Adversity & Resilience

Suspenseful drama and vivid characters, bleak surroundings and indomitable spirit: three Cannes prize-winners that depict average people in desperate situations, who must fight against the forces that stand in their way. These films show empathy for their flawed protagonists and employ a verité style that does not shy away from the gritty details of their lives. The European films refuse to veer into sentimentality, resulting in works of artistic integrity. Finishing the series with a mash of deadpan naturalism and fantasy, the genre-blending Taiwanese selection offers us a pandemic romantic-comedy-musical.

Art by Sheena Agnew

Series Films

 

Rosetta (1999)
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
November 16, 2023

This Dardenne brothers' Palme d'Or winner epitomizes adversity and resilience. It drops us into teenage Rosetta's world with no explanation, to experience the tumult of her life at full speed. Her modest ambition is to have a job and a normal life, away from the trailer she shares with her alcohol-addicted mother. Our sympathy is tested as we watch Rosetta's desperation push her into moral grey areas, but the filmmakers are not seeking our sympathy. This isn't really a social issue film, but a war story with a heroine who is fighting for survival.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (2007)
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
November 30, 2023

A Palme d'Or winner set during the last years of Communist rule in Romania, this is a nuanced suspense drama, with notes of dark humour, about friendship, loyalty, responsibility and decision-making. Centred around the procurement of an illegal abortion, the film creates a sense of real-time urgency, as two friends navigate the sinister world they must rely on and the obliviousness of those that set themselves apart from lower class concerns.

The Hole (1998)
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
December 14, 2023

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes, a pandemic deadpan comedy musical like you've never seen before. Two people in adjacent apartments who disobey evacuation orders in the face of a mysterious disease begin an antagonistic awareness of each other when a plumber leaves behind a small hole. Punctuated with glamorous musical fantasies that vividly contrast with the rain-soaked urban decay of the characters' surroundings, the film is a complex mixture of humour, melancholy, and wonder.