For her debut directorial effort Natalie Portman chose to return to Israel, the land of her birth, and ponderous but poetic material in adapting Amos Oz’s 2002 A Tale of Love and Darkness, an unflinching meditation on Israel, its birth and destiny through the events of the author’s own family. Told with the help of an intermittent thoughtful voice over, the story of Oz’s own childhood parallels the birth and difficult infancy of the Jewish state. His father and mother (Portman) have recently arrived in Jerusalem, fleeing the horrors of the holocaust in Poland and are struggling to make a life in the new land still under British protectorate. While the father is optimistic about the future of the Jewish homeland, the woman, Fania, has a sense of foreboding, which is soon enough proven justified as the first Arab-Israeli war breaks out in 1948. The events are narrated from an Israeli perspective, which espouses the notion of Zionism while rising above the contentious acrimony, which through the decades we have come to associate with that intractable conflict. Oz’s is a voice of reasoned conviction, the rational viewpoint of idealism pained by the dysfunctional relationship of two people, which have both been wronged by history and which he characterizes as “abused siblings who turn against each other”.
Portman, who wrote the script, as well as directed the film, effectively transposes the passion and quite pathos to the screen. Rather than lecturing, it is an intimate personal story set against momentous historical events. Portman’s own character is Oz’s allegory for Israel itself. It is a figure the author reveres as well as grieves for as she mentally and emotionally devolves and one through which Portman expresses her own feelings on the Israeli story. “Dreams are always more luminous when they are abstract notions”, the film instructs us, “once they are lived, their failures are revealed”. And yet we leave with the sense that Oz – and Natalie Portman – strongly believe they deserve to be lived. All in all a fine directorial debut for the luminous Ms. Portman. A Very different tone was on show at the Salle Lumière, the festival’s cavernous main screening hall, as Yorgos Lanthimos’ Lobster played to a packed house. The Greek director is a household name in Cannes ever since he made off with the Un Certain Regard Prize here in 2009 with Dogtooth about a couple who keep their adult children sequestered in a suburban home manipulating their reality into a darkly comical state of perpetual arrested development.
His new film adopts a similarly absurdist premise, taking place in a country spa hotel, which is somewhat of a last, ehm, resort for singles wanting to get hitched. This is something more than a whim, as the surrounding society requires people to find life partners and falling in love with compatible matches is apparently required by law. Failure to do so is persecuted to the fullest extent and beyond: Guests of the last ditch hotel have 45 days to find true companionship. If they don’t they are turned into animals; they get to pick which kind. No further explanation is given about the state of affairs as we follow “David” a middle-aged sad sack type (Colin Farrell) who, having been left by his wife, checks in for “rehab”. He joins a motley crew of characters (played among others by Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly) in the proceedings, which include singularly depressing banquet and dance nights under the watchful eye of hotel manager (Broadchurch’s Olivia Coleman).
Activities also include hunting sessions in the woods, where guests shoot tranquilizer darts at recalcitrant singles, who have escaped into the woods led by strict leader Lea Seydoux. Hilarious (if always deadpan) events eventually bring David to join the tribe of unattached rebels (who have their own strict rules about not becoming romantically involved. Fellow freedom fighter Rachel Weisz makes this exceedingly difficult. Lanthimos’ films are perhaps an acquired taste but if you buy into his absurdist universes, reminiscent of the work of Lonesco, Beckett and Godard (especially some of his conceptual sci-fi efforts like Alphaville), they can be a unique pleasure. That is the case with this deliciously unclassifiable comedy that skewers societal obsessions with relationships, dating, romantic love and conformism.
Luca Celada