‘France’: Léa Seydoux Faces A Different Kind Of Spiritual Crisis In Bruno Dumont’s Media Critique [Cannes Review]

Director Rachel Lang follows military couples in Our Men, an intriguing insight into French Foreign Legion life that closed the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section. Lang herself graduated as Lieutenant from the French army, and served in the Sahel desert in 2017, so it’s fair to say she has more knowledge of this world than many filmmakers.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticBy far the most biting and ironic satire to premiere in Cannes competition this year — a divisive comedy whose cynicism was met with boos at the press screening — Bruno Dumont’s “France” doesn’t want to be liked. That’s more than can be said of its eponymous protagonist, France de Meurs (Léa Seydoux), the country’s top news anchor and a damning representation of the journalist-as-star phenomenon.

It’s not on the level of M*A*S*H or The Hospital, but The Divide (La Fracture) keeps you on your toes with its frenetic look at a besieged Paris emergency room hospital staff as, along with its regular patients, it tries to cope with the many people injured during a Yellow Vests protest that gets out of hand in late 2019.

There is a moment of genuine tension at the very beginning of Joachim Lafosse’s “The Restless” that is worth your attention. Damien (Damien Bonnard), is swimming with his son Amine (Gabriel Merz Chammah, the grandson of Isabelle Huppert, no less) off a boat on the rocky French coast.

Few films have accurately captured the definitive Millennial experience—lovelorn, cash-strapped, self-absorbed, and tech-addicted—though a few have tried, and some even succeeded. Modern love is no joke, as films and shows like “Frances Ha” and “Girls” know, and neither is modern friendship, or any part of early adulthood these days.

Bruno Dumont uses a French anchorwoman to explore his country’s media in France, a Cannes Film Festival competition entry that’s glossy and watchable but ultimately disappointing. Léa Seydoux plays France de Meurs, a TV anchorwoman and reporter so famous that she stopped for selfies everywhere she goes, from cafes to war zones. After she is involved in a traffic accident, she quits her job and ends up in a Swiss spa, but the respite she meets there isn’t quite what she’d hoped for.

The eclectic veteran French director Jacques Audiard shifts gears yet again (his last feature was 2018’s unusual western, The Sisters Brothers) with Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades), an adaptation of stories by the American comic book writer and artist Adrian Tomine.

It’s official – Lea Seydoux will not be making an appearance at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival this year.

Lea Seydoux won’t be in Cannes this year after testing positive for Covid-19 back on Saturday. The star is staying in Paris to serve her self-isolation and to do her “part to keep everyone safe and healthy”. She was asymptomatic following the initial diagnosis and tested negative the day after, on Sunday, but French rules mandate 10 days of self-isolation after a positive result.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentLea Seydoux, one of France’s biggest stars who was expected to be the toast of Cannes with four films in competition, issued a statement on July 14 saying that she won’t be able to attend the festival as she is currently self-isolating after testing positive to Covid. “Sadly, I have to self-quarantine in Paris and won’t be able to attend the Cannes Film Festival this year.

Arnaud Desplechin returns to the Cannes Film Festival with Deception (Tromperie), a self-indulgent Philip Roth adaptation that’s only marginally better than 2017’s derided Ismael’s Ghosts. One of the late Roth’s most openly personal novels, it details a string of affairs conducted by Jewish-American writer “Philip,” here played by French actor Denis Podalydes, speaking French.

July 12th, 2021, Cannes – Reader, I ratatat out this missive in haste on my trusty Smith-Corona from the South of France, in the paltry hopes it may adequately convey my delight in viewing the latest cinematographic marvel from Mr. Wes Anderson, originally of Houston, Texas but more latterly resident of a nearby color-coded, symmetrical nebula almost entirely of his own design.

As we’ve noted in the last two weeks of this ongoing Cannes Film Festival, Léa Seydoux is the belle of the ball, and she has four films playing at Cannes, three of them in competition.

If Wes Anderson hasn’t already been ordained as the king of twee, he certainly will be with The French Dispatch. There can never have been a film so entirely marked and dominated by preciously perfectionist compositions, arcane detail, meticulous camera moves, ornate décor, historical and design minutiae, styles of typography, precision diction, arch attitude, obsessive attention to cultural artifacts and loyalty to Oscar Wilde’s notion that art needn’t express anything other than itself.

COVID-19, putting her appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in doubt.The No Time to Die actress is due to appear in four films at the festival, which is already underway, including Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Arnaud Desplechin’s Deception.Seydoux is double vaccinated and asymptomatic, though organisers have put strict measures in place during the in-person festival.The news comes as Cannes has reported an average of three COVID-19 cases per day, though general secretary Francois

Of the many films playing at Cannes which have gained in resonance since the coming of the pandemic, “Zero F*cks Given” from French duo Julie Lecoustre, and Emmanuel Marre does not represent the creepiest, most alarming kind of coincidence — that description would better fit “Benedetta” from Dutch master Paul Verhoeven, which features an actual plague, face coverings and quarantine measures.

A sweeping social protest met with utter chaos in an emergency room—especially to the American festival-goer at Cannes, this brief sounds like an unpleasant evocation of 2020. And indeed, filmed in the immediate aftermath of the gilets jaunes protests in France, Catherine Corsini’s “The Divide” (“La fracture”) both reflects the past year and eerily foreshadows the true disaster in emergency rooms that followed the events of the film.

Lea Seydoux may not be appearing at the Cannes Film Festival as scheduled after testing positive for COVID-19.