanatics exchange records of Velvet Underground, David Bowie and The Doors and admire the Sex Pistols, the Clash and Blondie. A bit like a sect, the artists test their songs in apartments with the hope of playing them at the Rock Club or even make a record. Mike (Roman Bilyk), who lives with Natasha (Irina Starshenbaum), is an already confirmed artist of the Rock scene in Leningrad. Seduced by the talent of Victor (Teo Yoo), he will help the young rocker to realize his musical potential.

Roman Bilyk &Teo Yoo – Courtoisie Festival de Cannes

Crazy interludes

The Leto scene by Kirill Serebrennikov succeeds one another as songs on a musical album, taking us into this carefree generation, already announcing the Perestroika, a youth full of energy and creativity, but realistic about their future of possible American-style rock star and consoling themselves by saying: “It’s OK to be in the swamp if you’re the No.1 toad.” The film is dotted with crazy interludes, some renditions, embellished with drawings, of Talking Heads‘ Psycho Killer and Iggy Pop‘s The Passenger, like hallucinations “that never happened”.

Kirill Serebrennikov, Artistic Director of the Gogol Center, who received the 2016 François Chalais Prize in Cannes for his film “The Disciple”, is accused of funds diversion, and is currently under house arrest in Moscow.

Leto
Kirill Serebrennikov
2H06 B&W

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