Cannes critics have lost their minds over Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, a laid-back, edge-of-boredom, fly-on-the-wall father-daughter vacation flick, set in Turkey sometime in the late ‘90s. I didn’t mind it and it’s not a painful endurance test, but it’s certainly lethargic as fuck.

Where’s the pulse? Where’s the intrigue or story tension or the proverbial second-act pivot or any of that stuff? Sorry, Jose.

11 year old Sophie (Frankie Corio) and her young-looking, divorced dad (Paul Mescal) are staying (bonding) at a midrange coastal hotel. Swimming pool, video games, camcorder footage, puppy love, golden sunlight, distant hazy forests, dad grinning like an idiot. etc.

A dozen or so little things “happen” (including a curious weeping scene and a mystifying moment when Sophie succumbs to the romantic advances of an overweight gamer) or are more precisely observed. but the whole time you’re thinking “Guy Lodge and Carlos Aguilar did backwards somersaults over this?“

Ruben Ostlund‘s Triangle of Sadness is often wickedly funny — there’s no denying that. Now and then the press crowd at the Salle Debussy was chortling, guffawing and even howling. Even I, a confirmed LQTM-er, laughed out loud five or six times.

The 140-minute Triangle turns broad after the first hour or so, and that’s when it starts to lose the satiric mojo. (But not entirely.) But until that tonal shift it struck me as the funniest, scalpel-like social comedy I’ve seen since…well, now that I think of it, Ostlund’s The Square (’17), which sliced and diced your elite, politically terrified, museum-culture wokesters.

When the capsule synopsis for Sadness appeared online a couple of years everyone immediately recognized the similarity to Lina Wertmuller‘s Swept Away (’74), a Marxist comedy about a luxury yacht sinking and leaving a rich bitch (Mariangela Melato) and a common crewman (Giancarlo Giannini) stranded on a desert island.

Once their class-based loathing of each other fades away, Melato and Giannini fall in love and the social dynamic reverses itself — Melato swooning with desire for the primitive Giannini and vice versa. But when they’re finally rescued Melato reverts to haughty form, leaving Giannini heartbroken.

But strictly speaking the resemblance applies only to Triangle of Sadness‘s third act, titled “The Island.” And it’s different from the Wertmuller (a two-hander) in that Ostlund’s is an ensemble piece.

The first act, focusing on a young, beautiful, somewhat conflicted couple living on modelling and social-influencer income (Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean), is titled “Carl and Yaya”.

The film’s best scene occurs early on. It involves a dispute Carl and Yaya have about who will pay for dinner in a pricey restaurant. Yeah, I know — what kind of dude is Carl if he’s expecting Yaya to play the traditional man’s role? But Yaya, who makes a good deal more money than Carl, pledged the night before that she’d cover it, only to blithely ignore the check when the waiter places it on their table. Carl wants them to be equals, he complains, and not submit to standard gender roles. Yaya replies that it’s “unsexy” to talk about money. Manipulation translation: She wants him to get the check anyway.

The second best scene is the opener — a cattle call for a group of shirtless male models (Carl among them) who are asked at one point to show their Balenciaga face (cold, indifferent) and their H&M “happy” face.

In the second act, “The Yacht”, Carl and Yaya are guests on a swanky, first-class vessel (actually Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy‘s Christina O), and about halfway through this section Triangle of Sadness tips over into coarse slapstick with a healthy serving of gross-out humor a la Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

The vomit scene is when the movie changes its game, and while the remainder of the film is amusing in fits and starts, it never qui recovers.

But half of a brilliant comedy (complemented by a reasonably decent one in the second half) is enough for me.

The abundantly wealthy passengers on the cruise (Vicki Berlin, Henrik Dorsin, Jean-Christophe Folly, Iris Berben, Dolly De Leon, Sunnyi Melles) are all vulgar exploiters of one stripe or another. The most amusing tuns are from Woody Harrelson as the ship’s captain — a droll, Marxist-slogan-spouting alcoholic — and Zlatko Burić, a fat Russian fertilizer tycoon (“I sell shit”).

On 7.19 Kino Lorber will issue a 4K “special edition” Bluray of Delbert Mann‘s Marty (’55). It will include the correctly framed 1.37 version, which Kino issued in 2014, along with an 1.85 version — a political concession to the 1.85 fascists who screamed bloody murder over the boxy.

In a 7.28.14 HE post titled “Marty Is Boxy After All…Glorious!,” I included an explanation from Kino Lorber vp acquisitions and business affairs Frank Tarzi:

“We looked at [Bob Furmanek]’s research and then screened Marty at 1.85, and didn’t like what we saw,” he said. “If I cropped some of the close-up scenes down to 1.85 I would be cropping half of their face off. I could see [going with] 1.66 but I still think 1.33 is better. We got attacked on Home Theatre Forum and Facebook. I couldn’t believe the tone of [some of the posts]. For a two-week period we were being crucified.”

Tarzi says he’s “very happy” with the boxy Marty. “1.85 just would have been too severe, he believes. “We did several tests. There’s one closeup scene in which Marty’s is on the phone, asking the girl for a date…by the time the camera stops getting in tight, the face covers the whole frame. Cutting that down to 1.85 would have been incorrect.”

Today’s trio: Riley Keough’s War Pony (2:15 pm), Ruben Ostlund’s Triangle of Sadness (4:30 pm) and Cristian Mungiu’s keenly anticipated R.M.N. (10 pm).

Didn’t like and therefore haven’t mentioned — Arnaud Desplechin’s Frere et Soeur, Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO.

Can’t wait for Sunday afternoon’s screening of Ali Abbasi ‘s Holy Spider.

On the Cannes red carpet for George Miller’s new movie, the woman in front of me stripped off all her clothes (covered in body paint) and fell to her knees screaming in front of photographers. Cannes authorities rushed over, covered her in a coat, & blocked my camera from filming pic.twitter.com/JFdWlwVMEw

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) May 20, 2022

“Maybe childhood makes you sad sometimes, but there are other solutions besides ‘hand me the dick-saw.’I’m sure the vast majority of parents do not take this lightly, and [know] that it’s very hard to know when something is real or just a phase. Being trans is different — it’s innate — but kids do have phases. Gender fluid? Kids are fluid about everything. If kids knew what they wanted to be at age eight, the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody scheduled me for eye removal and peg-leg surgery.” — from last night’s “New Rules” crescendo of last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

Edited Twitter reaction: You can’t say George Miller‘s Three Thousand Years of Longing isn’t trippy or eye-popping or CG-swamped or…okay, a bit florid. But it also touches bottom with a poignant, imaginative and very adult current of romance, discovery and even transcendence.

Much of Miller’s film is invested in a 21st Century CG-meets-Michael Powell and The Thief of Baghdad aesthetic, but it’s framed by a very unusual and touching love story between Tilda Swinton‘s English writer — whipsmart, spinsterish — and Idris Elba‘s hulking and thoughtful Djinn (i.e., magic genie).

I can’t say that Longing is a supreme G-spot experience — too much is submerged in the Djinn’s fantastical history, which is devoid of story tension — but the film has something of real emotional value while Swinton and Elba are holding the screen.

I was praying that the film wouldn’t stay inside the genie bottle and smother us with CG fantasy mush.

But during the last 15% or 20% it leaves the CG palaver behind and focuses on the grown-up love story, which is one of the gentlest, most other-worldly and spiritually driven I’ve ever experienced.

Elba** and Swinton are wonderful — seasoned, grounded, playing-for-keeps actors at the peak of their game.

I was scared at first, but Longing turned out much better than I expected. A mixed bag with an intriguing beginning and a payoff that feels (or felt in my case) sublime.

** Elba’s gentle and reflective genie reminded me, of course, of Rex Ingram‘s Djinn in The Thief of Baghdad (’40). What a contrast between this exuberant, rip-roaring, loin-clothed giant and Ingram’s quiet, tradition-minded “Tilney” — servant to Ronald Colman‘s Supreme Court nominee in George Stevens‘ The Talk of the Town (’42).

Friday, 5.20 — 6:45 pm: I’m sitting in the rear left section of the Grand Lumière for a 7 pm black-tie screening of George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing. I scored a last-minute ticket through friends, and I’m the only guy not wearing a tux. Miller, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton, producer Doug Mitchell on red carpet as we speak.

Variety‘s Clayton Davis has posted a torpedo response to James Gray‘s Armageddon Time, at least as far as its awards potential is concerned. Scenes conveying white elitist viewpoints from three or four odious characters have rubbed Clayton’s woke sensibilities the wrong way.

In describing the film as deeply offensive in terms of said attitudes, Davis is half-suggesting that the film’s admirers are either missing something or oblivious to same.

The autobiographical Armageddon Time is a humanist, well-honed, memory-lane film about what Gray experienced as an 11-year-old youth in Queens, and the ugly elements that he encountered after enrolling in a Forest Hills private school. It’s the first really good film I’ve seen at this technically troubled festival.

Davis excerpt #1: “Armageddon Time, a deeply personal look at how the auteur became the auteur we, or at least the French, came to know and love, debuted to warm applause on Thursday. However, the film’s problematic depiction of racial inequalities in the Reagan era may turn off awards voters.”

Davis excerpt #2: “In a one-scene surprise, recent Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain plays U.S. State Attorney Marianne Trump, speaking to a sea of privileged white children at an elite private school, where [lead protagonist] Paul eventually attends, while Fred Trump (yes, Donald’s father) is present.

“[Marianne] channels the entitlement to be superior, oozing the grotesque and vile nature of a class of people in this country who are ‘the chosen ones’ for no other reason than the tint of their skin. While never named, two boys who use the ‘n-word’ when speaking about [a young Black protagonist] when he visits the school, have the narrative DNA of young Eric and Donald Trump Jr. The cringe factor may be too much to bear for more progressive voters.”

Davis excerpt #3: “Respected critics like Justin Chang of the L.A. Times were high on it, while Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian absolutely admonished it. Unfortunately, when this tale unveils itself stateside, a new racial debate will likely ensue regarding the undertones, similar to Licorice Pizza from Paul Thomas Anderson last year in the AAPI community. That may keep many voters at a distance.”