Cannes of Worms Opens at Closing of Film Fest as Biggest Winner Launches Tirade Against President Macron

You can run from sinking popularity in the polls, but you can’t hide. In case there was any doubt about that, the director of the winning film at Cannes cleared it up with a blunt message for President Macron.In her acceptance speech for the Palme d’Or for her courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall,” Justine Triet spared the niceties, saying that this year France “suffered from historic and unanimous protests over the reform of the pension system” that that were “denied and repressed in a shocking way.”And she said it to thunderous applause.But Ms. Triet did not stop there, telling her glamorous in-person audience and much larger global audience Saturday night that Mr. Macron’s “pattern of increasingly unrestrained and dominating power is erupting in several areas,” but that “the social sphere” is where it has been the most “shocking.”Earlier this spring, France was wracked by weeks of strikes and protests against Mr. Macron’s deeply unpopular pension reforms, which saw the official age of retirement rise from 62 to 64. Without a parliamentary majority, Mr. Macron controversially resorted to an obscure legal procedure to ram the legislation through. The French Conseil d’État, or constitutional council, rejected efforts to hold a referendum and was widely seen as rubber-stamping the reform. While not widely reported outside of France, President Macron was accused of having an overly heavy police presence at many of the protests that erupted at Paris and cities throughout France. According to some French media reports, police surveillance drones were used for the first time in an effort to keep tabs on protesters’ movements. All that is seen by many as a heavy-handed approach to dissent in France, a republic that is philosophically allergic to a concentration of power and that prides itself on its status as the cradle of European political revolution. Mr. Macron has mainly belittled the critics of his reforms as “bangers of pots and pans” — and that does little to dispel perceptions of authoritarian drift.Ms. Triet also took aim at what she perceives to be Mr. Macron’s approach to cultural matters too, saying that “the commercialization of culture this neoliberal government supports is in the process of breaking France’s cultural exception.”Stinging criticism of Mr. Macron at the Festival de Cannes, which is without question the most high-profile international French cultural happening of the year, will do nothing to help the 45-year-old politician’s sagging popularity. On Sunday, the French newspaper Journal de Dimanche reported that 77 percent of French people in the key electoral demographic of ages 50 to 64 are unhappy with the president — the head of the polling agency described Mr. Macron’s relationship with a majority of French as “poisoned.” Only 28 percent of those polled had a positive opinion of Mr. Macron. The government is now clearly on the defensive. The prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, who politically and otherwise is almost a carbon copy of Elizabeth Warren, is in a sense already admitting defeat. In an French radio interview on Sunday, Ms. Borne admitted that she could foresee a “possible” victory of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the next election cycle in 2027. But she tempered that by lambasting Ms. Le Pen’s right-leaning party as “absolutely heir to Pétain.” Philippe Pétain, of course, was the disgraced head of the Vichy regime that collaborated with the Nazis from 1940 to 1944 during World War II. Ms. Borne’s were fighting words by any measure, but also a slightly desperate bid to clip Ms. Le Pen’s wings as her party’s standing rises in the polls. Unlike its more ideologically-driven predecessor, the National Front, the National Rally under Ms. Le Pen’s stewardship has moved more toward the center-right and championed the working class, with which Mr. Macron seems perennially out of touch.Now that Ms. Borne has thrown a taboo gauntlet — possibly at Mr. Macron’s bidding — Ms. Le Pen will have no choice but to respond. The coming week in France promises a lot more drama than the red carpet at Cannes. In the meantime, some French officials were caught on the backfoot by the verbal jousting as the festival came to a close. Mr. Macron’s culture minister — because of course France has one of those — Rima Abdul Malak, said Ms. Triet’s speech left her “flabbergasted.” She also said that her movie “would not have seen the light of day without our French film financing model, which allows for a diversity that is unique in the world. Let’s not forget that.”But Ms. Malak said that on Twitter, a platform which does not, as some have observed, pack quite the global punch as good old-fashioned television. Some other Cannes notes: Indiana Jones tried to steal the show, but despite the whips and some gorgeous scenery was no match for the momentous “Killers of the Flower Moon.” If you are going to sit still during a drama with a three-hour-and-26-minute run time, it takes a director like Martin Scorsese to make it fly by. On the other side of the spectrum, Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life” clocked in at a lean 31 minutes. “I was not sure that I’d make a Western in my life but at least I made a short,” Mr. Almodóvar, the director of such contemporary classics as “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” told a reporter at Cannes.The Spanish director and longtime darling of just about everybody at Cannes, may be on to something. A half-hour of watching Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal spar as two aging gay cowboys is probably more than enough for most. Ticking that box leaves more time for other entertainment, such as watching Marine Le Pen make Emmanuel Macron squirm like a frog.

Cannes of Worms Opens at Closing of Film Fest as Biggest Winner Launches Tirade Against President Macron

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