When festival director Thierry Frémaux was criticised at the press conference for the fact that only four female directors were represented in the competition, he rightly pointed to the numerous films featuring female protagonists.
A first highlight was “La vie d’une femme” (A Woman’s Life) by Charline Bourgeois-Tocquet. Behind the simple title lies the dramatic portrait of a successful surgeon, a professor at a public hospital in Lyon. Gabrielle (Léa Drucker) is a specialist in facial reconstruction and explains the ethos of her profession at a conference. The aim is to give people with severe injuries a new face, which, though not identical to their former one, nevertheless allows them to walk down the street unnoticed, without people staring at them.
We follow Gabrielle through her hectic daily routine: there’s a staff shortage, the final-year students turn up whenever they feel like it, and her personal assistant wants to take three weeks’ paternity leave – something the childless boss considers a complete extravagance. When moving to a new building, her department has to pack half their belongings into cardboard boxes and transport them themselves, as the dentists help themselves to their equipment.
Gabrielle is constantly on her mobile, and when she comes home in the evening, the first thing she has to do is push aside a pile of trainers by the door, because her husband’s son (Charles Berling) is celebrating his birthday with his friends to the sound of loud music. One day, the author Frida (Mélanie Thierry) turns up at the clinic where she works to gather material for her new novel. Somewhat reluctantly, Gabrielle agrees to her company, but then an unexpected dynamic develops from this encounter.
The 40-year-old director Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet started out as an actress. “La vie d’une femme” is her second feature film, which was one of the highlights of the Cannes competition. Not least thanks to the excellent lead actress Léa Drucker, who I consider a strong contender for the Best Actress award. She already impressed last year as a detective in Dominik Moll’s “Dossier 137”.
In Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s ‘Soudain’ (“Suddenly”), it is Virginie Efira who dominates the story as the head of a care home. Five years ago, Hamaguchi won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes and later an Oscar for “Drive My Car”, the film adaptation of a story by Haruki Murakami. He is highly regarded in cinematic circles, and his new film is likely to receive rave reviews.
Hamaguchi masterfully plays on all the Western clichés about Japan. Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira) wants to introduce the new concept of ‘humanitude’ into everyday care work, which, given the staff shortages, does not meet with universal enthusiasm. One day, she meets the Japanese theatre director Mari, played by the Japanese top model Tao Okamoto. From her, Marie-Lou learns all sorts of Far Eastern body techniques. Together, they analyse the destructive effects of capitalism, which, in their view, is responsible not only for the falling birth rate but also for all manner of other evils in the world today. To help the audience understand better, they draw a diagram on a flipchart.
In Japan, the power of patriarchy comes into play, as Marie-Lou discovered during her anthropology studies at Waseda University. This is why the two women are able to converse alternately in French and Japanese. An erotic attraction develops beneath the surface, though it never comes to fruition thanks to Hamaguchi’s discreet direction. Hugs and foot massages are the furthest they go in terms of physical intimacy.
“Soudain” relies entirely on dialogue, which sometimes turns into monologues. Consequently, everything is explained to the audience in as much detail as possible. Thanks to the physical exercises Mari introduces at the care home, both the residents and the carers are better able to cope with their daily lives. Yet, as fate would have it, Mari is a stage-four cancer patient whose illness could flare up “suddenly” (hence the title). This creates a corresponding emotional drama; Marie-Lou devotedly cares for her terminally ill friend. “Soudain” feels like a three-hour exercise in mindfulness and is not short on calendar-style wisdom. Critics with a penchant for Japan will be delighted.
This was also the case with the first of three Japanese films in the competition, “Nagi Notes” (Days in Nagi) by Koji Fukuda, who won the “Un Certain Regard” award at Cannes 10 years ago for “Harmonium”. This film, too, is about two women who gradually grow closer. Following her separation from her husband, the architect Yori (Shizuka Ishibashi) visits her ex-sister-in-law Yoriko in the small town of Nagi, just under 700 km south of Tokyo. Yoriko (Takako Matsu) works as a sculptor and carves wooden statues. On the side, she keeps a handful of cows to make ends meet. She asks Yori to sit for her as a model. There are also two teenage schoolboys who have decided to run away as a gay couple and borrow money from Yoriko. In the pouring rain, they are picked up again by their fathers, and Yoriko has to apologise with deep bows.
In the background, you can hear the firing exercises from a military base belonging to the Japanese ‘Self-Defence Forces’, which, following rearmament by recent Japanese governments, are no longer quite so defensive in nature. Images of the war in Ukraine are perhaps intended to suggest a threat scenario. It is all staged in such a banal and restrained manner that weariness soon sets in, and one lets the rest of the family’s story pass by with disinterest. In the end, the architect turns down a job offer in Taiwan so she can enjoy the quiet country life in Nagi for a little longer. Japanese origami cinema.