Volume 25 Issue 1 - September 2019

Seamless Soundtracks/Notably Musical
Antonio Banderas won Best Actor at Cannes this year for his role as
a film director who reflects on the choices he’s made as his life comes
crashing down around him in Pedro Almodóvar’s warmly received
semi-autobiographical fable, Pain and Glory. Composer Alberto
Iglesias, who has scored every Almodóvar film since The Flower of My
Secret (1995), won the Cannes Soundtrack Award for his score which
has been described as intense, emotional, highly inspired and moving,
with echoes of impressionism imbued with melancholy.
Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian last May of Céline
Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the film that would ultimately
win Cannes’ Best Scenario Prize: “I was on the edge of my seat.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire has something of Alfred Hitchcock –
actually two specific Hitchcocks: Rebecca, with a young woman
arriving at a mysterious house, haunted by the past, and also
Hitchcock’s Vertigo, with its all-important male gaze, [which]
Sciamma flips to a female gaze.” Sciamma’s film takes place in 1770,
so Vivaldi for one plays a part in the score. But Para One (Jean-
Baptiste de Laubier), who has worked on each of Sciamma’s films
beginning with Water Lilies, contributed a poignant, indelible
moment of great emotional power heard at the 78-minute mark. In
a recent interview he said that they thought a lot about the rhythms
and dances of 18th-century music, specifically in Brittany, the film’s
setting. But they also talked about Ligeti and the modernity of the
film. “So [Sciamma] went back to listen to Ligeti for three days and
came back with a frantic pace; it was a great inspiration. We found
the tempo.”
Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s haunting debut feature,
Atlantics, won Cannes’ Grand Prize for the story of marginalized
young lovers in Senegal desperately seeking a better life. Cinezik
called Berlin-based electronic-music artist Fatima Al Qadiri’s
score “captivating” and published part of a recent interview with
the composer. “The most important [thing] in my music is the
melody. This is my obsession. The repetition of melodic lines in
my music gives the feeling of a meditation . . . the director wanted
minimalism, with very little musical information, not to overwhelm
the characters.”
A symbiotic relationship between two families, one rich, the other
poor, is at the root of Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s socially conscious
thriller that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. Called
ingenious and unpredictable and a twist-laden black comedy, its
musical component by Jung Jae-il consists mostly of a solo piano
melody playing against cello, guitars and orchestral strings with
an original song with lyrics by the filmmaker performed by Choi
Woo-shik, an actor in the film.
Bradley Warren wrote in The Playlist about Bacurau, the film
that shared the Cannes Jury Prize with Les Misérables: “For his third
feature film, Brazilian filmmaker Kleiber Mendonça Filho splits
directorial duties with Juliano Dornelles, the production designer
on his first two features. It’s a logical progression for a body of work
known for rich soundscapes and vivid images, but it’s also a game
changer for his style. … Bacurau is the duo’s most political work yet
... it’s also their most playful effort to date. ... Music may not be as
foundational to the plot of Bacurau as was the case with Aquarius,
but its use still manages to stir the soul.” Mendonça Filho, quoted in
the film’s presskit, described their approach: “The greatest challenge
for the music in the movie is knowing when to shut up, which often
happens with me. When you embrace the genre with all its narrative
twists and turns, it’s better to have music. And when it all comes
together, it’s very beautiful.”
Ladj Ly’s Cannes Jury Prize–winning debut feature, Les Misérables,
ingeniously weaves the thematic threads of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece into
an explosive contemporary narrative spotlighting France as a place of seismic
political and social change. According to cinezik.org, the score by Canadian
rock band Pink Noise (founded by Toronto-based Mark Sauner) is made up
of consistent, unchangeable, undifferentiated electronic tablecloths that serve
to maintain the film’s tension.
Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, according to Justin Chang of the LA
Times, tells the story of an Austrian peasant farmer who was imprisoned and
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