Cannesversations is a film podcast in which Eliana and Patrick (Twitter) deep-dive each episode into one film that has played at some point during the Cannes Film Festival.
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Welcome back to our coverage of the Cannes Film Festival! We (Patrick and Eliana) look forward to sharing our first reactions and giving a sneak peek at the festival's ongoing films and events. In this episode, Jakob Jurisch joins us on day two of twelve to discuss the festival's opening film, Le Deuxième Acte (Quentin Dupieux), other festival controversies, and film anticipations. Coming soon: Ma vie Ma gueule | This Life of Mine by Sophie Fillières Bird by Andrea Arnold Megalopolis by Francis Ford Coppola, and more... For those who are German speakers, you can also find Patrick and Jakob on moviebreak.de and can listen to their German-language podcast coverage here! Thanks for listening! Correction: Ma vie Ma gueule English title is This Life of Mine* If you have any comments or suggestions or want to get in touch: cannesversations@proton.me Credits: Image: Cannes 77e poster © Shochiku Co., Ltd. – Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991) / Graphic creation © Hartland Villa Sound: Intro: EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal O'Doan (Piano) Nancy O'Doan (Piano), and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein Archive. Extro: Quinzaine des Cineastes Intro Extract Music: Cyril Moisson | Piano: Frédéric Fortuny
This week, Patrick and Eliana discuss Marcel Carné’s 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), which appeared in the 2011 Cannes Classics section. Filmed during the Nazi Occupation of France and released as the first film following its liberation, the film has continued to charm audiences in France and abroad with its gorgeous set design, iconic actors, and wit-infused characters, a result of the core collaboration between set designer Alexandre Trauner, screenwriter Jacques Prevert, and composer Joseph Kosma. Spectatorship and performance are at the heart of this farcical and bittersweet film, where four men vie for the radiant yet fugacious Garance as she flits between them, and they amongst themselves on the grand Boulevard du ‘Crime.’ It is a film about action and re-action, the verbal and the non-verbal, in a city too small for undying dreams. Resources: Affron, Mirella Jona. "Les Enfants Du Paradis: Play of Genres." Cinema Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 1978, pp. JSTOR. Ebert, Roger. “Children of Paradise.” RogerEbert.com, Forbes, Jill. Les Enfants Du Paradis, British Film Institute, 1997. Mancini, Marc. "Prevert: Poetry in Motion Pictures." Film Comment, vol. 17, no. 6, 1981, pp. 34-37. JSTOR. Nye, Edward. Deburau. Pierrot, Mime, and Culture, Routledge, 2022. Picherit, Hervé. “A Strange Child of Paradise: The Artistry of Arletty’s “Self” in Les enfants du paradis.” Camera Obscura, Vol. 32, No. 1, Duke University Press, 2017. Reid, Tina. “Marcel Carné on Children of Paradise: Forty-Five Years Later” The Criterion Collection, 20 Sept. 2012, Sadoul, Georges. "The Postwar French Cinema."Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 1950, pp. JSTOR. Sellier Geneviève. « Les Enfants du paradis dans le cinéma de l'Occupation.” 1895, revue d'histoire du cinéma, n° 22, 1997, pp. 55-66. Turk, Edward Baron. Child of Paradise. Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema, Harvard University Press, 1989. Sound: EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal O'Doan (Piano) Nancy O'Doan (Piano), and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein Archive. Excerpt
For the last episode of Cannesversations this year, Eliana, and Patrick are joined by critic friends Öykü Sofuoğlu (this marks Öykü’s second time on the podcast; check out our Cannes episode on About Dry Grasses and May December) and Lawrence Garcia to look back at their favorite films of 2023. Follow Öykü & Lawrence on Twitter/X Below, you'll find our Top 5 films. Top 5 Öykü 5 The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo 'Teddy' Williams) 4 Afire (Christian Petzold) 3 Los delincuentes (Rodrigo Moreno) 2 May December (Todd Haynes) 1 Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude) Lawrence 5 Here (Bas Devos) 4 This Closeness (Kit Zauhar) 3 Un Prince (Pierre Creton) 2 May December 1 Arturo a los 30 (Martín Shanly) Eliana 5 Our Body (Claire Simon) 4 Un Prince 3 Sobre todo de noche (Victor Iriarte) 2 A Wild Roomer (Lee Jeong-Hong) 1 About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) Patrick 5 About Dry Grasses 4 The Human Surge 3 3 Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World 2 Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân) 1 The Shadowless Tower (Zhang Lü) At the end of the second episode, we asked Öykü and Lawrence about writings they are proud of or happy with. Öykü interviewed Radu Jude for Mubi’s Notebook, which you can find here, and Lawrence referred to his 15,000-word deep dive into David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Make sure to check both of them out! We wish all of you a happy year of 2024 and are hopeful for many more episodes to come in the new year!
For the last episode of Cannesversations this year, Eliana, and Patrick are joined by critic friends Öykü Sofuoğlu (this marks Öykü’s second time on the podcast; check out our Cannes episode on About Dry Grasses and May December) and Lawrence Garcia to look back at their favorite films of 2023. Follow Öykü & Lawrence on Twitter/X Below, you first find all our honorable mentions, followed by our individual Top 10-6 films. Honorable Mentions Öykü Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi) Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorcese) Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos) About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) Here (Bas Devos) Lawrence Music (Angela Schanalec) The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams) Notre Corps (Claire Simon) In Water (Hong Sang-soo) The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson) Eliana Amiko (Yusuke Morii) Music Sparta (Ulrich Seidl) Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude) The Human Surge 3 Patrick Forms of Forgetting (Burak Çevik) A Wild Roomer (Lee Jeong-hong) Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Elene Naveriani) Music Eureka (Lisandro Alonso) De Facto (Selma Doborac) There Is a Stone (Tatsunari Ota) Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara) This Closeness (Kit Zauhar) May December (Todd Haynes) Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki) Top 10 Öykü 10 Yannick (Quentin Dupieux) 9 Orlando, My Political Biography 8 Riddle of Fire (Weston Razooli) 7 Notre Corps 6 La bête (Bertrand Bonello) Lawrence 10 Totem (Lila Avilés) 9 Cerrar los ojos (Víctor Erice) 8 In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo) 7 The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow) 6 Forms of Forgetting Eliana 10 Passages 9 Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry 8 Yannick 7 The Delinquents 6 May December Patrick 10 Concrete Valley (Antoine Bouge) 9 Notre Corps 8 Cerrar los ojos 7 Here 6 La bête At the end of the second episode, we asked Öykü and Lawrence about writings they are proud of or happy with. Öykü interviewed Radu Jude for Mubi’s Notebook, which you can find here, and Lawrence referred to his 15,000-word deep dive into David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Make sure to check both of them out! We wish all of you a happy year of 2024 and are hopeful for many more episodes to come in the new year!
This week Eliana and Patrick delve into Lizzie Borden's 1986 dramedy Working Girls about a day in the life of a group of young sex workers in a middle-class brothel in 1980s Manhattan. A milieu rarely ever depicted on the big screen in American cinema (in their Criterion essay So Meyer stresses that it was not until Sean Baker's Tangerine in 2015—three decades later—that the lived reality of sex workers would take center stage of a major US feature film again), Borden, with her observational eye and collaborative filmmaking process, circumvents the common dichotomous portrayal of prostitutes as either glamorized or pitiable, shedding light on the profession that proves both sympathetic to its characters and discerning of the mundanity of their profession—ultimately highlighting the autonomy women can exercise while embracing that the world's oldest profession is just that—a profession. Resources: Borden, Lizzie, and Gordon, Betty. “Lizzie Borden and Bette Gordon on Working Girls.” Criterion, 2021, Da Costa, Cassie. Lizzie Borden Is Finally Getting Her Due. Vanity Fair, 15 July 2021, Felando, Cynthia. „4 Lizzie Borden.” Independent Female Filmmakers. A Chronicle Through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos, edited by Michele Meek, Rouledge, 2019. Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex. The Case for Feminist Revolution. 1970. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.Free, Erin. „Unsung Auteurs: Lizzie Borden.“ FilmInk, 12 May, 2021, Gagne, Emily. “Director Lizzie Borden on Censorship, Community and the Movie She’s Kept in the Closet for Over 40 Years.” That Shelf, 1 March 2023, Hoberman, James. “Lizzie Borden’s ‘Working Girls’ Is About Capitalism, Not Sex.” New York Times, 16 June 2021, Huber, Christoph. “Whatever Happened to Lizzie Borden?” CinemaScope, 17 March 2018, 22 Sept. 2023. Isaacson, Johanna. “Hollywood Kills Feminism: the Work of Lizzie Borden.” Blind Field, 14 August 2019. Lane, Christina. Feminist Hollywood. From Born in Flames to Point Break. Wayne State University Press, 2000. Mayer, So. “Working Girls: Have You Ever Heard of Surplus Value?” Criterion, 13 July 2021. Sound EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal and Nancy O'Doan and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein Archive Intro: CNN