Melancholy tingles. It can be both ticklish and shocking. Aristotle believed that the melancholic state consists of a precarious balance between the morbid and the brilliant, between the simply sick and the euphoric. Some of all this was experienced on an opening day of Cannes suddenly surprised by Gérard Depardieu's abuse conviction. Meanwhile, the festival opened with the musical, also a directorial debut, by Amélie Bonnin Partir un jour (Leaving one day), and Robert de Niro exploded while receiving a more than fair Palme d'Or. Even necessary. Indeed, both one and the other, and the other -- the sentence, the film, and the actor -- evoke melancholy. The first because it is the downfall of the greatest living French actor, in every imaginable way; the second because it is a film that celebrates the nostalgia of home things (from popular music to mom and dad's food, from lifelong friends to the misfortune of growing old...), and the third because yes, because of who he is. As mentioned, for the bad and even the less bad, the trio as a whole caused quite a stir.
In terms of relevance, always De Niro. "In my country, we are currently fighting tooth and nail for the democracy we once took for granted. This affects us all here because the arts are democratic. Art is shared, for everyone, inclusive, it brings people together. Art embraces diversity, which is why it is a threat, and why those of us in this field are a threat to autocrats and fascists," he said without further provocation than simple and basic sanity, just after receiving the Palme d'Or for his entire career from Leonardo DiCaprio. And, after calling Trump a philistine, protesting against tariffs, and calling for freedom, equality, and fraternity, he added: "We have to act, and we have to do it now, not with violence, but with passion and determination." It's clear.
About the film, the best that can be said is that it happened. It's not cynicism or condescension, it's what can be deduced even from the statements of the festival's director Thierry Frémaux himself. Asked on Monday why such a choice was made for the festival's opening film, he basically said because yes, because there is no other choice. Not that he was apologizing, but almost. For years, and for reasons not entirely clear, Cannes has been obliged to open with a film that is released in theaters that same week. This excludes a large part of international films and forces a French production to be exposed to a thorough review. In other words, from all that is available, what remains is chosen. At any cost, the cheapest available, as my uncle used to say.
Amélie Bonnin turns into a feature film, with the exact same title, what was previously a short film. And highly acclaimed, by the way. The problem is that what was celebrated in just over 20 minutes as a clever and graceful idea becomes overwhelming with an additional hour in length. And terribly boring. To go back to Aristotle, who is always relevant, the brilliant turns into the morbid. Partir un jour revives the taste for revitalization, reinterpretation, and redefinition (all in a virtuoso twist or twist) that the Nouvelle Vague demonstrated towards classic Hollywood genres in general and musicals in particular. We're talking about Jacques Demy and his Palme d'Or film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Who would have thought that decades later there wouldn't be a film on the billboard, more or less authorial or independent, that at some point wouldn't let loose and dare to sing and dance as if it were the greatest of revolutions. And we're not just referring to Emilia Pérez.
Now, the story is about a woman who, after winning the French equivalent of those cooking shows where contestants rush to fry an egg, returns to her town as the most renowned cook (or chef, in a patriarchal sense) and the most famous of French women. She is pregnant and unsure if motherhood fits on the menu. There, she encounters what was and what she dreamed of being before becoming what she is. Matters of verb tenses and indeed, nostalgia. Her father, owner of a roadside restaurant, is very ill and resentful towards his daughter; her mother endures the resentment of the former, and her old boyfriend is still around. In reality, not much happens. The charm lies in the fact that the little that does happen is done as in zarzuelas, a while singing and another dancing.
Partir un jour plays with combining the most austere (and even stale) realism with the most unreal of settings. The problem is that the film is so self-aware of itself and its proposal that it seems to be in no man's land. Neither as lyrically and provocatively cheesy as Jacques Demy's films nor as boldly crazy as the latest daring from Jacques Audiard and Karla Sofía Gascón. Let's say that the constant appeal to melancholy rather than to the shock or tickles mentioned earlier, ends up now in a much simpler short circuit. Additionally, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, each of the musical and popular culture references are so excessively local that, let's admit it, it's very easy to get lost unless you have at least a C2 level in French. However, the interpretative brilliance and undoubtedly genius, not morbid, of its protagonist Juliette Armanet is enjoyable.
And then there's the Depardieu matter.
"He is no longer a sacred man," were the most prominent and even painful words that Juliette Binoche uttered on Tuesday during her press appearance. She was referring to Gérard Depardieu's 18-month prison sentence, a ¤20,000 fine, and his inclusion in the sex offenders register for sexually abusing two women during the filming in 2021 of Les volets verts, by Jean Becker. She continued: "For me, the sacred is when you create, when you act, when you are on stage, and suddenly something extraordinary happens. The sacred is, by definition, incomprehensible. And now, it's clear, he [Gérard Depardieu] is no longer sacred. This means that we must reflect on the power that certain people exercise and appropriate," she added.
Indeed, the conviction of the French actor leaves little room for debate beyond the judge's own words. However, the fact that this year's jury president was Juliette Binoche herself required a comment. Especially when the entire jury, led by Binoche, made their annual appearance. Remember, back in 2010, in an interview with the Austrian magazine Profil, the actor expressed his disbelief at the fact that Binoche had received the award she was given at Cannes for her performance in the film Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) by Abbas Kiarostami. "Can you please explain to me what the secret of this actress is?" he asked the interviewer. And he continued: "I would really like to know why she has been so appreciated for so many years. She has nothing. Absolutely nothing!" And another one: "She is worse than [Isabelle] Adjani, who, even though she's crazy, is great, and much worse than Fanny Ardant [Depardieu's partner], who compared to Juliette is extraordinary."
The actress, an Oscar winner with awards from the three most respected international festivals (Cannes, Venice, and Berlin), elegantly endured the storm. "Depardieu wanted to kill me. But I'm still here," she declared years later. And so it went until they met again on the street, where he apologized, and then on screen. It was in 2017 when Let the Sunshine In, by Claire Denis, brought them together. And they forgave each other. "Gérard is a person who has suffered a lot," were Binoche's words to turn the page. And until today.
On Tuesday, Binoche did not miss the almost sacred opportunity that the festival offered her to assess how things have changed in general and at Cannes in particular. "The festival is following the same trend as the rest of the world in social and political life," Binoche said in reference to the consequences of the Metoo movement. "I believe the festival is increasingly in tune with current events," she concluded. The statement was prompted by some voices that have risen due to the festival's silence on the news of the conviction that was known that morning.
Not the bucket, we are talking about the winner at Cannes for his work in Cyrano de Bergerac and the protagonist of the noisy Palme d'Or of 1987 Under the Sun of Satan, by Maurice Pialat; we are talking about a myth now condemned and desacralized, according to Binoche. The moment when nostalgia was like an electric shock. Luckily, in the end, already at night, De Niro arrived, thanked everyone, and caused, with all the clarity in the world, the great blackout.