Cannes opens with (very) light film in the midst of statements about Gaza and Trump

After the stuffy, apolitical Oscargala of March, the film world in Cannes seems to want to get the damage. « He is not so talkative, but when he says something, you listen, » said Leonardo DiCaprio on Tuesday when he awarded his old mentor Robert de Niro an honorary gold palm at the opening ceremony of the 78th edition of the Film Festival. After which the emotional De Niro went loose on his « Philistine President. » « Art assumes diversity, so we are attacked by autocrats and fascists. What is happening now is not a film, we can’t sit back to see how this ends. We have to take action now. »

A thunderous ovation came to the Niro, after which the room light went out and everyone sat back for the charming Partir Un Jour. A film debut: The 40-year-old French director Amélie Bonnin previously worked for television and made documentaries and short films such as in 2021 Partir Un Joura preliminary study for this charming jukebox musical. Celebrity chef Céline returns unwanted pregnant from Paris to her parents’ trucker restaurant. Dad, an ADHD member who recovers from his third heart attack, wriggles her resentment with down-bending quotes from her culinary TV show (« At home they only thought of car tires »). And Céline doesn’t get away: there are some loose ends with her wildly attractive school friend Raphaël, now father and car mechanic. Once they were in love but too bleu to confess that. Célines Parisian friend show up, there are complications around an abortion and every evening ends in drunkenness, but in the end is Partir Un Jour A melancholic ode to love and missed turns in life, reminiscent of the recent arthouse hit Fits Lives. Although there is more life in this version; With increased emotion, people simply lift French hits.

Grim political context

A nice no -nonsense of the kind with which Cannes likes to open his black film program, but perhaps a little too light in the grim political context of today. The trade press notes that Donald Trumps vague tax plan of 100 percent On foreign films, the topic of conversation is among the tens of thousands of film traders who have settled along the boulevard de la Croisette – followed by embarrassment because they are already talking about Trump again. The jury of the 78th festival received one in the newspaper on Tuesday Libération published statement of 350 filmmakers, including Ralph Fiennes, Susan Sarandon, David Cronenberg, Viggo Mortensen, Pedro Almodóvar, Jonathan Glazer and Ruben Eöstlund. They show themselves ‘ashamed’ about the silence of the film world about the ‘genocide in Gaza’. Why did jury chairman Juliette Binoche not signed, wanted Al Jazeera Tuesday of her knowing. « You will understand that better later, » replied Binoche: that evening she commemorated during the opening ceremony dressed in a mother Maria-dress de Palestinian photographer Fatma Hassonawho was killed in April by an Israeli bombing – a documentary about her in Cannes.

Thursday is the Blockbustdag: Cannes always let Hollywood put one in the shop window, with often some old action heroes such as Harrison Ford or Kevin Costner. Tom Cruise (62) fits in with that list: Three years ago, eight French combat aircraft flew over at the premiere of his top gun follow-up Maverickwhat a symbolic reconfirmation of NATO and the French-American ties seemed to be after the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Maverick Was a megahit.

In 2025, Cruise is back with the eighth and last part of his Mission Impossible series: Final Reckoningin which the American SuperSpion Ethan Hunt has to tame a loose AI. But the context is now different: an American who saves the world, Europeans may not be so appetite. What does Cannes have to do with such a film, a journalist directist Thierry Frémuux skeptical asked. He bypassed the question with a long argument about the qualities of Tom Cruise’s regular director Christopher McQuarrie. Fighter jets will not give them cruise, but he can use Cannes’ support: the previous part of Mission Impossible Was flattened in 2023 by the ‘BARBENHEIMER phenomenon’ and only rugged a meager 570 million dollars. Cruise is also not superhuman, although he himself reportedly thinks about it differently.

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