Adèle Exarchopoulos is again the best actress in the world

Special correspondent to the Cannes Film FestivalSomeone wrote on Twitter –it was still called that then– a few hours after the first screening of La vida de Adèle,, at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, that Adèle Exarchopoulos was, quite simply, the best actress in the world. And that impression was conveyed by the young debutante in that torrential and wonderful film, that year's Palme d'Or winner, exceptionally shared by the director (Abdellatif Kechiche) and the two leads, Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux.

The two actresses are reunited this year in the official competition: Seydoux, a star in Gentle monster and L’inconnu, is one of the most frequent presences at the festival, often in the official competition and in the most anticipated titles. Exarchopoulos, on the other hand, has had a lower-profile career that has not done justice to the hyperbolic assertion of that tweet thirteen years ago, often in minor films where her talent didn't quite shine or in independent productions that didn't get the recognition they deserved. She, meanwhile, kept working, trying new registers – action films with Cédric Jimenez, absurd comedies with Quentin Dupieux – and consolidating herself as a great actress, perhaps not the best in the world, but with a very special presence and closeness.

But in Garance, Jeanne Herry's film presented this Sunday at the festival, Exarchopoulos may have found the film that will reignite the praise and superlatives. Her character is also an actress, with a more modest career, passionate about her work and with severe but more or less functional alcoholism. Garance is a social animal, queen of the party with a drink always in hand and a very talented actress, but ending every night drunk and waking up each morning with a hellish hangover eventually takes its toll.

The film is not reduced to portraying an illness, but rather makes Garance a rich and complex character whom we see make mistakes, grow, change, and learn over the years. It becomes very difficult not to love this girl with so much zest for life and at the same time so afraid of a life without the crutch of alcohol. Garance, the film, is a small miracle, a luminous film that addresses alcoholism without condescension, that does not soften the gravity of the subject, but refuses to descend into the mire of melodrama. And Exarchopoulos once again works magic in a role that could perfectly earn her an award at Cannes.

Resistance and martyrdom

Jean Moulin was one of the leaders of the French resistance to the Nazis, and its principal martyr, as he died cruelly tortured by one of the Gestapo chiefs, Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon. A biopic about this national hero buried in the Panthéon in Paris could have easily fallen into mere heroic exaltation or the encyclopedic illustration of historical facts, but the Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes leads it to a much more interesting terrain to construct, from expressive restraint, a sober and elegant portrait of the character. The film, simply titled Moulin, focuses only on the last weeks of Moulin's life, when he returns to France from his London exile to unite the divided factions of the French resistance.

An extraordinary Gilles Lellouche plays Moulin with great economy of gesture and the right words. The somber grey-toned photography wonderfully expresses the oppressive atmosphere of an occupied country and the permanent sense of danger. But from Moulin's arrest and imprisonment, the film enters an almost Bressonian phase. Although the outcome of the story is known, Nemes manages to maintain tension at all times, narrating the interrogation and torture at the hands of the Nazis with a touch of modesty, without ever falling into the pornography of pain. There are even moments of sublime beauty, and a use of Offenbach's music – the famous excerpt from La barcarola from the opera The Tales of Hoffmann– which now forever belongs to this great film.