Cannes Film Festival – 2nd day – May 12th

Hello,

Yesterday I didn’t watch any movies. Only the official selection was already open and I’m waiting for the Directors’ Fortnight and the Critics’ week to start.

I just came down to pick up my badges and some invitations for my colleagues at Orange.

Today is a sunny and windy day in Cannes.

My 2nd day at Cannes starts with an Italian movie, the opening movie of the Director’s Fortnight: “Fai bei sogni” from Marco Bellocchio, from the Italian editorial success of Massimo Gramellini.

 

Sweet dreams is like a lullaby that the mother of Massimo was whispering to him every night. After Massimo’s mother mysterious death when he was 9, he returns to his childhood house in Torino, to sell it. Massimo, now an accomplished sport journalist, is still hunted by the truth on his mother’s death.

Torino and the story of the city his at the center of Bellocchio’s screenplay and Valerio Mastandrea is perfect in rendering the feelings of a man forced to relive the traumatic events from his past.

Massimo’s the 2nd generation of people from southern Italy that migrated to Torino to work for FIAT, the giant car industry of the Piedmont’s capital and with no surprise their preferred team is the “Toro”, and not the “Juventus” whose owners are from the same “bourgeoisie” that owns FIAT. And we see Massimo and his father rejoining after many years at the yearly commemoration of the death of the Turin football club, when a plane with all the team on board crashed on the hills of Superga.

Bellocchio gives here a very profound and emotional description: prepare your kleenex!

 

My second film of the day is from the Critics’ week: “Albüm” from Turkish director Mehmet Can Mertoğlu.

 

While the pitch was interesting (a couple creating a fake family album, portraying a fake pregnancy to cover the fact that they are actually adopting, the movie doesn’t succeed in exploiting all the humor of the situation as in the director’s intentions. The Romanian co-production and the Romanian D.O.P. don’t help and the result is quite disconnected, even if some funny moments and an insight into Turkish daily life are well portrayed. The chief policeman and the interrogations at the police station, even if surrealist, must be routine in rural Turkey.

That’s all for today!