A great Adam Driver impresses the Cannes Film Festival

Special correspondent to the Cannes Film FestivalFor fans of North American cinema that unites the narrative vigor of film genres and the authorial ambition of the seventies generation, this Sunday was an important day at the Cannes Film Festival, because a new film by James Gray, responsible for films such as Two Lovers or Ad Astra, and arguably the most underrated American director of recent decades. In France, however, critics and the public love him, and so does the Cannes Film Festival, which has screened with all honors Paper Tiger, a masterful drama about a New York family who, at the end of the summer of 1986, unexpectedly finds themselves in the crosshairs of the dangerous Russian mafia.

The origin of the problem lies in the dealings that Gary, the ambitious and successful ex-cop played by Adam Driver, has with these mobsters. Gary does not explain to his brother, an engineer (Miles Teller), who the Russians really are when he recruits him to start a consulting firm; Irwin doesn't quite see it clearly, but his trust in his brother and the prospect of easy money, added to his frustration at not having climbed further up the social ladder, leads him to accept the proposal without knowing he is endangering his wife, Hester (Scarlett Johansson), and their two teenage children.

Paper tiger, a title that ironizes Irwin's description of mobsters and the slogan that discredited the United States in communist countries, is part of the great tradition of seventies crime cinema, from which Gray's films have always drawn, but here with a very personal and down-to-earth dimension. “The world of the film is the world where I grew up – the director has explained–. They are experiences I've had directly or indirectly, things I've lived through. And my life is not a Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola film”.

The thematic elements Gray works with are similar to those in his early thrillers, Little Odessa, The yards, or La noche es nuestra: family as a space of salvation and perdition, insurmountable moral dilemmas, bonds tested by forces beyond our control... However, in Paper tiger, there is a tenderness and intimacy that connects it greatly with his previous film, Armageddon time,A sense of doom runs through the images of A six-foot Al Pacino

A sense of doom runs through the images of Paper tiger from the beginning of the film, in which Gray once again demonstrates that he is one of the directors who best films New York and a gifted planner of suspense scenes. But the heart of the film here is the relationship between Irwin and Gary. Between the two there is a fraternal love that is reflected in the self-destructive mirror of Harvey Keitel and Robert de Niro in Mean streets, although Adam Driver's imposing performance makes one think above all of a one-ninety version of the best Al Pacino: dangerous, charismatic, contradictory, and tragically human. Driver's always-at-volume-eleven energy finds a perfect vehicle in his character to be channeled, and the result is one of his best roles in cinema, well accompanied by a Teller who offers his most fragile and nuanced performance.

At a press conference, Driver downplayed his creative contribution, giving all the credit to Gray. “I didn’t have to work much because the script was so clear and specific that nothing needed to be added – he explained –. I just had to follow the key that James gave me: all of Gary's decisions are based on his love for his brother.” Driver also dodged a question about the portrayal Lena Dunham makes of him in her recent memoir, where she describes outbursts of violence perpetrated by the actor. “I won’t make any comments, I’m saving it all for my book,” Driver quipped.

Scarlett Johansson, who is filming the remake of The Exorcist, could not be in Cannes, and she couldn't even answer the video call that James Gray made to her on Saturday during the ovation at the end of the gala screening. Johansson plays a role that is initially secondary but gains importance as the story progresses, and who experiences her own drama apart from the entanglement with the mobsters. With a very marked accent and a period wig that does not favor her, the actress's effort to embody a more mundane character than she usually plays and escape her own iconicity is evident. Perhaps it wasn't the ideal casting, but her performance does not deserve the cruel criticism she is beginning to receive.