Adèle Exarchopoulos returns to be the best actress in the world

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

The two actresses are once again appearing together this year in the official competition: Seydoux, the protagonist of 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 statement of that tweet thirteen years ago, often in minor films where her talent did not fully shine or in independent productions that did not receive the recognition they deserved. She, meanwhile, has been moving forward, trying new registers – action cinema with Cédric Jimenez, absurd comedy 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 that premiered 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 a 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 up drunk every night and waking up every 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 to whom we see making mistakes, growing, changing, and learning over the years. It is very difficult not to love this girl with so much zest for life and at the same time so much fear 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 sensationalism. 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 against the Nazis, and its main martyr, as he died cruelly tortured by one of the heads of the Gestapo, Klaus Barbie, known as the Butcher of Lyon. A biopic about this national hero buried in the Pantheon of Paris could have easily fallen into mere heroic exaltation or the Wikipedia illustration of historical events, but the Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes leads it to a much more interesting territory to build a sober and very elegant portrait of the character of expressive restraint. The film, 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 Giles Lellouche plays Moulin with great gestural economy and the right words. The gloomy gray-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. Despite knowing perfectly well what is to happen, the film manages to maintain tension at all times, narrating the interrogation and torture at the hands of the Nazis with a sense 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 fragment of La barcarola from the opera The Tales of Hoffmann– which forever belongs to this great film.