Meanwhile, in Cannes… A big first for Hafsia Herzi, a western under Covid, Poelvoorde teases Katerine

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CANNES RECAP , DAY FOUR. Juliette Binoche's jury, which will award its Palmes in a week, discovered "La Petite Dernière" by Afsia Herzi and "Eddington" by Ari Aster on Friday.

After Dominik Moll and his "Dossier 137," Hafsia Herzi presented the second French feature film in competition on Friday. The Croisette also shone in the evening with screenings of American director Kristen Stewart's directorial debut, "The Chronology of Water" (in the "Un Certain Regard" selection), and the documentary "Bono: Stories of Surrender" about the U2 frontman, in a special screening.

Hafsia Herzi in the spotlight for her third film

At 38, Hafsia Herzi, director and actress, recently awarded a César for her role in "Borgo" . After climbing the Cannes ladder one by one - her first feature film, " You Deserve a Love" was in Critics' Week, her second, "Bonne Mère", in Un Certain Regard - the actress is entering the competition with "La Petite Dernière", adapted from a novel by Fatima Daas and starring non-professional actors. "Universal, " she told us last summer , "the subject matter shook me. The heroine, a 17-year-old girl, a practicing Muslim, discovers an attraction to women and has trouble accepting it." She was supposed to film in a housing project in eastern France but had to change the setting. Some guys had threatened her because of the subject matter. "Among Muslims, " ​​they kept saying , "there are no lesbians."

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Portrait of the northern districts of Marseille at the Cannes Film Festival: who is Hafsia Herzi, director of "La Petite Dernière"?

Hollywood had already made a passage on the red carpet for the presentation of the last part of "Mission Impossible" certainly, but the American glitterati had not yet shone in competition. This has happened with "Eddington", a modern western by the American Ari Aster, which arrives with its share of international stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler… In "Eddington" (2h25), in theaters July 16 in France and July 18 in the United States, Ari Aster, the new king at 38 years of the genre film ("Hereditary", "Midsommar"), tells the story of the confrontation between a sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and a mayor (Pedro Pascal) in New Mexico in the midst of the Covid pandemic in 2020, against the backdrop of the omnipresence of social networks, according to the first images revealed. "It's a film that talks about contemporary America (...) it talks about what the United States has become in general through a municipal campaign in a small town," explained the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, Thierry Frémaux, when announcing the selection.

It's all in the kick. That of a BRI (Research and Intervention Brigade) cop to a yellow vest on the ground. A kick too soft, restrained, for us not to see, at first, an intention of acting, of writing. A strong but applied gesture, it is like "Dossier 137," which marks Dominik Moll's return to Cannes after "The Night of the 12th." Because the latter was a public success and garnered several Césars, the festival's general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, was criticized for not having selected it in competition but in Cannes Première, a section without stakes. Three years later, Frémaux therefore reinvites the filmmaker into the race for the Palme d'Or—which he competed for in 2000 with "Harry, a Friend Who Wishes You Well" and in 2005 with "Lemming " —and we can't help but be a little disappointed.

An investigation by an IGPN inspector (Léa Drucker, solid) into the circumstances leading to a LBD shot that mowed down a young yellow vest in the face during the 2018 protests, "Dossier 137", like "The Night of the 12th" , behind the conscientious follow-up of a police investigation (based on real events), aims to expose the tensions that animate French society. But in a form that is only half-convincing. The clinical rigor of the film-dossier flirts with the boring hum of the police report – a harrowing first half-hour, a didactic series of shot-reverse-shot interrogations punctuated by images shot on an iPhone serving as evidence – the societal presentation and its mocking humor come up against the pseudo-naturalistic stiffness of the staging. And the dialogue resonates with both sharp precision and demonstrativeness. It's when it shifts into a surveillance film that "Dossier 137" really takes off, when the stubbornness of Léa Drucker's character pushes her to leave her office and enrich her work as a cop with her civic instinct.

It's a strange feeling, in the end, to see an emulator of Yves Boisset eyeing the lands of Laurent Cantet (Moll shares the same screenwriter, Gilles Marchand) and ending up on those of Stéphane Brizé. Nevertheless: on the substance, "Dossier 137" (release announced for November 19) dissects with mathematical efficiency the process of dehumanization of justice in the face of police violence, a bureaucratic impunity without regard for the victims. On security policy, the social divide and an increasingly divided France, crystallized by the role and fate of the police, the demonstration is chilling.

Animated feature films are rare at the Cannes Film Festival. All the more reason to enjoy "Arco," directed by Ugo Bienvenu and Félix de Givry. Presented in the official selection, this futuristic tale takes on the appearance of a poetic fugue where pixels become poems and vanishing points. In a refracted future, technology has come to resemble a childhood dream. Young Iris lives alone with parental holograms, a robot nanny, and a little brother. Until the day the sky drops an alien boy from the azure sky. Arco, with his rainbow dust allowing him to wander through time, gets lost in a world on the brink of collapse. This meditation on self-exile, innocence as a lost territory, and nostalgia for a better future that the present cannot contain, becomes the guiding thread of this utopian eco-science fiction epic, presented in a special screening.

The references abound. Lucasian droids draw on the verve of the golden age of Japanese anime; Marvel-style polychrome caped heroes are armed with the soulful depth of Miyazaki's tales; the Spielbergian script projects a lost alien into a catastrophic world sketched by Christopher Nolan. This French work, co-produced by Natalie Portman, with the voices of Swann Arlaud, Alma Jodorowsky, Vincent Macaigne, Louis Garrel, William Lebghil, and Oxmo Puccino, is absolutely sumptuous from start to finish. It required no less than five years of writing, from 2D hand drawing, through to production and financing. At the end of the fourth day, the Cannes sky alternated between rain and sunny spells. The perfect weather for "Arco" to now take its radiant flight, light years from the Croisette.

Last year, he told us how he stained Jeanne Balibar's dress just before the actress took the stage at the Palais des Festivals. This year, Philippe Katerine returns with a new Cannes anecdote, namely the origins of the nickname "the sea urchin" with which Benoît Poelvoorde gave him. The origin dates back to the filming of Gilles Lellouche's film "Le Grand bain" (Sink or Swim). The "VIP" singer, like the rest of the cast, reveals a large part of his anatomy, notably his back, which is very hairy. It didn't take much for the Belgian actor to seize on this "defect." But Philippe Katerine is also not stingy with comments on Benoît Poelvoorde's physique. Take a look.

True to its reputation as a nightlife sensation, Magnum brought the Croisette to life with a musical evening. To kick off the festivities, Lucky Love, the ice cream brand's ambassador, performed a rhythmic and heartfelt pop concert on the private beach. But it was Charli XCX, the event's most anticipated audience, who had hundreds of fans waiting for her. Provocative as ever, sporting a ripped miniskirt and plunging neckline, a variation on an iconic Vivienne Westwood outfit, the pop brat belted out a few of her hits. The soundtrack for her evening was incandescent performances by Jamie xx, drummer-producer George Daniel of The 1975, and Swedish rapper Yung Lean. Before Charli XCX nonchalantly bit into an ice cream, as she did tonight, with the Croisette.