After Johnny Depp, Pedro Almodóvar with his boys from Strange Way of Life and Harrison Ford displaying tenderness in his final farewell to Indiana Jones, the Cannes Film Festival was delivered yesterday with authentic fervor to Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the world premiere of Killers of the flower moon on the Croisette amid enormous expectation, fans who waited hours in the rain to see the protagonist of Titanic up close, and long queues both to access the afternoon pass at the Debussy theater as in the official one at the Lumière, with all the imaginable pomp that accompanies this trio of Hollywood stars.
DiCaprio and DeNiro are working together for the first time on a Scorsese film - they already did it three decades ago under the orders of Michael Caton-Jones in Life of this Boy - a veteran filmmaker who had not attended the contest to present a film for 37 years after achieving the best director award for Jo, what a night!. Previously, he already took the Palme d'Or for the mythical Taxi driver in 1976.
Killers of the Flower Moon, based on David Grann's novel of the same name that focuses on a series of murders of native Osage tribesmen in Oklahoma in the 1920s, was enthusiastically applauded by an audience captivated by a powerful story of three and a half hours with some spectacular performances by DiCaprio and DeNiro as a nephew and uncle 'king' of the county trying to get a piece of Indian oil in a case that brought out the colors of the United States in the middle of an investigation by the newly formed FBI. Of course, the director of titles such as Casino and One of ours will not be able to take the Palme d'Or this time because he participates out of competition (it was he who wanted it that way).
Yesterday, two Catalan-produced films also triumphed in these parts. In the morning it was Elena Martín's turn with Creatura, her second feature film after Júlia Ist, which received a magnificent reception from the public at its screening at the Filmmakers' Fortnight. And Pablo Berger did the same with Robot Dreams, his first foray into 2D animated cinema that participates in the Special Screenings section. Shot in Catalan on stages in La Escala and with a script co-written with Clara Roquet -which premiered Libertad at Critics' Week two years ago-, the film "talks about a woman who tries to reconnect with pleasure and understand how her desire and what are the external and internal effects that have been building the ideas that she has preconceived in relation to her own body and sex”, she tells this newspaper.
And for this the story is divided into three different stages, going back to the time when Mila was a child, later in her adolescence, and then in her adulthood. “We were fully aware that making a portrait of childhood sexuality was something very risky. However, the germ of the film arose from the desire to portray this vital moment because all the taboos, shame and misunderstandings already begin at such an early age”, she points out.
After tackling films as different as Torremolinos 73, Snow White and Abracadabra, Berger delves into a genre that captivated him since he was little as an admirer of Studio Ghibli films. In Robot Dreams, he adapts Sara Varon's graphic novel to talk about loneliness and loss through the adventures of a lonely dog who decides to build himself a robot to keep him company in New York in the 80s. Until one day he is forced to abandon it on a beach. "I love emotional journeys and Dog goes through one when he loses his friend."
