Cannes 2024: Marcello mio, the hymn to the seventh art by Christophe Honoré (review)
In the grip of an identity crisis, Chiara Mastroianni appropriates… that of her father! A hilarious comedy and a joyful hymn to the world of cinema.
Chiara Mastroianni plays Chiara Mastroianni. Catherine Deneuve, his mother; Melvil Poupaud and Benjamin Biolay, his exes and Nicole Garcia and Fabrice Luchini… the director and her partner in a future project, of which Chiara is testing. In the new Christophe Honoré, everything is true and yet nothing really is. Because very quickly, an unexpected element changes the cards.
Chiara, who we constantly – starting with Nicole Garcia in this audition who would have liked to see her play more Marcello and less Catherine – bring back to her parents, will decide to appropriate her father's identity. To become Marcello and impose it on an initially doubtful entourage before understanding that it is in no way a fad. From this starting point, Honoré deploys an irresistible comedy, of which the first two virtuoso scenes set the tone. Far from being a German pratice, the filmmaker signs a hymn to the seventh art, in what it can be poetic and dizzying in its way of erasing the boundaries between fiction and reality. Where while playing with the ghost of Marcello and his characters, he never loses track of what moves him: a declaration of friendship and admiration for Chiara Mastroianni (exceptional from start to finish but which stands as a serious candidate for the prize for… male interpretation!), including its Room 212 was a marker of the career and that he made his debut in the theater in The Sky of Nantes.
Chiara, of whom he closely embraces the emotion she has in embodying this deceased but unforgettable father. But it is because he never stops looking in front of him that this Marcello mio never drowns in nostalgia while drawing from it an energy of wonder that sets it ablaze.
Of Christophe Honoré. With Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Fabrice Luchini… Duration 2 hours. Released May 22, 2024
