Category: Cannes

CANNES21 REVIEW: Retour A Reims [Fragments] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

A war is waged on the dominated. The MIT Press describes Didier Eribon‘s book Returning to Reims as “A memoir and meditation on individual and class identity, and the forces that keep us locked in political closets.” The author never went back home upon leaving until after his father was moved to a nursing home for those afflicted by Alzheimer’s and it was only upon his return that he began to recognize the underlying factors that made its community what it became despite what it originally rose from. By looking…

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CANNES21 REVIEW: Aya [2021]

Jared Mobarak

We can’t leave our sand behind. Living on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean would be a dream to many people. Not only is the view beautiful, but one’s ability to live a simple life can often be a welcome reprieve from the hustle and bustle of a city and its potential for disaster through culture shock and excess. The unfortunate truth of the world in which we currently live, however, is that nothing is simple anymore. Climate change has rendered coastal towns like the one in which Aya (Marie-Josée…

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CANNES21 REVIEW: H6 [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Laughter is a good remedy. Some hospitals are better suited for your needs than others no matter where you reside. Maybe you’re lucky and the best is local in case of emergency. Maybe you need to take the night train just to reach it for the opportunity to find a bed days later. And depending on insurance, you’re always forced to weigh your options with family before even beginning to think about attempting the services they offer. To therefore set a camera inside one of the busiest medical establishments within…

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CANNES21 REVIEW: El Empleado y El Patron [The Employer and the Employee] [2021]

Jared Mobarak

I’m sorry about what happened. All relationships are to some extent transactional, but none more than that between employer and employee. One provides capital and the other labor. This dynamic would be symbiotic in a perfect world since one can’t exist without the other: a boss cannot acquire the capital necessary to run a business without workers on the ground and those workers cannot live without a job with which to earn a steady wage. Even so, the disparity between them has grown exponentially throughout the past few decades. Executives…

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CANNES21 REVIEW: Are You Lonesome Tonight? [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Did you find him? Xue Ming (Eddie Peng) is in jail when we meet him. He’s talking about the boredom of living the same day repeatedly while thinking about how he got there. Deciding it’s better to show rather than tell, first-time director Shipei Wen sends us back to 1997 to find Xue on the telephone with an angry girlfriend just about fed up with waiting. It’s difficult to tell whether he’s on his way to the cinema late or simply going home when he finally leaves, but the path…

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