Politics, Entertainment & Naturalism

The day started with the screening of Mon Colonel, a heavy political work co-written by Costa-Gavras about the use of torture during the war in Algeria. Following the same structure as Missing, the film proved to be intense during its flashbacks but lost some of its momentum during the investigation sequences set in modern days.

Hunting & Gathering, a comedy by Claude Berry starring Audrey Tautou & Guillaume Canet was certainly enjoyable but suffered at times from its mainstream cheesiness.

Flanders was certainly the roughest moment of the festival. Built on naturalism, Bruno Dumont's film was both a haunting and difficult experience, which bordered on autistic art. The film was followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, which turned into the most excruciating and interesting discussion of the week From the beginning, it was clear that the director wasn't comfortable being there -- there was actually the same feeling with Olivier Dahan. While giving some great insights about his film, the director was at times pompous, at times somewhat autistic -- in an artistic way of expression -- which he actually admitted as being his method of work.

Filmmakers, like most real artists, use their media to express themselves and they shouldn't have to give away the meaning of their work to their audience. More disturbing were the questions -- or would I say vapid comments -- from an audience over-intellectuazing everything, turning this Q&A into a pretentious, grotesque and ridiculous freak show.

Talking about Q&A's, I was pretty surprised to see that most interviewers this week had absolutely nothing interesting to say, beside endlessly praising the filmmakers. It looks like most of them hadn't done their homework and either used praises or questions from audience to mask their lack of inspiration.