2024 – La Presse at the 77th Cannes Film Festival

(Cannes) Quebec filmmaker Matthew Rankin arrived Friday afternoon at the SODEC pavilion, on the beach at Cannes Bay, with a slight delay. He underestimated the time it would take to get through the security perimeter. The Cannes Film Festival is a fortress guarded by dozens of police officers.

It is my fault too. In 2017, I met Rankin at the premiere of his short film there Tesla: The light of the world During the critics' week. I liked the wink. Two months before the Olympic Games in Paris, the whole of France was under police surveillance, which was not the idea of ​​the century.

Matthew Rankin returns to the Croisette after seven years in another major parallel section of the Cannes festival, the Directors' Fortnight. This Saturday morning and Saturday night he presents his second full-length film, very charming, funny and poetic Universal language.

“The film was born out of our collective joy, and we wanted to replicate that joy at Cannes,” says the 43-year-old director, who was on site with several members of his team (co-writers, actors, etc.).

Universal language is an absurdist comedy inspired by the life of Matthew Rankin, who plays the alter ego of the same name. An anecdote told by his grandmother is the origin of the original idea for the script, which he wrote with his friends Ila Firuzabadi and Piruz Nemati, two Iranian Quebecers, after visiting his hometown of Winnipeg during the epidemic.

This is the story of two elementary school students, Negin and Nazgol, who found a banknote stuck in ice. They enlist the help of Masood, a tour guide in Winnipeg. For his part, Matthew Rankin (the protagonist) leaves his job as a civil servant in the Quebec government and, like the filmmaker, takes a mysterious trip to the capital of Manitoba, where he does not speak a second language, to visit his mother. . English, but the French were bequeathed by Louis Riel.

“My mother died while I was presenting XX century (son précédent film) at the Berlin Film Festival, February 29, 2020. I was in Winnipeg for a while during the lockdown because I was an enforcer for it. The city was especially empty. I was completely alone. It inspired me. »

A tribute to Iranian and Quebec cinema

Universal languageSet in the reinvented 2000s, this is a mystery with Matthew Rankin's unique visual signature and quirky humor. A man runs a tissue box store, students play curling on the playground, and street vendors look like they're in Iran. Rankin shot his characters mostly in fixed shots in front of beige or gray brick walls in Winnipeg.

The students, played by their teacher Mani Suleimanlou, attend the Winnipeg Children's Institute, a nod to Canon Studios, where many Iranian directors made their debuts, including Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami. year White ball Based on a screenplay by Panahi Kiarostami, a boy tries to recover a stuck banknote.

“Iran is a corner of the world that has interested me for a long time. “20 years ago, I went to study filmmaking, but it was very difficult,” says Rankin, who speaks, reads and writes Persian. When we met, he carried a bag on his shoulder with an image of the poet Forou Farrohzad, who made one of his favorite films. Look at the house (1962).

Universal languageShifting from funny to dreamy, it's certainly a tribute to Iranian cinema, but also to the cinemas of Quebec and Winnipeg (end credit song). These are the Eyes Guess Who).

“I was inspired by Quebec gray cinema for my only character back home. It's very Québécois. The absurd and surreal humor is very Winnipegger, and the Iranian metarealism is another language of film. It was the idea of ​​doing a mix between the three,” explains Matthew Rankin, who planned to go to Cannes to see Winnipegger Guy Maddin's new film. RumorWith Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander and Roy Dupuis.

A particularly funny sceneUniversal language The story takes place in a haunted office of the Quebec government, where a large portrait of François Lego adorns the wall and an employee constantly cries in the office. Daniel Fisheau stars as a senior civil servant who worries about what Matthew will say about his work experience elsewhere in Canada.

If you don't like it, I encourage you to be neutral, his boss advises him. “It was the most neutral experience of my life,” he replied. A jokeUniversal language I'm looking for the word … universal. It should captivate the Cannes crowd this weekend.

The costs of posting this report were paid by the Cannes Film Festival, of which it has no opinion.