Some serious takes on the Riviera 

Geoff Andrew 

Cannes Film Festival 
Cannes, France

The seventieth Cannes Film Festival could have meant even more of a celebratory air than is usual at this star-studded event; but France has suffered a number of terrible attacks, the Nice tragedy included, since last year. Given that and the current state of the world, the official selection included a weighty share of films dealing with serious social, political and ethical issues. The most notable theme was the nature of our responsibility to others. 

This motif manifested itself in various ways: Hong Sang-soo’s The Day After and Sergei Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature focused on marital responsibilities; Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s very impressive Loveless on responsibilities to one’s children. 

And then – again unsurprisingly in the light of the media’s preoccupation with migration and refugees – there were films centred on our relationship to what some still describe as the “Other”. These ranged from Vanessa Redgrave’s Sea Sorrow, a well-meaning if rather clumsy documentary about the UK’s treatment of child refugees, to Kornél Mundruczó’s Jupiter’s Moon, a flashy, fatuous allegorical thriller whose plot about a wounded Syrian refugee followed/hunted as an angel (miraculously, after being shot he can levitate at will), which seemed both ludicrous and morally reprehensible.