Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
History of Sound actor/producer Paul Mescal brings his period romance to Cannes as he reflects on masculinity and love.
When Paul Mescal last came to Cannes he was arriving off the back of hit TV show Normal People and wowed the festival with his delicate portrayal of a father in crisis in Aftersun in 2011. Now he’s bringing a film to the Croisette in the wake of All of UsStrangers and Gladiator II – and as a producer. Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound, based on Ben Shattock’s short story, follows music student Lionel (Mescal) who falls for fellow undergrad David (Josh O’Connor) and embarks on a folk song collecting expedition through 1919 rural New England.
The role is another nuanced role from Mescal who says that cinema is shifting from dated male stereotypes. ‘It’s ever shifting,’ he says. ‘I think maybe in cinema we’re moving away from the traditional, alpha, leading male characters. I don’t think the film is defining or attempting to redefine masculinity, I think it is being very subjective to the relationship between Lionel and David.’
He and O’Connor have followed a similar trajectory in their careers and knew each other before getting on set together, which only added to the actors’ ability to get into character and craft a heartbreaking love story. ‘We’ve known each other for about five years and we were definitely friendly so that foundation of safety and play was there, but that relationship really deepened in the three or four weeks we were filming. I felt very lucky that myself and Josh knew each other well enough to begin with but we had a canvas to keep painting on during the filming process.’
The journey to showing the film to audiences at Cannes has taken a number of years, with Mescal first reading the script at the age of 24, filming at 28 and presenting it in France at the age of 29. For the actor it’s been a rewarding experience to track a project from start to finish both in front of, and behind, the camera. And the end result is a feature that explores love without words. ‘What I found so moving about the screenplay is that it’s never really described in words, it’s described in actions and things you don’t see … That’s something I’ve learned in my own life, kindness is wildly underrated in romantic relationships and should be celebrated.’
The History of Sound premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival and is out in cinemas now Read our review here
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
The lead of Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme tells Hollywood Authentic how Cannes was the secret ingredient in their latest collaboration.
Though he’s been to Cannes many times to premiere many films before, Benicio del Toro admits to still getting nerves when he climbs the famous red Palais stairs to sit in the dark with an inaugural audience. ‘It’s the best,’ he says of the festival and the experience. ‘Always fun but always nerve-wracking. You bite your nails, you feel good, you feel bad, you feel good, you feel bad, you feel good, you know? But then you try to leave on a good note.’
He left the cinema on a good note this year; his headlining performance as tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda trying to get his business deal off the ground via international funding in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme was warmly received by critics. The premiere was a full circle moment for this project – the actor was last in Cannes with Anderson in 2021 with anthology The French Dispatch where he appeared in one of five stories, and it was during that festival that the auteur first told him about his plans for this film. ‘He was saying he was doing his next movie, and he wanted me to be a part of it. When he sent The French Dispatch to me he sent me just the pages of my part, so when he sent the first 20 pages of The Phoenician Scheme, I thought it was going to be something similar, because he’s been doing these films where there’s a lot of characters moving around, and with several stories. But then he sent the next 20 pages, and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m still in it’… When he sent the next 20 pages, the fear started to take over. And then it was like, ‘Wow, this is heavy’. But, at the same time, his writing is so three-dimensional and so thorough. Aside from original, unpredictable, and funny, there’s also this heart to it that is super-exciting and one hell of a challenge for any actor. I just took the challenge and went for it. It’s really an honour. A gift.’
The heaviness that del Toro refers to is the fact that he appears in practically every scene, juggling the machinations of a complex business deal with an emotional arc that see the tycoon reunited with his nun daughter, Leisl, played by Mia Threapleton. ‘Then there’s also, you could say, the reconstruction of Zsa-zsa. But through the relationship with the daughter, is what will help him become a better person.’ The most challenging aspect of balancing a business arc with one of redemption and parental love was hard to pick for del Toro. ‘I had to know where he’s going to be. At the end, he will lose everything. I had to make a choice. How could this man have been working for decades, and has all this fortune – why would he throw it away? He has this ‘win at all costs’ mentality – and that remains the same until the end.’
As a veteran of Anderson’s films, del Toro surely had advice for newcomers to the stable, Threapleton and Michael Cera, who plays Norwegian tutor, Bjorn? ‘No advice,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Mia was probably the youngest of the group, but most of the time she behaved like a veteran. She is strong as an actress, prepared. But there were moments that we were getting tired. I was like, ‘Let’s just have fun. Don’t forget that this thing that we do – it’s at its best when we’re having fun, you know?’’Anderson’s intricate sets, huge casts and practical effects look like a great deal of fun, so Hollywood Authentic wonders if del Toro and his director were cooking up another treat during this festival that they might serve up in the Croisette in another three years time? ‘I would love to work with Wes again,’ del Toro smiles. ‘We’re not talking about something in the near future, but he knows that my door is open for anything he needs. And I like the pressure…”
The scheme at the centre of Wes Anderson’s latest is as precisely matriculated and detailed as the auteur’s work. Wily 1950s business tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) decides to go full hog on a business plan to build an Empire via infrastructure, deals and percentage financing after surviving his sixth plane crash (one of the film’s best sequences). A Charles Foster Kane crossed with Trump egotist who wants to win at all cost, Korda is determined to leave a legacy – in business via his scheme, and generationally via his offspring. Though he has nine sons, he reconnects with his 20 year-old daughter Leisl (Mia Threapleton), a nun who carries unresolved family hurt and a pipe. Korda’s biggest deal then involves globetrotting via complex sets and dioramas, to raise capital and outwit a bureaucratic group who are falsely inflating costs – all while handing out hand grenades as gifts and outrunning a mysterious assassin who keeps trying to pop him. Along for the ride: Michael Cera’s delightful Norwegian tutor Bjorn, who has a dazzling collection of insects and ends up working above his paygrade as Zsa-zsa suffers another plane crash, quicksand and a battle to the death in a luxury hotel.
Del Toro, in practically every frame, is a hoot as Zsa-zsa, a man who is casual about death, serious about cards and a fan of hot baths. He’s matched by deadpan Threapleton who can transmit an exasperated eyeroll without actually moving her peepers. Another newbie to the Anderson stable, Riz Ahmed, makes an impression as Prince Farouk, while the returning troupe (Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray et al) do their fast-talking, comedic thing. But it’s Cera who really steals focus with a performance so singularly sweet and a lilting Scandinavian accent so charming that one wishes Anderson had given this character a whole film to himself.
Though there’s plenty of physical gags and willfully opaque business speak which could be interpreted as Anderson criticising capitalism, the matter at the core of the hijinks is the redemption of a man and the relationship between a father and daughter. And to that end – and the film’s end – there is emotional satisfaction. As expected, production design is a whimsical trove and monochrome scenes set in heaven (with Murray as God) are quirky sojourns. Anderson fans will likely not be unduly disappointed.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs courtesy of TPS PRODUCTIONS/FOCUS FEATURES The Phoenician Scheme premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Ben Shattuck’s short story about two young men falling in love with each other and folk music is a thing of absolute beauty, filled with yearning, want and bucolic imagery. Shattuck has also written this screenplay and built out his fragile tale to a two hour movie that though handsome, well intentioned and delicately acted, fails to fully match the source material’s emotional resonance.
Gwen Capistran
We first encounter Lionel (Paul Mescal) and David (Josh O’Conner) as they meet-cute – a couple of music students at a Boston Conservatory in 1917 who connect over a piano in a bar, and then in bed later that night. Their fledgling romance is interrupted by WW1, with David getting drafted and Lionel returning to his family’s Kentucky farm. Lionel pines for his lost love so when David reappears post-conflict and invites him on a song collecting trip around New England, he jumps at the chance. The two men camp and hike to remote communities, archiving folksongs on a phonograph, cuddling in their tent and not saying what’s really on their minds like a folksy Brokeback Mountain. But David is tightly-wound, clearly rattled by his experiences in Europe and the trip cannot last forever…
Gwen Capistran
Shattuck’s short story is economic with detail but gives more lived-in texture to the affair than Oliver Hermanus’ stately film does which is as coy with its sex scenes as it is in showing the duo’s passion for music. The ‘history of sound’ is what Lionel yearns for in recalling his relationship with David as an older man (played by Chris Cooper) – not the ditties picked up and preserved on wax cylinders but the vibrations of being with someone in nature, in love. ‘Sound is invisible but can touch something, make an impression,’ Lionel explains at one point in a beautifully composed farmhouse tableau. Audiences might want more evidence of this than they are afforded in a film that creates striking visuals (an old man collapsed in a sun-bleached tree, the crystalline lake beneath an oar, Rome at magic hour) and haunting audio of fluting harmonies. Mescal and O’Conner are excellent, of course – carrying regret like the backpacks they shoulder – and production values are exemplary. But The History Of Sound offers something akin to blank sheet music, requiring the viewer to add notations.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GWEN CAPISTRAN Courtesy of FAIR WINTER LLC The History of Sound premiered at the 78th Cannes film festival
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
When Hollywood Authentic meets up with Adria Arjona and her Splitsville castmate (and co-producer) Dakota Johnson in a suite at the Majestic Hotel on the Cannes Criosette it doesn’t take long for talk to turn frank. ‘In your penis scene, you saw balls?’ Arjona asks. “Not in your penis scene. In my penis scene,’ Johnson replies. It has to be said, Splitsville has a number of penis scenes to choose from in a comedy that charts the emotional fallout of two couples – Arjona’s Ashley and her spouse Carey (Kyle Marvin) and Johnson’s Julie are her other half Paul (writer/director Michael Angelo Covino) – as they break-up and try to negotiate open relationships. That’s explored by male nudity, destructively funny house fights, goldfish on rollercoaster disasters and an opening scene that sees Arjona singing The Fray during a car ride that starts with a handjob and ends with death and divorce.
‘What it’s about is something that has always really intrigued me,’ Arjona says of the lure to both acting and exec-producing on the project from the team behind TIFF hit The Climb. ‘This is fun – a movie about messy relationships. And I’ve never played a character like Ashley. I was like, ‘Oh, I get to be bonkers for a little bit’. Johnson nods; ‘It’s very authentic,’ she laughs.
Johnson’s company TeaTime Pictures part-financed the film and she is used to producing, but for Arjona this was an opportunity to refine her behind-the-camera experience further and give herself more agency within the industry. ‘I’ve produced the last couple of things that I’ve been in. [Last year’s AIDs drama] Los Frikis was the first that asked me to do that. And I learned so much. You have a seat at the table. You have a little bit more ownership over your character. And then you’re so much more invested, I feel, as an actor. It’s not that I’m not invested in movies that I don’t produce. But when you do produce them, you get the best schooling in the world. You get to be a part of the edit, and you get to really understand how movies are made. As an actor we do our job, and then we leave. And a whole other movie is formed without us being present. So really getting to understand how filmmakers’ brains work, has been a really big gift. I think I’ve become a better actor by producing, because you’re just understanding planning, the schedule, the budget and the editing. You see the world completely differently. I’m acting but I’m also thinking ‘we’re losing time. We’re losing light…’’
It sounds like Arjona, who has recently worked with Zoë Kravitz on her directorial debut, Blink Twice, might be working towards helming a picture herself? A huge smile breaks out across her face. ‘I would love to direct. It’s probably one of my biggest dreams. But I’m terrified. I’ve got a lot more filmmakers to work with before I decide to make my own movie, and I also haven’t found the story yet.’
For now she has a full slate to continue learning from in preparation. She’s got Adam Wingard’s horror-actioner Onslaught upcoming in which she plays a mother fighting to protect her family opposite Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall. She also produced. ‘That one is a wild one. It’s crazy. It’s Adam going back to what he’s great at, what he proved to the world he could do with The Guest. So I played in the service of Adam’s vision. It’s the most extreme thing I think I’ve done. And it was a great experience.’ She’s also just completed filming on Amazon Prime’s buzzy new show, generational mob drama Criminal, acting alongside Charlie Hunnam, Richard Jenkins and Emilia Clarke. ‘Charlie is insane. He’s so cool and so sweet. It’s broken down into two sections. I’m four episodes, Emilia comes in the other four. It was a cool experience.’
Cannes, she says, is also a cool experience – and a switch-up from when she visited three years ago with Olivier Assayas’s TV show, Irma Vep. Then she was a relative unknown, now she’s the star and producer of the film she’s presenting to the festival, having made waves since in Hit Man and Andor. ‘It’s a very different experience. Irma Vep was a big ensemble cast and it’s very much Alicia [Vikander’s] show. So coming now, with this, and being with these guys, was pretty special. In a way, it kind of felt like my first time.’She’s also glad to bring the rom-com vibe to the festival. Splitsville is certainly romantic and comedic – but with a modern twist. ‘Oh, man, rom-coms are my favourite. You make all these movies, but then you come home, and you’re like, ‘I just want to curl up, and watch a really good romcom.’ And to be a part of them, too. I think we’re in this really interesting era of redefining what that is, or what romcoms are for this generation. And what resonates for people – the more I watch things, or watching people’s reactions – is things that are a little bit off-centre, and things that touch on complex subjects. Because there’s nothing more fun than watching people fall in love, fall out of love, and then fall back in love. And messily…’
Splitsville premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Photographs and interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Mission: Impossible’s tech nerd tells Hollywood Authentic about his directorial dreams, DJing and what he’s learnt from Tom Cruise.
Simon Pegg moved to his current home in Hertfordshire 13 years ago from London when the experience got to be too much like living in one of his own films. ‘I was living in Crouch End, and that’s where we shot Shaun of the Dead,’ he explains as he welcomes me to his country house. ‘So I couldn’t really complain when people came up to me on the street. I don’t mind it but obviously after a while it gets a little tiring.’ The move to the country was also prompted by needing more space for his growing brood: he lives in this home with his music publicist wife, Mo, daughter, Tilly, two Schnauzers and a Cockapoo, called Cookie. The Schnauzers, Willow and Branwell, are currently winding round his feet as he gives me the tour of his garden.
He shows me his ice plunge which he jumps into every day (‘I do 3 degrees for three minutes’) and his DJ spot – a music room at the end of the garden kitted out with CDJ-3000s and shelves of vinyl. Pegg now DJs at parties and festivals having self-taught himself three years ago. ‘DJing reminds me of doing stand-up comedy, in that you have an audience, and they react immediately to what you’re doing. Stand-up is like, they either laugh or you die. With DJing, they either dance or you die!’
He’s a long way now from where he started doing stand-up gigs. A Gloucester boy who grew up around musicians at his Dad’s music shop with a cinema just down the road, Pegg’s love of acting was fostered by an amateur dramatic mum and movie-fan dad. He attended Bristol university to study theatre, film, and TV where he started a comedy club with Dominic Diamond, David Walliams, Jason Bradbury and Myfanwy Moore. His stand-up there led to getting an agent (he’s still with the same one) and a role on Big Train. The experience moved him onto co-writing and appearing in cult TV show Spaced and then to writing and working with Edgar Wright and Nick Frost on Shaun Of The Dead. That built out to the ‘Cornetto Trilogy’ and acting in films such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Ice Age and Mission: Impossible.
Nowadays the writing is done in his office, located away from the main house and a treasure trove of film memorabilia (also the setting for a Rick Astley music video). Inside he has the numbers from the house in Spaced, artwork based on Edgar Wright’s work, a photograph of Harrison Ford cracking his Indy whip at Elstree, an oscilloscope from his film Lost Transmissions and a bloodied shirt from Shaun Of The Dead. ‘There’s one here, and then there’s one in Peter Jackson’s museum in Wellington, and then there’s one in a museum in Seattle. They’re the only three I know the whereabouts of.’ Part of the Cornetto Trilogy, Pegg laughs as he recalls the genesis for the recurring ice-cream gag. ‘We came up with the idea of [Nick Frost’s character] Ed eating a Cornetto in the morning because he was hungover – that was Edgar’s hangover cure, a strawberry Cornetto. And then at the Shaun of the Dead premiere, we got free Cornettos, and we were like, ‘Oh, man, this is great. We got free ice cream. We should put one in the next film as well.’ So we did. Shaun is red-and-white strawberry. Hot Fuzz is blue and white for the police. And The World’s End was green mint choc for the aliens.’
It’s in this private sanctuary that Pegg writes, he’s currently adapting a book he holds the right to and hopes to direct. ‘When I work with Edgar, it’s the ideal situation because we write the film, and then when we’ve written it and we’re happy with it, he becomes the director and I become the lead actor. That way, we have total autonomy. I think as a director, if you can write the thing, you’ve already done half the job by the time you actually get to set, because you’ve envisioned it, and you’re aware of the shots you want to use. But it’s such a weird time in the film industry because everything’s changed so much with exhibition and the way we consume cinema. Cinema’s pricing itself out of the market slightly, and the idea of going to see a small drama at the cinema now feels like: ‘Well, why would I do that? I could just watch it at home. What’s the point of seeing it on the big screen?’ But it’s not just the big screen, it’s the community of watching a film with other people, you know? A whole vast array of differing people who you might not agree with politically on various reasons, but you all share this experience. It’s a tribe of ours that I think we’re losing. When I was a kid, there was the television, and there was the cinema. TV was a square. You couldn’t see films. You saw a cut-and-shut version of films. You didn’t see them until five or six years after they’d been on at the movies. Now that’s totally different. We all own TVs that have the right aspect ratio for cinema, and we can get them immediately. We can see them in cinematic terms because the sound and the picture is so good. It’s no one’s fault. I think lockdown had something to do with it. People started to realise they didn’t have to leave their house, you know? But then concerts have gone back. Other collective events have gone back. It’s just cinema that seems to be clinging on by its fingernails at the moment.’
His latest project is cinema writ large. He’s reprising his role as tech whiz Benji in Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning, apparently the final film in a eight-movie series powered by cinephile and champion of the theatrical experience, Tom Cruise. ‘Tom has only ever done movies. He’s not interested in doing anything else. For him, that experience is really important. And I agree with him. It’d be a terrible shame if theatrical exhibition disappeared. It would be a tragedy. That’s why I like being part of the Mission franchise. It’s wildly exciting, and big in its scope. But it’s also a kind of twisty-turny story, and there’s great characters in it. [Producer/director] McQ and Tom are always very, very insistent that we concentrate on character more than the stunts, because the stunts don’t mean anything if the characters aren’t relatable or you don’t fall in love with them. There’s art in entertainment. But there doesn’t have to be entertainment in art. Entertainment is an overrated function of art. There you go. That’s my university head talking.’
We leave the office to shoot some hoops with a Louboutin basketball and onto Pegg’s soundproofed screening room guarded by a storm trooper, with signed Laurel and Hardy photos on the wall. Pegg and his daughter watch at least two movies a weekend in the chilled out space that boasts curtains in front of the screen and a Kaleidoscope system where Pegg has digitised his vast DVD collection. Next door, his gym is signposted with a pub sign from The World’s End. Fitness is a key part of his sobriety, having given up drinking 15 years ago. It also became more important as he made Mission: Impossible films. ‘The first time I really rediscovered keeping in shape was on Ghost Protocol and then it just became part of my everyday. I got in shape for Hot Fuzz, and then I let it go again. If you watch Ghost Protocol, I lose about 20 lbs in an edit. There’s a scene of us outside in Red Square and then it cuts indoors, and I’ve got cheekbones! But now it’s part of my mental health routine as well. If you have an addictive personality, then the trick is to swap out the addictions for something that’s better for you, you know? It gets the endorphins pumping, and it makes you feel good. When I’m working I’ll do some calisthenics in my trailer before I go to make up.’
We head back outside to another passion of Pegg’s; the pizza oven. He talks me through his routine of getting the temperature to 300 degrees and having the patience not to put the pizza in too early. ‘I’ve had a lot of abortive pizzas, I’ve got to say. But eventually you get the technique, and then they come out beautiful.’ The artisan nature of his pizzas brings him back around to considering cinema. ‘There’s a lot of talk about the sheer number of IP-based cinema… but it was an interesting year at the Oscars for independent cinema and these films that were brilliant movies that weren’t relying on any kind of brand recognition. Which does show that there’s a market for that kind of stuff. I suppose the key to success is, it’s always the low production value – or low production costs – and a big comeback. That’s the golden egg. You make the film for nothing, and it makes everything. But the trouble is, it’s hard to make a film that everyone is going to go and see, if it’s small and thoughtful, you know, because people like big things. And I guess that’s what every producer wrestles with. Every film, every studio – how do you make great art and make money?’
‘My background is comedy, and the trouble with doing comedy is that no one subsequently ever takes you seriously. It’s a very overlooked skill-set, I think. They’ve just announced a category at the Oscars for stunt performance, which is great, but I’d like to see a category for comedic performance, because not everybody can do it. If there had been a category for comedic performance, then Jim Carrey would be weighed down with Oscars, you know? I’ve seen so-called straight actors attempt comedy and fail. But I’ve seen a lot of very good comedy actors be very good at dramatic acting.’
For now Pegg is consolidating everything he’s learnt in his career for his next steps. ‘I’ve learned a lot from Christopher McQuarrie because he always professes that he’s learning all the time. Steven Spielberg blew my mind when I worked with him because he just sees in film – that’s how he sees the world. I’m always really impressed by people that can do things I can’t do. You know, musicians or artists or people that have an amazing skill that I lack. But with directing, I feel that’s attainable. Having worked with Edgar so much, I just feel like it’s time to have a crack at that.’
I ask what he’s learnt from Cruise over the years. ‘I get asked about him all the time because he very rarely speaks about himself in public. You know, even in private, he’ll always switch the conversation back to you. But everyone’s so desperate for some kind of concrete information about him because he’s such an enigma. But I think that’s part of his success, that he’s maintained that. He’s maintained the interest in himself simply by just taking a step back, because he can. His journey is extremely simple when you look at it. He’s just always given 100% to everything that he does. Everything. To him, it’s quite simple: if you do that, then you get to be that, you know? He’s an eternal student of film. He’ll know what lens suits a scene, or he’ll know what piece of equipment we should use. He is across every facet of the production. But he’s just so diligent, and so invested in what he’s doing. The idea of doing it and half-arsing it, or phoning it in, would never cross his mind. He’s just not that way. He sets the tone, really. ‘Perfectionist’ is often used as a backhanded compliment. Edgar’s a perfectionist as well. Mediocrity is not in either of those people’s vocabulary. It makes for an intense experience. You know, I’ve been in these films for 20 years now, and every one of them has been an adventure, in the truest sense of the word, whether we’ve been in Vancouver or Morocco or the Arctic Circle or Venice or Rome. Tom sacrifices a certain amount of normality, I think, for the life he lives. That’s not to suggest he deserves any kind of pity. But I think he has given up something I really value, which is complete normality. But I think he knows that’s what it takes to be him, you know? He’s the last movie star, I think. I don’t think there’s anyone else like him.’
I point out that Pegg doesn’t live a totally ordinary life himself and he laughs. ‘I can still walk down the street quite easily and not be seen. The downside to having a career where you become recognisable are far, far less than the upsides of doing your hobby for a job. That, I really relish. But it’s just keeping a balance. As a rule, I try to never be away from home for longer than four weeks, if I can.’ He’s about to hit the road again with the Final Reckoning global press tour – possibly the last time he’ll be promoting the series. ‘It’s a whole IMF go-bag of mixed emotions,’ he says of the close of this chapter of his life. ‘It’s exceeded my wildest dreams. Twenty years of my life, that started with an unexpected phone call from JJ Abrams. It’s been a wild ride, literally at times. I feel very lucky to have been a part of it.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
The Gangs Of London actor tells Hollywood Authentic about the special thrill of bringing the first Nigerian film to competition in Cannes and the emotion of filming My Father’s Shadow in Lagos.
Hollywood Authentic catches up with Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù at the Cannes Palais the day after his soulful and evocative ‘un certain regard’ film has premiered to rave reviews and celebrated with a party on the beach attended by Nigerian dignitaries. As we sit above the red carpet as Spike Lee’s latest film premieres below, Dìrísù smiles at the reaction to a project close to his heart as the child of Nigerian parents – and as exec producer on the film. ‘I think that people who have been to Lagos found there was a sensory experience to this film,’ he nods. ‘The redness of the earth… they said that they could smell and taste the food, you know? They could smell the cooking in the bukas, on the street corner. And they could feel the heat in the textures. It is a wonderful representation of the country.’
It certainly is. Akinola Davis Jr’s vivid, evocative film co-written with his brother Wale weaves through a vibrant Lagos in 1993, as a father (played by Dìrísù) shows his two pre-teen sons the teeming capital city during one eventful day as the election results that will change the country are announced. Filmed on location in Nigeria, Dìrísù found the experience very different from his trips to the country to visit family and friends. ‘I was delighted to be contributing to the history of Nigerian cinema and to be there on my own agency, personally. I’ve been back and forth from Nigeria a lot, but mainly for family reasons – weddings and birthdays and funerals, unfortunately. But I really felt great purpose being in the country, as opposed to being there on holiday. It made me feel like I was connecting with my community. And the big celebrations that have happened, not only in Nigeria but with Nigerians across the world, on the back of the success of this film have completely justified the way that I was feeling making it.’
Dìrísù plays the father to two real-life brothers, Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibiuke Marvellous Egbo, and as the story unravels the relationship between parent and children becomes more nuanced. The connection between the trio had to feel authentic and the actor recalls the detail he and his director paid to ensuring it worked. ‘It was a really interesting task that Akinola and I worked a lot on, because I think the stereotype of a Nigerian father is very harsh, patriarchal and somewhat dictatorial. But the truth of a lot of fatherhood is that it’s not just that. There’s also great tenderness and love there as well. It was really important that we spent as much time together as possible. Because if we didn’t have that intimacy, which is captured so beautifully in the film, then I don’t think the film would work as well, you know? You want these boys to yearn for their father in the same way that Nigeria is yearning for great leadership. Wale talks a lot about a dream deferred and plans unfulfilled, and how that is thematically in parallel between the domestic familial story and the one of the country. The boys couldn’t swim and we wanted to capture this beautiful beach sequence. So I remember there were nights when we were at the hotel together, where I would take them swimming. I would try to teach them to swim, or give them familiarity in the water. To get to that point where their mother entrusted me to take the boys swimming, look after them, entertain them off set – I think it speaks to the relationship that we were able to foster in the course of the film.’
As we watch the red carpet below, Dìrísù explains the importance of My Father’s Shadow breaking barriers by being the first Nigerian film in competition at the festival. ‘It’s not only what it means for me, but what it means to Nigeria and the community, in the country and in the diaspora. There has been such a remarkable celebration of it. We didn’t get to see the carpet when people came to see the film yesterday – but I was told there was a wonderful expression of the joy and the pride that those who have been able to travel to Cannes have had for the film. That same joy and pride, and that expressiveness, I’ve felt on social media. I’ve felt it in conversations. I think a lot of people are excited that Nigerian cinema and Nollywood – which are definable as two different things but ultimately go film in hand – is being celebrated on a global scale. Nigeria has such a rich, deep history of filmmaking, and it’s kind of a shame that it’s taken so long for it to be on a platform like this. But I’m delighted that we’re able to break through that ceiling, and forge the connections and the global collaborations that are necessary for this to have happened.’
Backed by Irish Element Pictures, Nigerian Fatherland, the BFI, the BBC, Match Factory and Le Pacte, production on this film was, he says, ‘truly a global effort and I hope that there can be more collaborations like that in the future.’ And what does he think of possibly winning the big ‘Un Certain Regard’ prize at the end of this week? He chuckles and shrugs. ‘The experience here is a reward enough…’
In his debut feature Charlie Polinger riffs on The Lord Of The Flies but makes it entirely his own and pertinent to today’s politics, social media pile-ons and the cowardice of allowing cruelty to another to ensure one’s own safe passage. An adolescent study in social hierarchy and coercion, The Plague is what the 12 and 13 year old boys at a 2003 water polo camp call the rash that one of their number has developed during the summer. Eli (Kenny Rasmussen) is a ‘weird kid’, and his skin condition is deemed to be highly contagious by ringleader Jake (Kayo Martin) who has already bullied a boy over it in a previous summer session. When mild-mannered Ben (Everett Blunck) turns up, the fractured dynamics in his home and a speech impediment make him self-protect – he’d rather allow cruel taunts and ostracising than make a stand. Their coach (Joel Edgerton) is no ally anyway. A well-meaning man who sees unkindness as a right of passage based on his own high school experiences, he may shout at the group about compassion but he’s not willing or able to do anything about it.
Spooky Pictures
Foreboding sound design, score and cinematography make The Plague an uneasy watch from the start, the muffled underwater world of a swimming pool strafed with diving boys, the queasy chlorinated lighting of locker rooms and dark corners of a brutalist sports centre. This is a world of hard surfaces and no digital escape via cell phones or social media. The claustrophobic society created in the changing rooms and dorms is what we, and Ben, are stuck with as Jake smirkingly controls the group by picking apart any perceived weakness. Ben can’t pronounce his ‘t’s, cannot enunciate ‘stop’, so is christened ‘Soppy’ and ridiculed for his vegetarianism. It’s enough to not want to make him protest as Eli is humiliated in the lunch room, showers and, in a particularly vulnerable moment, when the arrival of girls causes an embarrassing reaction.
Polinger teases horribly recognisable performances out of his young cast; Blunck’s panic is infectious while Rasmussen is unexpected in every scene as a boy who is being bullied for being different but trying to own it. A moment where he dances like nobody’s watching (even though every one is) is heartbreaking and triumphant. But the standout is Martin who wears a knowing smile most of the time and has charisma to burn. Playing like a young Michael J Fox turned feral, he has a sweet face, a smart mouth and the instincts of a killer. The way his lips curl as he detects fallibility, ready to weaponise it, is the stuff that haunts all our memories of adolescence. And the ease with which his controlled community abuses a teammate is something we can all recognise in all social groups, both intimate and global. Ben’s ultimate question of ethics is one posed to every audience member.
Spooky Pictures
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs courtesy of SPOOKY PICTURES The Plague premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Photography by LAKIN OGUNBANWO Words by JANE CROWTHER
‘I will see you in dreams,’ says one of the delightfully cheeky children at the heart of this haunting tale of hindsight, loss, identity and love from Akinola Davis jr. The film, co-written by Davies and his brother, Wale, is like a vivid dream; loaded with so much evocative imagery that one can practically smell the food cooking in the teeming streets of Lagos, feel the heat from the dusty road and taste the salt of the beach where a key moment plays out. It is a loving portrait of both West Nigeria and a parent who comes sharply into focus when remembered on one adventurous day in 1993.
Lakin Ogunbanwo/BBC Films
The father in question, Fola (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), is largely absent from the lives of two brothers, Akin and Remi (Godwin Chimerie Egbo and Chibiuke Marvellous Egbo) who live in a rural town, constantly awaiting the return of both their parents from work. One day, as the wind whispers through the trees and fruit rots on the ground, Dad arrives home. As he moves through the house alighting on various personal possessions, he brusquely suggests his sons accompany him on his trip into the capital to collect money owed to him from shift work. The three of them squash into a bus for the journey but amid the petrol shortages and political unrest of the recent elections, it breaks down. Now begins the real odyssey, as the trio hitchhike to Lagos and are consumed within its messy, chaotic, bright and busy centre – zipping around on motorbikes, hanging out with Dad’s friends, visiting a closed-down fairground, watching the city hold its breath waiting for the election results in a bar as beer bottles sweat.
Lakin Ogunbanwo/BBC Films
Daddy suffers from nosebleeds, has an unspoken past and is wary of the soldiers patrolling the streets with watchful eyes. His trauma and possible infidelity flutter within the periphery of a day that crystallises both boys’ image of their father. In their jumbled recollection Fola is a stern parent, a swimming teacher, a protector, a provider, hurt by his own childhood and filled with hope for better days, politically and personally. He feels so fully formed by all the aspects of himself coming together during this day, that a stunningly beautiful beach scene begins an emotional ache that lingers to the final, sorrowful moments. Throughout, decay and rot is catalogued via decaying fruit, bones, the circling of vultures – and once linked by a deft foreshadowing twist, Davis’ film packs real emotional punch.
Dìrísù is magnificent in a role that may see him on the same trajectory as Paul Mescal when he arrived in Cannes with Aftersun, ably supported by plucky performances by his young co-star brothers. The film also makes non-fiction history in being the first Nigerian film to be in competition at the festival, despite the power of Nollywood. And what a gorgeous, evocative, smart and tender portrait of Nigeria and a family it is.
