Thursday,June 20, 10: 30 a.m. – spike Collars, tattoos, satanists, fishnets… On the platform of the Gare Montparnasse, one prepares for a journey to the end of hell. The convoy of the darkness, towards the Great West, is filled with metal fans. They make their annual pilgrimage to Clisson at Hellfest, where they rendezvous with Mephistopheles.
For other passengers, the journey stops in Nantes. Another devil is waiting: Keyser Söze, the mythical character of the Usual Suspects. The film Bryan Singer is screened at the Katorza in the framework of the SoFilm Summercamp, a film festival organised by the monthly magazine. The polar is nothing other than the «movie stand» of François Hollande, now in the art room and test. For his carte-blanche, as proposed in the manifestation, it’s a funny choice made by the former president of the Republic. One would expect to Bye up There, or Boulevard of the Twilight…
» READ ALSO – Nantes, François Hollande made his film: «In politics, I came across a Keyser Sözé»
«I wanted those who had not seen it can discover it and those who had already seen it, like me, can reinforce in their first observations», says François Hollande at the end of the projection. The time of an exchange with the public, the former president reflects on his experience in politics: «We are constantly looking to our opponent while he is often near us, he says. The own of Keyser Söze (metaphor of the Evil one in the film, editor’s note), it is that we don’t know who he is, even when he is with us. Therefore, I have necessarily had to encounter in my life.» But who, devil, may feel referred?
bananas and the blues
The same evening, another Keyser Söze arrives as a lame devil on the stage of the Katorza. John Landis, the leg in a splint, leans on his cane to climb the steps of the promontory. Guest of honor of the event, the «movie brat» this Schlock, his first feature film, produced in 1971 at the age of 21 years (and in which he plays a gorilla killer).
Before the festival, the director, even more, the banana, like the gorilla killer that he played in Schlock. Smile childlike on the lips, it digresse as an old schnoque. For more than an hour, he spares no detail of his journey from youth: his discovery of the Seventh voyage of Sinbad at age eight (a movie that gave him the urge to become a director), the beginnings of a postal clerk at Twentieth Century Fox, his wanderings european with Sergio Leone… «If I speak to you for so long, this is to let you forget how this movie is bad», loose-t-it-before leaving the scene in the old rogue proud of his stroke.
> ALSO READ – John Landis: «I love the monsters, they represent so much,»
His speech the next day, at the beginning of the session of open-air Blues Brothers, is relatively short: «At the time, we didn’t have the same technology as today. All the scenes that you will see have been carried out without the tricks. Including chases at full speed in downtown Chicago».
With wonder, we are rediscovering caroms dantesque of this masterpiece of 1980. And of course, its musical sequences. The spectators, comfortably seated in sofas and chairs, have their eyes glued to Jake and Elwood (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi). The evening of the fête de la musique oblige, they do not lose a crumb of the meeting of the two brothers with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Cab Calloway and John Lee Hooker.
Carte blanche to the relaxation
on Saturday, a fresh breeze blows over Nantes. Yves, the fridge connected to the film of Benoît Forgeard presented in the closing session of the parallel section at cannes last month, arrived in the Loire-Atlantique. On the terrace of Molière, a few steps from the Katorza, one crosses William Lebghil, the lead actor, in front of a plate of French fries, attitude CRAB (‘Definitely nothing to b******»the title of the song he performs in the film).
After Doria Tillier (The new monsters), his partner in Yves, he was entitled also to his carte blanche: the comedy slapstick of Riad Sattouf, Jacky in the kingdom of girls, the first film in which he appears with «his buddy» to First year, Vincent Lacoste. «My first contact with Vincent, it was a slap in the face for the film,» jokes the young man. Since that day, we became like best friends.»
Before the screening Sunday of Bacurau and The Traitor, two films in cannes, the third day of the festival ends with a cine-karaoke in the open air. Musical passages are projected on a giant screen in an out of blind test cinéphilique of 43 pieces for more than an hour and a half. Here’s something to delight music lovers and movie lovers.
In the aisles, singing at full lung on scenes cults of the 7th art: the wild dancing of Jessica Beals in Flashlight, the sensual between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) or the twist barefoot Uma Turman and John Travolta on Never Can’t Tell (Pulp Fiction). Excerpts of feature-length films of more recent (Bohemian Rhapsody, girls Strip, 120 beats per minute) are precisely those of classical musical comedy (The young girls of Rochefort, Jailhouse Rock, The Blues Brothers, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Grease…). Tonight, Nantes will have danced with the devil in the moonlight.
