Cannesversations Eliana Resnick and Patrick Fey

This week, Patrick and Eliana discuss Marcel Carné’s 1945 film Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), which appeared in the 2011 Cannes Classics section.
Filmed during the Nazi Occupation of France and released as the first film following its liberation, the film has continued to charm audiences in France and abroad with its gorgeous set design, iconic actors, and wit-infused characters, a result of the core collaboration between set designer Alexandre Trauner, screenwriter Jacques Prevert, and composer Joseph Kosma.
Spectatorship and performance are at the heart of this farcical and bittersweet film, where four men vie for the radiant yet fugacious Garance as she flits between them, and they amongst themselves on the grand Boulevard du ‘Crime.’ It is a film about action and re-action, the verbal and the non-verbal, in a city too small for undying dreams.

Resources:
Affron, Mirella Jona. "Les Enfants Du Paradis: Play of Genres." Cinema Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 1978, pp. JSTOR.
Ebert, Roger. “Children of Paradise.” RogerEbert.com,
Forbes, Jill. Les Enfants Du Paradis, British Film Institute, 1997.
Mancini, Marc. "Prevert: Poetry in Motion Pictures." Film Comment, vol. 17, no. 6, 1981, pp. 34-37. JSTOR.
Nye, Edward. Deburau. Pierrot, Mime, and Culture, Routledge, 2022.
Picherit, Hervé. “A Strange Child of Paradise: The Artistry of Arletty’s “Self” in Les enfants du paradis.” Camera Obscura, Vol. 32, No. 1, Duke University Press, 2017.
Reid, Tina. “Marcel Carné on Children of Paradise: Forty-Five Years Later” The Criterion Collection, 20 Sept. 2012,
Sadoul, Georges. "The Postwar French Cinema."Hollywood Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 1950, pp. JSTOR.
Sellier Geneviève. « Les Enfants du paradis dans le cinéma de l'Occupation.” 1895, revue d'histoire du cinéma, n° 22, 1997, pp. 55-66.
Turk, Edward Baron. Child of Paradise. Marcel Carné and the Golden Age of French Cinema, Harvard University Press, 1989.

Sound:
EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal O'Doan (Piano) Nancy O'Doan (Piano), and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein Archive.
Excerpt

For the last episode of Cannesversations this year, Eliana, and Patrick are joined by critic friends Öykü Sofuoğlu (this marks Öykü’s second time on the podcast; check out our Cannes episode on About Dry Grasses and May December) and Lawrence Garcia to look back at their favorite films of 2023.
Follow Öykü & Lawrence on Twitter/X
Below, you'll find our Top 5 films.
Top 5
Öykü
5 The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo 'Teddy' Williams)4 Afire (Christian Petzold)3 Los delincuentes (Rodrigo Moreno)2 May December (Todd Haynes)1 Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)Lawrence
5 Here (Bas Devos)4 This Closeness (Kit Zauhar)3 Un Prince (Pierre Creton)2 May December1 Arturo a los 30 (Martín Shanly)Eliana
5 Our Body (Claire Simon)4 Un Prince3 Sobre todo de noche (Victor Iriarte)2 A Wild Roomer (Lee Jeong-Hong)1 About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)Patrick
5 About Dry Grasses4 The Human Surge 33 Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World2 Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân)1 The Shadowless Tower (Zhang Lü)At the end of the second episode, we asked Öykü and Lawrence about writings they are proud of or happy with. Öykü interviewed Radu Jude for Mubi’s Notebook, which you can find here, and Lawrence referred to his 15,000-word deep dive into David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Make sure to check both of them out!
We wish all of you a happy year of 2024 and are hopeful for many more episodes to come in the new year!

For the last episode of Cannesversations this year, Eliana, and Patrick are joined by critic friends Öykü Sofuoğlu (this marks Öykü’s second time on the podcast; check out our Cannes episode on About Dry Grasses and May December) and Lawrence Garcia to look back at their favorite films of 2023.
Follow Öykü & Lawrence on Twitter/X
Below, you first find all our honorable mentions, followed by our individual Top 10-6 films.
Honorable Mentions
Öykü
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorcese)Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)Here (Bas Devos)Lawrence
Music (Angela Schanalec)The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)Notre Corps (Claire Simon)In Water (Hong Sang-soo)The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson)Eliana
Amiko (Yusuke Morii)MusicSparta (Ulrich Seidl)Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)The Human Surge 3Patrick
Forms of Forgetting (Burak Çevik)A Wild Roomer (Lee Jeong-hong)Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Elene Naveriani)MusicEureka (Lisandro Alonso)De Facto (Selma Doborac)There Is a Stone (Tatsunari Ota)Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara)This Closeness (Kit Zauhar)May December (Todd Haynes)Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)Top 10
Öykü
10 Yannick (Quentin Dupieux)9 Orlando, My Political Biography8 Riddle of Fire (Weston Razooli)7 Notre Corps6 La bête (Bertrand Bonello)Lawrence
10 Totem (Lila Avilés)9 Cerrar los ojos (Víctor Erice)8 In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo)7 The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)6 Forms of ForgettingEliana
10 Passages9 Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry8 Yannick7 The Delinquents6 May DecemberPatrick
10 Concrete Valley (Antoine Bouge)9 Notre Corps8 Cerrar los ojos7 Here6 La bêteAt the end of the second episode, we asked Öykü and Lawrence about writings they are proud of or happy with. Öykü interviewed Radu Jude for Mubi’s Notebook, which you can find here, and Lawrence referred to his 15,000-word deep dive into David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return. Make sure to check both of them out!
We wish all of you a happy year of 2024 and are hopeful for many more episodes to come in the new year!

This week Eliana and Patrick delve into Lizzie Borden's 1986 dramedy Working Girls about a day in the life of a group of young sex workers in a middle-class brothel in 1980s Manhattan.
A milieu rarely ever depicted on the big screen in American cinema (in their Criterion essay So Meyer stresses that it was not until Sean Baker's Tangerine in 2015—three decades later—that the lived reality of sex workers would take center stage of a major US feature film again), Borden, with her observational eye and collaborative filmmaking process, circumvents the common dichotomous portrayal of prostitutes as either glamorized or pitiable, shedding light on the profession that proves both sympathetic to its characters and discerning of the mundanity of their profession—ultimately highlighting the autonomy women can exercise while embracing that the world's oldest profession is just that—a profession.
Resources:
Borden, Lizzie, and Gordon, Betty. “Lizzie Borden and Bette Gordon on Working Girls.” Criterion, 2021,Da Costa, Cassie. Lizzie Borden Is Finally Getting Her Due. Vanity Fair, 15 July 2021,Felando, Cynthia. „4 Lizzie Borden.” Independent Female Filmmakers. A Chronicle Through Interviews, Profiles, and Manifestos, edited by Michele Meek, Rouledge, 2019.Firestone, Shulamith. The Dialectic of Sex. The Case for Feminist Revolution. 1970.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.Free, Erin. „Unsung Auteurs: Lizzie Borden.“ FilmInk, 12 May, 2021,Gagne, Emily. “Director Lizzie Borden on Censorship, Community and the Movie She’s Kept in the Closet for Over 40 Years.” That Shelf, 1 March 2023,Hoberman, James. “Lizzie Borden’s ‘Working Girls’ Is About Capitalism, Not Sex.” New York Times, 16 June 2021,Huber, Christoph. “Whatever Happened to Lizzie Borden?” CinemaScope, 17 March 2018, 22 Sept. 2023.Isaacson, Johanna. “Hollywood Kills Feminism: the Work of Lizzie Borden.” Blind Field, 14 August 2019.Lane, Christina. Feminist Hollywood. From Born in Flames to Point Break. Wayne State University Press, 2000.Mayer, So. “Working Girls: Have You Ever Heard of Surplus Value?” Criterion, 13 July 2021.Sound
EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal and Nancy O'Doan and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein ArchiveIntro: CNN

On this episode of Cannesversations Patrick and Eliana discuss Tsai Ming-Liang's 2009 in-competition Cannes film, Visage (臉 | Face). Commissioned by the Louvre Museum and sprinkled with the ghosts of Nouvelle Vague and Truffaut's own muses, the Taiwanese director's own muse, Lee Kang Sheng, wades through halls of grief and desire while directing a film based on the incandescent and timeless biblical Salomé.
Through long durational takes, absurd situations, and a composed acumen of transience, Tsai's cinema captivates with just one face, leaving behind a body of work that lends itself in equal parts to theatrical and institutional dissemination.
Resources/Credits:
Bordeleau, Erik. "The Care for Opacity – On Tsai Ming-Liang’s Conservative Filmic Gesture." NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies, 1 (2012), No. 2, p. 115–131. DOI: www.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15052.Bordeleau, Erik. "Soulful Sedentarity: Tsai Ming-Liang at Home at theMuseum." Studies in European Cinema, 10:2-3, 179-194, DOI: 10.1386/seci.10.2-3.179_1.Hughes, Darren. "Tsai Ming-liang." Senses of Cinema, May 2003, https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/tsai/.Lim, Song Hwee. Tsai Ming-liang and a Cinema of Slowness. University of Hawai'i Press, 2014.Tsai, B. 2017. The many faces of Tsai Ming-liang: Cinephilia, the French connection, and cinema in the gallery. International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 13 (2): 141–160, https://doi.org/10.21315/ijaps2017.13.2.7Villiers, Nicholas de. Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy. Sexual Disorientation in the Films of Tsai Ming-liang. University of Minnesota Press, 2022.Visage - Press Kit Cannes.Sound:
EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal O'Doan (Piano) Nancy O'Doan (Piano), and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein ArchiveIntro Interview

This week on Cannesversations, Eliana and Patrick discuss Valeska Grisebach’s self-described "dance with the Western genre," the 2017 Cannes Un Certain Regard film Western. Considered by some to be part of the second generation of the Berlin School and by others to be one of the distinct voices of the New Austrian Cinema, Grisebach distinguishes herself through her filmmaking approach by favoring a collaborative process with her actors in the conceptualization of scenes.
Strangely enough, this does not take away from her directorial signature style, yet rather establishes her as one of the leading filmmakers of world cinema concerned with narrative realism. Western implements documentary-style filmmaking techniques to speak to the subsisting undercurrent themes of colonization and masculinity with contemporary panache and vigilant subtlety.
Credit/ Resources:
Marco Abel. The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School, Camden House, 2013.Martine Floch. „Western, de Valeska Grisebach (2017).” Histoire Politique, https://doi.org/10.4000/histoirepolitique.5350.Codruța Morari. European Auteurs Revisit the Western: Thomas Bidegain’s Les Cowboys and Valeska Grisebach’s Western.New German Critique: An Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies. 2019;46(3 [138]):11-34.Tony Pipolo. Small Talk. “Tony Pipolo on Valeska Grisebach’s Western.” Artforum, February 2018.Peter Scheinpflug. „Western (Valeska Grisebach, 2017). Home is here the horse is, oder: Valeska Grisebachs respektvolle Demontage des Westernhelden.”Lola, Toni, Yella und die anderen: Der deutsche Film nach 1990, Brill | Fink, 2023, pp. 417-434.Victoria Steiner. „Der deutsche Weste(r)n zu Valeska Grisebachs WESTERN (2017) – unter anderem.“ Medienobservationen, pp. 1-20.Peter Verstraten “Valeska Grisebach’s Western: An Unacknowledged Remake of Samuel Fuller’s ‘Run of the Arrow.’” Senses of Cinema, Issue 87, June 2018.Catherine Wheatly. “Not Politics but People: The ‘Feminine Aesthetic’ of Valeska Grisebach and Jessica Hausner.” New Austrian Film, Berghahn Books, 2011, pp. 136-147.Sound:
EFF Open Audio License for Le Carnaval des Animaux (Saint-Saëns, Camille - Aquarium) by Neal O'Doan (Piano) Nancy O'Doan (Piano), and Seattle Youth Orchestra Pandora Records/Al Goldstein ArchiveInterview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKAPNjgkNS4