Meanwhile, in Cannes… Pierre Richard or the “tall blond” on the red carpet, the return of the Dardenne brothers and a final clap

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CANNES REcap , DAY TEN. At 90, the eternal "tall blond" was celebrated for his entire career and presented his final film as a director! A different room, a different atmosphere: the Dardenne brothers took to the stage at the last of the competition.

As the Nèg'Marrons sang, "it's crazy how quickly time flies." Here we are already on the last day of competition, but seasoned festival-goers know: every day counts and Juliette Binoche 's jury will still have 24 hours to fine-tune the prize list, which will be revealed Saturday evening. On the program this Friday, May 23: a regular festival duo, the Dardenne Brothers, already twice awarded the Palme d'Or, who are back this year with "Jeunes Mères." And the return of actor Josh O'Connor who, after "The History of Sound," returns to the podium for "The Mastermind," by American director Kelly Reichardt. The list of 22 feature films will then be finalized... and the wait for the final verdict will begin.

Pierre Richard: peers pay tribute to “an odd one”

It's safe to say it without offending anyone: comedy isn't the Cannes Film Festival's strong point. So when it celebrates one of France's greatest comedic actors, it's a minor event. Pierre Richard, because that's who we're talking about, paid tribute to the 90-year-old actor and director on Thursday. His latest film, "The Man Who Saw the Bear Who Saw the Man," his first in nearly 30 years, was screened in a special screening before hitting theaters on September 24. Shot in Occitanie, it tells the story of the friendship between an old fisherman who has fled his environment—played by Pierre Richard himself—and a young autistic boy, who share a love of nature.

At 90 years old, with a career spanning more than 60 years, the actor, who will forever be remembered as "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" (1972), has made people laugh with his awkwardness in more than 100 feature films, crossing the history of French comedy like few actors. On the occasion of the release of his memoirs, he gave a long interview to "Le Nouvel Obs" in which he confided the difficulty of making people laugh.

Unforgettable with his big smile and his curly hair in the successes of Francis Veber ( "La Chèvre" , "Le Jouet" ...), he has again lent his sympathy capital in recent years to Pierrot, one of the incorrigible old men of "Les Vieux Fourneaux" (2018), or to the druid Panoramix in "Asterix and Obelix: The Middle Kingdom" (2023).

This burlesque, often whimsical actor received an honorary César Award for his entire career in 2006. During the award ceremony, with the music from "Le Grand Blond" (The Tall Blond Man) playing as he entered the stage, he listened to a long ovation from his peers before saying: "I, who have never been anything but a fool..."

The Dardenne brothers attempt the third pass

The Dardenne brothers have produced a unique film, brighter and more diverse than their previous works, freed for once from the terrible deadlines that transform each of their social chronicles into a diabolical countdown. The intertwined destinies of five young girls prematurely catapulted into the throes of motherhood, "Young Mothers" recounts the weight of parental priesthood, its almost animal mystery, and its extra anguish and emotion when it is coupled with social deprivation, the breeding ground to which these Cannes super-directors – eleventh selection in a row and two Palmes d'Or – nevertheless remain faithful. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne talk to us about the revolution that "Young Mothers" represents in their filmography, and about the casting. A two-voice interview with this double Palme d'Or winning filmmaker duo is worth discovering.

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Interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne: "This time, we wanted our heroines to make it through"

Three years after "Leila and Her Brothers," Iranian director Saeed Roustaee returns to the competition with "Woman and Child," a film whose filming was authorized by the authorities. Sentenced to five years in prison in 2022 after his appearance at Cannes, he now explains: "The worst thing for me is not to make films." Many of his compatriots in exile accuse him of having compromised himself with this work, which respects the strict laws of the Islamic Republic - particularly concerning the wearing of the veil. Saeed Roustaee has indeed made a radically different choice from that of his compatriot Jafar Panahi, his competitor in the competition, who chose to go underground. "It's very important to me that my films are seen by people in my country" because "I think that Iranian cinema is a bit hijacked by vulgar comedies," adds the filmmaker who, in this family drama presented in competition, follows the destiny of Mahnaz, a 40-year-old mother on the verge of rebuilding her life.

He says he was forced to request permits to film, which took him "more than six months" to obtain, notably due to a change of government.

"If you make this kind of film, with scenes in a hospital, in large institutions like a school, how can you do it without permission, with substantial equipment, a lot of extras? On the first day, second day, our filming would have been stopped," explains the director. "I think my purpose is to depict these stories inside Iran and to be able to show them in cinemas," he continues.

Intergenerational dialogue, family heritage, and the transmission of spleen will remain the major themes of this Cannes vintage. At the end of this fortnight, and after "Sound of Falling," "The Secret Agent," and "The History of Sound," two very different films are making their honey, one by a Catalan director, the other by a Norwegian director.

In "Romeria" by Carla Simon, a newcomer to the competition, a young adopted woman (a doll-like Llucia Garcia) arrives in Vigo, a port city in Galicia known for its ruins, in search of her origins and the administrative documents essential to continuing her studies. Armed with her mother's diary, she meets her father's relatives and piecemeal, here with the help of testimonies, there thanks to photos, objects and other material traces, the life and early death of her parents, modern young people of the Movida years, enamored with bohemianism and cut down by their thirst for freedom. Romeria is, in fact, the director Carla Simon who retraces the journey she made in 2004, at the age of 18. Hence the intimate vibration, the very personal sensuality that his film exudes, its organic and delicate way of implicitly evoking the unspoken and persistent denial of the Spanish regarding the ravages of drugs and AIDS, a libertarian backlash to decades of Francoism. A powerful subject that Simon approaches with delicate touches, as close as possible to the bodies and the elements, each scene resembling the emanations of a personal diary whose subtleties, let's admit it, do not sit well with the end-of-festival fatigue. Of the seven films by female directors in competition (a record), "Romeria" appears to us to be the most discreet and, without doubt, the most beautiful.

Clearing and understanding the past to better envision the future is also the driving force behind "Sentimental Value" , the comeback of Norwegian Joachim Trier and his actress Renate Reinsve in competition four years after "Julie in 12 Chapters" which earned the latter the Best Actress Award. The return of a famous filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgaard) to business and to the lives of his two daughters, one of whom, an actress (Renate Reinsve), refuses to play in his next film and is replaced by an ambitious Hollywood starlet (Elle Fanning), this dramedy promises to be a continuation of "Julie in 12 Chapters" , alert and playful, before revealing its deep melancholy under heavy Bergman-Chekhov-Woody Allenian influence.

Bourgeois family home where the deceased mother raised her two daughters and gave psychoanalysis sessions that the kids spied on (hello Woody Allen); resentment of two sisters (Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) for their boomer father who resurfaces and draws inspiration from their complicated relationships in his new work (hello Bergman); mirrored portraits of artists, one of whom plays "the Seagull" (hello Chekhov): "Sentimental Value" (release announced for August 20), if it fits into the era (excellent gag about the DVDs offered to the 10-year-old: "Haneke has understood everything about women"...) and is not stingy with well-aimed barbs aimed at Netflix and the backstage of showbiz, surfs less on the zeitgeist than "Julie..." and navigates in too identified, overwhelming territory, so as not to suffer from the comparison. No matter: Trier has the intelligence to keep a low profile, to opt for careful writing but a loose form, and to rely on his characters and their actors, all excellent, while his film gains in truth and emotion as the two sisters become its chorus. It also celebrates the cathartic, if not reconciling, power of cinema, another leitmotif of the selection.

A strange convergence of Cannes fluids offered by "History of Sound" . The film revolves around the secret passion of two academics from the 1920s roaming the deep countryside of Maine. Their little vintage priestly ritual of musical archaeologists (archiving the folk songs of the surrounding villages using wax cylinders) results in a film haunted by the specter of the polished reconstructions of James Ivory, a former regular at the Croisette, custodian of a largely obsolete production model (the corseted melodrama of the period, with messages) that director Oliver Hermanus revives as a meticulous continuator - we often see the characters polishing objects that have gathered dust, a good summary of the film's project.

In fact, the only update of this software is mainly in the choice of its cast: lively headliners, the new stars of the moment Josh O'Connor (seen as Prince Charles in "The Crown" ) and Paul Mescal ( "Gladiator 2" ), reincarnate the well-combed ephebes of Ivory at the height of "Maurice" or "A Room with a View" (Hugh Grant, James Wilby, Julian Sands). Both come off with honors: anxious presence, all fragility out for one (O'Connor), coolness and marble class for the other (Mescal).

It would be tempting to confine "The History of Sound" to this walled-off horizon, although the film regularly manages to extract itself from it, affected by a background of roughness, of primitive attraction to the rural, the open air, the simple melodies of Americana. The Maine forest, its muddy paths, its heavy and gray skies form a modest Eden to which the characters always return, in the name of their secret love of course (it is in the intimacy of lost corners that their homosexuality can live and express itself), but also of an ancestral attachment to the land, to the virtues of the silent customs of the peasant world. Frankly, we could not imagine such a love of the raw from this groomed thing.

Chosen by Unifrance as one of its 10 to Watch (10 revelations to follow) of the year, actor Sayyid El Alami ("La Pampa", "Their children after them") tells how he passed himself off, for the duration of a festive evening, as the "American nephew by marriage" of the director of the Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux.