The Dead Don’t Die Opens 72nd Festival de Cannes

The team of The Deads Don’t Die around Jim Jarmush on the Red Carpet ©YesICannes.com

The 72nd Festival de Cannes is open: after a glamorous Red Carpet studded with international stars, the Opening Ceremony kicked off the competition with the screening of The Dead Don’t Die by Jim Jarmusch.

The Jury of the Competition, chaired this year by the Mexican director, writer and producer Alejandro González Iñárritu, was welcomed on the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière in the Palais des Festivals by the Master of ceremonies, actor and director Edouard Baer. Some 1845 feature films have been proposed for the Official Selection. Twenty films are competing in Official Competition. The competition for the Caméra d’Or brings together 26 feature films among the Official Selection, the Semaine de la Critique and the Directors’ Fortnight.

Charlotte Gainsbourg & Javier Bardem ©YesICannes.com

A couple of actors opens the Festival

The 72nd Cannes Film Festival was declared open by actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg in a one-night couple with Spanish actor Javier Bardem (Everybody Knows by Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi, in competition last year). Both actors were directed by the 2019 Jury President Alejandro González Iñárritu: Charlotte Gainsbourg in 21 Grams in 2004 and Javier Bardem in Biutiful in 2010. Both also won the Best Actor Award in Cannes: Charlotte Gainsbourg for her performance in Antichrist by Lars von Trier in 2009 and Javier Bardem for his role in Biutiful.
The opening ceremony was followed by the screening of The Dead Don’t Die by Jim Jarmusch, the first film of the selection to open up the competition for the Palme d’Or.

Jury ©YesICannes.com

The Palmares unveiled on May 25

Under the chairmanship of Alejandro González Iñárritu, the jury composed of four women and five men from five continents, will select among the twenty or so films in Official Competition, the winners of the various prizes, and will unveil on May 25 the winners list, who, as every year will be fun in confounding all the forecasts.
Jury members of the 2019 Festival de Cannes are: Elle Fanning – (Actress / United States), Maimouna N’Diaye – (Actress, director / Burkina Faso), Kelly Reichardt – (Director, screenwriter & editor / United States), Alice Rohrwacher (Director, screenwriter & producer / Italy), Enki Bilal – (Comic-book author, director / France), Robin Campillo – (Director, screenwriter & editor / France), Yorgos Lanthimos – (Director, screenwriter & producer / Greece), Paweł Pawlikowski – (Director & Writer / Poland).

©DR

The Dead Dont Die: that will end badly!

The 2019 Cannes Film Festival opens under the sign of the horror slapstick with The Dead Don’t Die, Jim Jarmusch‘s 13th film, an awarded veteran of La Croisette. Centerville, Usa, a real nice place! A small town in the countryside where life is good, where the police deals with chicken theft… Until THE climate disaster that turns the axis of the earth. Nature goes wild. Dogs and cats rebel against their humans, ants are disoriented, ominous crows fly in tight ranks… Cliff (Bill Murray), an aging policeman and his young assistant Ronald (Adam Driver) see everywehre that something is wrong with the world.

festival de cannes 2019 the dead dont die

Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny & Adam Driver ©DR

A little too much detachment?

Then, the ubiquitous song The Dead Dont Die by Sturgill Simpson, singer of country music and roots rock, (whose album A Sailor’s Guide to Earth won the Grammy Award for best country album in 2017), accompanies the first faltering steps of the undead coming out of the grave to feed on human flesh… These zombies imitate what motivated them in their lifetime: inane things, simplistic desires, shabby ambitions…
Despite a glitzy cast, Bill Murray, Iggy Pop, RZA, Tom Waits, Selena Gomez, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, the detachment played by the actors and the lack of deep breath in the film makes it hard to bite into this fresco denouncing the “corrupt world” in which we live.
Only one is having fun, Hermit Bob (Tom Waits), a survivalist vagabond, who, connected to nature, haunts the woods all around and sees the hour of his revenge ring. All this will end badly…