I have admittedly taken far more time writing this dispatch, my final out of Cannes, than I have with the others. Mostly because these three works from Un Certain Regard are so complex in their engagement with grief, history, and dreams, it took more consideration on my part to figure out a way to grasp their unique features and approaches without oversimplifying why and how they succeed. These films might be bolder than any picture that played in competition, and more indelible than many films that’ll play at other festivals this year.
Vivid, haunting, and poignant, Sandra Wollner’s experimental, psychologically adept film “Everytime” is a commitment to images of the indescribable hollowness that loss can instill in the living. The winner of the top prize in Un Certain Regard opens as a seemingly standard family drama. A teenage Jessie (Carla Hüttermann) walks with her mother, Ella (Birgit Minichmayr), and her young, precocious sister, Melli (Lotte Shirin Keiling), from their graffiti-stained train station toward their cozy yet cramped home. The Austrian family experience expected ups and downs: Melli complains to her mother that Jessie is being mean to her; Jessie attempts to study with her boyfriend Lux (Tristán López) without her attention-seeking younger sister spoiling the mood. Eventually, Jessie and Lux attend a rave whose unbridled alcohol and copious drugs accompany them on their listless stroll through the woods, back into the city, and atop a rooftop to watch the day break.
If you’re game to see “Everytime” spoiler-free, then you should probably stop reading here—though what I’m about to write is written in the program note for Cannes. While on this roof, blissed-out Jessie observes how the world looks uncommonly quiet. No one is bustling through the streets down below or coming to their windows. It appears the city is deserted. One can feel tragedy is about to strike when Wollner switches to a POV shot from Jessie’s perspective. Suddenly, we catch sight of a falling girl whose identity takes a beat for one to discern. It’s Jessie, plunging to her death.
Wollner will pull off this bending of perception and perspective several times throughout “Everytime,” using her curiosity to consider the wide range of weights grief can have on people. Fast-forward one year, and Lux is nearing his high school graduation. His return from vacation with a new girlfriend comes while Ella and Melli are still in deep mourning. For that reason, a guilt-ridden Lux decides to accompany Ella and Melli on vacation to Tenerife for a kind of send-off to their shared sorrow.
Fascinatingly, Wollner and her cinematographer Gregory Oke don’t opt for intimacy with a touchy subject like suicide. Often, in fact, they’re capturing these characters in negative space from far away, like when one is swimming in a large body of water, to intimate how alone they feel. Her and Hannes Bruun’s cold editing also knowingly zaps the film of any potential warmth, as does Wollner’s terse dialogue. Minichmayr, as Ella, in particular, delivers cutting barbs with the precision of a dagger piercing the heart. That dance between tone and aesthetic shows how grief sticks with you like the heavy foam atop a rushing wave.
Not content to give a filmic voice solely to that feeling, in the last third of “Everytime,” Wollner opts for a psychedelic vision from a kid’s point of view. The possibility of reincarnation, and even the act of stopping the heavens, are broached. Little of the inspired imagery, an ambiguous stream of childlike adventures, matches the grounded mood of the film that came before it. And yet, the lyrical mode Wollner activates is as haunting as any regret and as tangible as the dream that puts your unconscious fears in their logical place. And like a dream, “Everytime” is as unspeakable a movie as they come.
How do you grant forgiveness when the crime is unsolved, and the injury still hurts? That question looms over Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo’s morally and spiritually complex interrogation of the Rwandan genocide, “Ben’Imana,” the first film to play Cannes, hailing from said country.
To be clear: “Ben’Imana” isn’t set in 1994 during the turmoil and bloodshed of the human rights tragedy that saw militant Hutus kill Tutsis and moderate Hutus and Twas. The film occurs in 2012. A community-based truth and reconciliation process is underway, with half the spectators Hutu women and the other half Tutsi women. At the center are the judges and the two people: Karangwa (Aime Valens Tuyisenge) and Vénéranda (Clémentine U. Nyirinkindi). The former stands accused of murdering much of Vénéranda’s extended family and committing an unnamed crime against her. While Vénéranda says she’s willing to forgive, causing significant consternation from her sister Suzanne (Isabelle Kabano), whose children’s bodies still haven’t been recovered, it’s immediately clear that Vénéranda hasn’t totally processed her mental and emotional traumas.
When Vénéranda discovers her teenage daughter Tina (Kesia Kelly Nishimwe) is pregnant with a Hutu man’s daughter, the hurts she thought she buried rise back to the surface. She, ironically, finds her daughter’s “betrayal” to be unforgivable.
Dusabejambo and Delphine Agut’s intelligent script takes this potential inter-generational dynamic between mother and daughter, and Vénéranda’s potential grandchild, and heightens it by including Vénéranda’s own mute mother. Among these female characters, the film wonders aloud about Rwanda’s future. Can the people who lived through such atrocities truly guide the country forward, or will it take new blood unburdened by the past’s baggage to lead the way?
Those historical complications are set in artistic relief against cinematographer Mostafa El Kashef’s evocative lighting, which leans on blue hues to grant Vénéranda’s anxieties a cool melancholy. Nyirinkindi’s internal performance as Vénéranda also pushes the film’s light poeticism forward, allowing moving confrontations between mother and daughter, each arguing for emotional support, to flourish. There’s even a magical realism element to the film, whose depictions of ghosts further demonstrate how close these past crimes are to the people still living.
“Ben’Imana” makes a plea for its characters and, for that matter, its country to continue to reckon with its unspeakable yesteryears. How can a country forgive and heal when those accused of wrongdoing see such olive branches as transactional, at best? Dusabejambo can’t fully answer that question because she believes it’s up to future generations to provide the proverbial road map, but she does give us art capable of making sense of the storm that came before.
Akame is a silent teenager attending a Japanese boarding school for mermaid training, where she tries in vain to hold back her crush for her diligent coach, Kotaro (Masahiro Higashide). At this academy, Akame undergoes mental and physical training to learn to hold her breath underwater for extended periods, sing hypnotic songs, and swim gracefully with an artificial fin. She performs these exercises for a chance to compete in the Official Mermaid Championships, a real event that, if she wins, will place her in the top aquarium in the world.
If this all sounds a bit silly, then writer/director Konstantina Kotzamani doesn’t take the bait. Her feature directorial debut, “Titanic Ocean,” is a ruminative fantasy whose gentle rhythms can sometimes conceal its rich themes. See, Akame’s competitive school requires significant sacrifice. For one, the students must dispense with their given names in favor of a mermaid moniker. Akame’s is Deep Sea; her best friend is Yokohama Blue (Kotone Hanase), and her primary rival is Eternal Sunset (Haruna Matsui). They must also dye their hair; Akame wears purple while other girls span the rainbow. Through Akame, Kotzamani asks a reflective question: If every component of you is changed to fit inside a gilded shell, then what hope is there for you to find your voice?
“Titanic Ocean” moves at a glacial pace to find that answer. The potential response somewhat resembles Akame’s amorous feelings for Kotaro. Her desires also enliven the film’s magical elements, making one wonder if being a mermaid in this film is strictly a performance requiring constant training or a true state of being these characters must achieve? Kotzamani plays with that question, imbuing Akame with bewitching qualities that defy one’s beliefs.
Indeed, Kotzamani understands that a film doesn’t have to make logical sense, but it should make emotional sense. When Akame communicates with Hotaro telepathically, we don’t doubt it. When she dives deep into the bowels of the ocean, we don’t dismiss it as folly. We are enveloped under its mythical spell. The only arc that often breaks this swirling feeling of escapist desires and unrequited love is a new, deeply competitive student who arrives to be the best. Her role doesn’t work as well within the constellation of these characters, largely because her overt demands stand in stark contrast to Akame’s plaintive narration.
Like the hypnotic effect Akame’s supernatural singing has on Kotarko, “Titanic Ocean” similarly lulls one into a heady high. Its delirious imagination, therefore, makes the film difficult to love, and equally hard to shake.
