I woke up this morning around 3 am…naturally, having operated by a European clock for the last two weeks. Come daybreak I couldn’t do much except sit around and chat with Jett, Cait and Sutton and, you know, do grandfather stuff. And then I crashed for a couple of hours. All to say this is more of a recovery than a filing day.

But I’ll have at least three topics to wade into when I return to Connecticut — watching the original King Kong with 2 and 1/2 year-old Sutton, re-watching the original Ant Man and a rehash of the whole Bernardo Bertolucci-Maria Schneider Last Tango in Paris thing, thanks to Jessica Palud‘s Being Maria, an out-of-competition Cannes film that I didn’t get to but have read about. From what I’ve gathered and have personally been told, it distorts big-time.

NYC transit system to weary traveller upon his return from France:

Welcome back, Chuck, and now the ordeal begins.

Nine and a half hours from Nice Airport take-off at 2 pm (or 8 am by a Manhattan clock) to your JFK 5:30 pm touchdown, you say?

Followed by 170 drag-ass minutes (customs, luggage retrieval, endless walking, Air Train, missing the Howard Beach A train by seconds), topped off by your A train’s sluggish arrival at Penn Station at 8:20 pm, thereby causing you to miss your 8:11 pm Jersey Transit train to West Orange.

I had awoken on Saturday morning at the NYC equivalent of 12:30 am.

London and Nice-area mass transit systems are faster, smoother, more comfortable and less arduous, you say? They actually have escalators everywhere, unlike NYC?

I began my Cannes-to-Nice bus voyage (free voucher supplied by Cannes Film Festival staff) at the NYC time zone equivalent of 4:30 am and finally walked through Jett’s door in West Orange last night at roughly 9:15 pm or 3:15 am Cannes time, or nearly 23 hours later.

What do you do, whine for a living? Are you a baby, some kind of chronic complainer? Are you a man or a mouse? Nine and a half hours of flying plus 14 hours of ground transport and waiting on both ends…par for the course.

…that comes over you or creeps in…after flying nine hours from Nice and then you finally touch down at JFK…I shall be released! Actually not so fast because there’s no available gate so your Delta 767 sits on the tarmac for 35, 40 minutes…waiting, waiting…trying to suppress anger. Really nice.

…that a super-famous person was portrayed by an actor who resembled him/her this closely?

Nobody knows how good Waltzing With Brando will be, but even if it’s only so-so Billy Zane will have landed his catchiest, most attention-getting role ever. Zane hasn’t been on a hot streak since his mid ‘90s one-two punch — The Phantom (‘96) and Titanic (‘97). Everyone loves a good comeback.

…are actually making sense or at least aren’t striking me as wildly off the mark.

Except, that is, for Jesse Plemons being handed the Best Actor trophy for playing three muted, hung-up, blank-eyed zombies in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness. This, to me, is a huge WHAT??

I’m especially pleased that one of my biggest faves, Halfdan Ullmann Tondel‘s Armand, has won the Camera d’Or.

I’d much rather listen to Deirdre’s vocal-free Beatles tracks than think about the dreaded Paul Mescal playing one of the lads in Sam Mendes’ planned quartet of Beatles films. I’m sorry but Jordan Ruimy’s 5.24 post sent me into a black pit.

Okay, I’ve popped for Delta’s onboard wifi…we’re now over the Atlantic (southwest of Keflavik) and the signal is surprisingly strong.

I’m only just starting to monitor ticket-buyer reactions to George Miller’s Furiosa (5.24) and the negatives seem higher than I expected. Many agree with my viewpoint. I called it a visually handsome but unimpressive revenge saga — shallow, overlong — in my 5.16 review.

…are going to upset me, at least to some extent. They always do. I’ll be among the last to read about the winners, as my Nice-to-JFK flight (departing 35 minutes hence) doesn’t land until 5something Manhattan time or 11sonething in Cannes

From “The Power of the Kennedy Look,” a 5.21.24 N.Y. Times piece by Vanessa Friedman:

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the most attention-getting independent candidate for president since Ross Perot, may not have the poll numbers to end up on the debate stage next month. But he increasingly has something else: a reputation as the electoral ‘X factor.’

“In an election fought partly through the images that inundate social media and pit archetype against archetype — Donald J. Trump, the 1980s red-tie-wearing sultan of reality TV, versus President Biden, the aviator-clad deal maker of D.C. — Mr. Kennedy offers a Rorschach test of a different kind. At least stylistically speaking.

“His look — skinny rep ties, button-downs, shrugged-on suits, shock of gray hair and weather-beaten tan — not only sets him apart. It also speaks directly to associations with the early 1960s, a golden age of promise that represents ‘vigor, wit, charisma, change, said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, and that are buried deep in the American hive mind.”

Mohammad Rasoulof‘s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which I saw at the Grand Lumiere a few hours ago, is a political metaphor film — an embrace of Iran’s anti-mullah, anti-sexist “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, otherwise known as the Mahsa Amini street protests.

The historic rebellion was triggered by the 9.16.22 killing of protestor Jina Mahsa Amini while in police custody. Furious reactions went on for months.

It follows that the motivation behind the widespread Cannes cheering (and I got an earful of it following today’s 3 pm screening) is two-fold.

One, admiring the film equals supporting the movement, and nobody wants to sound blase or neutral about this, myself included. And two, supporting Rasoulof during his time of trial and nomadic uncertainty has been deemed vital, as he recently escaped from Iran in order to dodge eight years of prison time, which he was sentenced to over the content of this film.

The story is basically about the older, bearded, barrel-chested Iman (Misagh Zare), a Tehran civil servant recently promoted to inspector. He’s married to Najmeh (Soheila Golestani), whose nature is basically submissive and go-alongish, and they have two college-age daughters, the politically outspoken Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and the sullen and resentful Sana (Setareh Maleki).

Iman’s odious job partly involves interrogating malcontents (principally students) who’ve been arrested for protesting, and in some cases placing the lives of the accused in jeopardy.

And yet Iman isn’t initially presented as a flat-out villain — he’s a defensive-minded bureaucrat who’s mainly terrified of incurring the wrath of his hardline boss. And yet he is in lockstep with the Iranian regime and therefore a bringer of harsh authority.

The first half of this three-hour film is about the tensions stirred by the protests and particularly Iman’s daughters as they try to protect a college-age friend who’s been hurt in a street protest.

The second half — here’s where the problem kicks in — begins when Iman’s pistol, which his work colleagues have given him for protection, suddenly disappears. Who stole it and why? It seems surreal that one of Iman’s daughters might be the thief, but somebody’s clearly responsible.

Iman’s strategic reactions become more and more authoritarian and then paranoid, and we’re encouraged (along with his wife and daughters) to feel more and more alarmed by his punitive thinking, which has been exacerbated by lying.

It all comes to a head when Iman drives his family to a rural Iranian village.

Boiled down, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is two movies — the first half comprised of complex social realism, and the second half (stolen gun) driven by metaphorical symbolism and the ‘22 Jina protests. It’s really two separate films, and while their content comes from the same place the styles don’t blend.

And the 180-minute length really isn’t necessary.

Critic friendo: “Cannes critics are investing heavily in praising this film…they’re going along with this emotional wave that everyone’s feeling up and down the Croisette. I’m thinking it might win the Palme d’Or.”

HE: “It’s not good enough to win the Palme d’Or. The two halves don’t blend together. It’s two separate films. It’s serious and thoughtful, but no one’s idea of a great movie.”

Critic friendo: “That’s what bothered me. Rasoulof should have adhered to the realism of the first 90 minutes. And yet everyone’s raving like nothing’s wrong and everything’s glorious. They’re all trying to duck the flawed second half.”

On my 11th and next-to-final day of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, here’s my best-of-the-best rundown, and in this order:

1. Sean Baker’s Anora

2.  Halfdan Ullman Tendel’s Armand (yes, I promise to post an actual HE-styled review)

3.  Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light

4.  Magnus von Horn’s The Girl With The Needle

5.  Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice

6.  Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance

7.  Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez (deserves respect and a certain measured approval as far as it goes)

8. Paul Schrader‘s Oh, Canada (subdued dignity, excellent writing, Richard Gere’s caustic performance).

Which of these will have the biggest impact in the States? The Baker, Audiard and Abassi.

The abrasive nature of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s Limonov: The Ballad and the generally bizarre mood and extreme brushstrokes of Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Kinds of Kindness and Francis Coppola‘s Megalopolis…not my cup.

I’m sorry for failing to catch Andrea Arnold‘s Bird…every time I checked for opportunities the app reported COMPLET or the venue was in Cannes la Bocca, the next town over which is a huge pain to get to.

At one point I was determined to catch Caught by the Tides…not so much now.

I reported the other day about being blocked by festival security from seeing Three Kilometers to the End of the World.

I was never interested in Wild Diamond, which is about a young girl looking to make her mark in reality TV.