Social justice is a topic beloved of Cannes's glitzy set
By N.B. | CANNES
THE typical Cannes Festival film is either an extravagant exercise in surrealism or an angry indictment of social injustice. But films in the latter category seem surreal in the context of the Festival’s conspicuous consumption. However political the polemics may be, they’re being shown in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, a venue known for its black-tie galas and red-carpet photoshoots, with a street of high-end jewellery boutiques on one side and a sparkling bay jammed with super-yachts on the other. The only people likely to storm any barricades are the star-spotters craning to glimpse George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Both were in Cannes for the premiere of “Money Monster”, a satirical hostage thriller which struggles in vain to match its most obvious influences, “Network” and “Dog Day Afternoon”. Clooney plays Lee Gates, a complacent stock-touting guru with his own trashy television show. When a fund he recommends takes an $800m nosedive, one of its shareholders (Jack O’Connell) sneaks into the television studio (which has remarkably lax security) armed with a gun and a bomb vest, demanding an explanation. “Money Monster” is a brave attempt to examine the reasons behind the financial crisis, while adhering to the conventions of a Hollywood star vehicle, but the film—Jodie Foster’s fourth as director—comes across as a gimmicky fringe play. Whether or not you would buy the shares tipped by Gates, it’s impossible to buy his swift transformation from shallow buffoon to selfless crusader.
A more cogent commentary on our economic woes came from a past master, Ken Loach. The 79-year-old’s latest, “I, Daniel Blake”, is a companion piece to his influential homelessness drama “Cathy Come Home”, broadcast on the BBC 50 years ago. But his affecting new film is set squarely in a 21st-century Britain of food banks, online forms and automated phonelines. And, unlike some of the Cannes offerings from pensionable directors—say Woody Allen’s 1930s-set “Cafe Society”—it doesn’t feel like the work of a film-maker who is past his best.
The titular hero of “I, Daniel Blake” (played by Dave Johns, a stand-up comic) is a 60-ish widower who worked as a carpenter in Newcastle for decades before suffering a heart attack. In order to qualify for welfare payments, he now has to trudge through a maze of humiliating and Kafka-esque bureaucracy. He is threatened by “sanctions” when his CV isn’t up to scratch, and instructed to wait—and wait—to hear from an unseen “Decision-Maker”.
As depressing as the film is, it isn’t without hope. The indomitable Daniel cracks spirited jokes, and the mood is buoyed by Mr Loach’s faith in human decency. In scene after scene, both friends and strangers offer to carry Daniel’s shopping and teach him how to work a computer, while Daniel himself helps out Katie (Hayley Squires), a single mother having even more trouble with the Department for Work and Pensions than he is. “I, Daniel Blake” is a glowing tribute to the citizens of Newcastle, complete with English subtitles alongside the French ones, for the benefit of viewers who can’t penetrate its Geordie accents.
Andrea Arnold’s “American Honey” shares a cinematographer with “I, Daniel Blake”, as well as a fascination with the punishing reality of life on the poverty line, but the writer-director has broken away from her British social-realist roots. Her first America-set film is a freewheeling road movie in which an 18-year-old (Sasha Lane) escapes a dysfunctional family by joining a group of itinerant young misfits. Together, they drive across the Midwest, paying for their motel rooms and alcohol by selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. “American Honey” is an eye-opening exploration of the country’s poorest hinterlands, with a star-making central performance, but its preference for atmosphere over plot may prompt some viewers to jump out of the van before its two-and-three-quarter-hour running time is up.
In Jeff Nichols’s “Loving”, the writer-director dramatises the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), arrested in rural Virginia in 1958, when the state’s laws still forbade marriages between blacks and whites. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union offer to appeal against their conviction, realising that they have a historic case on their hands. But Mr Nichols downplays this momentousness, opting instead for a quiet, intimate portrait of two taciturn people who just want to get on with their lives. It’s acted with such exquisite subtlety that, for two hours at least, the frantic Riviera glitz outside seems miles away.
