After a quite disappointing day 4, I decided to wait for another (promising) screening before I spit my venom towards the outside world. A wise decision it was. My venom is way less poisonous now that I went through my Hamaguchi therapy.
Let’s briefly run through day 4. “The Killer”, just a big disappointment. I was expecting quite a lot from the cooperation between David Fincher (“Seven”, “The Zodiac”) and Michael Fassbender (aka one of the loves of my life since “Hunger” and “Shame”). What I got was a big bulk of nothingness. A styling exercise that seems to have appealed to some of the critics but that, to me, brought absolutely nothing new to the beautiful world of cinema. Had I written this yesterday, I would have just offered you a list of better killers to watch in the movie history instead (if I were you, I would start with Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men”).
As for “La Bête”, even less to say. Just a confirmation that French cinema is not doing so well and obviously not choosing the right projects to finance. And another confirmation that (#verypersonalopinion) Léa Seydoux is still as unbearable as before… and that I will never understand why James Bond died for such an irrelevant actress.
Now that I see that my venom is still pretty agressive, let’s move on fast to day 5 – a magic moment. Again, loads of expectations from this one because of Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” (if you have not seen it…. Just do watch it).
And this time, expectations fully met (pfew).
A pure moment of Japanese delicacy and poetry. The plot is quite simple: a glamping project comes to disrupt the inhabitants of a small Japanese community of 6000 in the middle of the untouched nature. Where a Western movie would most probably turn into mass hysteria, demonstrations and shouts, Hamaguchi’s movie goes towards a discrete but very deep discussion about the community’s relationship to nature, the history of its inhabitants and their reason for being where they are. The delicate confrontation between modern business goals (absolutely inadapted to the local realities) and people who simply have found their place is a pure delight to watch. I have to say that seeing people listening to each other whilst having quite irreconciliable points of views and objectives has sadly become very rare.
Top it up with a quite mysterious ending for which we have already found two different interpretations, and what you’ll eventually get is a massive (and absolutely deserved) standing ovation in the Sala Grande. I won’t tell you about the end but would be very happy to hear about your understanding of it as it is still a matter for discussion on our little Lido paradise…
Klara's cinema 