Scarlett Johansson and the lies of a New Yorker, Enric Marco

Special Envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalOne of the curiosities of this edition of the Cannes Film Festival is the coincidence in the parallel section Un Certain Regard of the directorial debuts of two popular actresses, established stars of American cinema: Kristen Stewart, who dazzled a few days ago with the poetic and tormented biography of Lidia Yuknavitch The chronology of water; and Scarlett Johansson, who presented this Tuesday Eleanor the Great, a dramatic comedy about a widow with a lot of drive and character who, after the death of her best friend, with whom she shared an apartment in Florida, returns to her native New York at over 90 years old to live with a recently divorced daughter and a grandson glued to his mobile phone screen.

Yes The chronology of water revealed a restless, radical filmmaker with a great future, with Eleanor the Great The opposite is true: despite having the most fashionable director of photography in European cinema, Hélène Louvart, Johansson simply puts into images in the most flat and predictable way a well-intentioned story about the loneliness of the elderly in which the protagonist pretends to be a victim of the Holocaust to connect with a journalism student who doesn't process the sea. The unexpected friendship between this young woman and Enric Marco, a New Yorker – with a final redemption – a bond based on a lie but more authentic than the rest of the relationships they have, is the heart of a harmless and kind film, to say the least, and sustained only by the charisma of a great actress from 2005, to present Nebraska, by Alexander Payne.

That a light and funny comedy can indeed take place at the festival was demonstrated (in the parallel Première section) Splitsville, by Michael Angelo Covino, which unleashed a flood of laughter with the intrigues, twists and turns of two married friends who begin a relationship. An update of the sex comedies of the 1930s, the film also connects with the naturalistic and mischievous impulse that Judd Apatow imprinted on modern American comedy, especially with regard to the portrayal of male insecurities. It also has the charisma and timing comic by Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, and a convincing Kyle Marvin in a role that seems written for Jason Segel.

Jafar Panahi, favorite for the Palme d'Or

In the official competition, there was much excitement about the return to Cannes and to festivals in general of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, after years of persecution by the authorities of his country: two imprisonments accused of making propaganda against the regime, torture, a hunger strike, house arrest and a ban on making films for twenty years, which the director has repeatedly violated, forcing him to practice his profession clandestinely. A simple accident, the first film in fifteen years that Panahi has presented in person at a festival – he was not even able to collect the Golden Bear for Taxi in Tehran–, it is also an important work, an immediate favorite for the Palme d'Or.

The film is marked by Panahi's last incarceration, who in 2023 spent seven months in prison, where, as he explained in the first interviews he has given in a long time, he was interrogated "eight hours a day, with his eyes covered and facing a wall." The protagonist ofA simple accident He is also a former prisoner, traumatized by the torture of a particularly cruel interrogator whom he recognizes one day in the workshop where he works. Thus begins a story of revenge in which other victims of the interrogator are added, a vibrant thriller A moral narrative narrated with a highly complex tragicomedy tone. In Panahi's most political film, there is rage and indignation, but also generosity and understanding of the human soul. It would be an act of justice to award this great work by a great filmmaker, Carla Simón's greatest rival for the Palme d'Or.