Germany
After several years of absence, of little-seen films not always appreciated by the critics (Les Beaux Jours d’Aranjuez in 2016, Submergence in 2017), the year 2023 seems to herald the return of the director of Paris, Texas.
First, there was the Cannes Film Festival. This year, the filmmaker presented two films, a rare occurrence. The first was a documentary on his compatriot and contemporary, the visual artist Anselm Kiefer. After the highly successful Pina, dedicated to choreographer Pina Bausch in 2011, here’s Anselm. Shot once again in 3D, this film, scheduled for release in France on October 18, cleverly uses the cinematic image to tell the story of another art form. A bird’s-eye panorama reveals a studio in the Paris suburbs. There are paintings against every wall, and it’s hard to estimate the size of the space until the artist himself enters, pushing a work and then riding a bike, tiny in the face of these monumental paintings. What kind of artist needs a bicycle to get around his studio? The same one who, later in the film, needs an electric crane to write “L’insoutenable légèreté de l’être” in English on a wall: Anselm Kiefer. And who better to observe him with respect, grandeur and humour than Wim Wenders?
On the fiction front, Perfect Days, which won the Cannes Best Actor Award for its lead actor, Japanese Koji Yakusho, will be released on November 29. With tenderness and melancholy, Wim Wenders recounts the daily life of a Tokyo toilet cleaner. Never pessimistic, Perfect Days is a great film of profound humanity, punctuated by Lou Reed’s famous ballad.
While he continues to be a very active filmmaker, at 77 Wim Wenders is also celebrated as never before. First there’s an exhibition at the Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles, based on Polaroids used during the filming of L’Ami Américain (1977). It features some very fine portraits of Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz. Then, next October, he will be awarded the Prix Lumière at the eponymous Festival, celebrating “a travelling filmmaker, a polymorphous virtuoso and visionary who has never stopped reinventing himself and has had a thousand lives”. Finally, as a link between this grandiose past and this promising future, Lubna Playoust’s Chambre 999 will be released in cinemas on October 25th. This is a remake of the German director’s classic, Chambre 666. In 1982, during the Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders rented a suite at the Martinez to interview numerous filmmakers about the future of cinema. Then as now, in the age of television and platforms, some are worried, not very confident about the future. Whatever the case, for Wim Wenders, we want to believe.
Anselm (Le Bruit du temps)
In cinemas october 18
Perfect Days
In cinemas november 29
instagram.com/wimwendersfoundation
Pierre Charpilloz