#Lumière2018
by Serge Kaganski 

Posted on sunday, october 14

Lumière 2018 got off to an exhilarating start, like every year, with an electric ceremony - a spirited mix of red carpets crisscrossed by a river of cinema celebrities, a phenomenal video compilation presenting the main themes of the program, a master of ceremonies (Thierry Frémaux of course) who became a master in the art of putting everyone in a festive mood, and 5,000 festivalgoers, who, by their very presence, attested to the remarkable magnitude of the whole affair (imagine the same ceremony in a venue of ‘just’ 600 seats; it would immediately seem unimpressive).

The temperature of the Halle Tony Garnier rose considerably when the VIPs sauntered onto the red carpet, their images projected on the big screen, generating enthusiastic bursts of cheers for Javier Bardem, Guillermo Del Toro, Liv Ullmann, Vincent Lindon, Monica Bellucci, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claude Lelouch. While Frémaux showed that he had retained a couple of tips from showmen like Bruce Springsteen ("Hey, you way up there, louder, we can’t hear you!"), the video montages put the audience under their spell, with an uncanny virtuosity of editing and mixing, slicing and melding characters from various films, or laying down musical tracks to accompany other scenes, putting an original twist on cinematic cult scenes and creating completely new emotions. To watch this rapid-fire, savvy blend of fragments before seeing the films themselves is like enjoying a delectable plate of petit-fours before the main course. The cut and paste wizard, the master chef behind these choice morsels, is a genius named Thomas Valette, who largely deserves to be cited.

© Institut Lumière / Léa Rener

While Laurent Gerra had the audience in stitches with his delightful, spot-on imitations of Bertrand Tavernier, Johnny Hallyday or Jean-Luc Godard, Thierry Frémaux gave the floor to maestro Renzo Piano to present their "Cité Lumière" project, an XXL extension of the Institut, devoted to the memory of cinema (and architectural creation). It was also a clever way to put a little pressure on the political and institutional representatives present in the assembly to support funding the project. If ever the project comes to fruition, it will be grandiose.

Less padded derrières and glutes started to suffer after about two hours on the stiff wooden chairs of Tony Garnier, when “Itinerary of a Spoiled Child” was launched by Claude Lelouch. For me, it was a good choice; I had never seen it… Lelouch has a gift of pulling us in with the most far-fetched, hocus-pocus stories. Let's take the premise of the movie: one dejected day, an industrialist specializing in urban cleaning (a manufacturer of poo-mobiles, basically) leaves everything behind (his wife, his kids, his company...), then pretends to be dead and gets stuck deep in the heart of Africa.

He finally comes back, but first indirectly, through a double-puppet controled remotely, in a kind of great role-playing game for real. Present this idea to any sane person, and the response would be, "Nope, not possible." But if it can become possible, it’s because Lelouch makes great use of his freedom as an artist and takes the most bizarre stories higher with his appetite for and joy of filming. Belmondo gives a strong performance, but in my opinion, the film’s real ace is Richard Anconina, who stupefies us by his ingenuousness, his sweetness, his comic intuition and his art of communicating with a simple movement of the eyelid. A film for all moviegoers, it was perfect for launching a popular festival.

© Institut Lumière / Léa Rener

After the screening, Maelle Arnaud (director of programming at the Institut Lumière and of the festival) told us that the 5,000 tickets of this opening ceremony had been sold in 48 hours (with the opening film not yet chosen and the headliner unannounced), and that 80,000 festival tickets have already been snapped up, although the festival has barely begun and the program is relatively narrow in scope (Richard Thorpe, Henri Decoin and Muriel Box are not exactly household names). What a crowning and comforting success, gained through the noble ambition of cinematographic heritage. This year’s opening night was thus emblematic of the greatest success of the Lumière festival: its capacity to unite fans of “old” classic films and all moviegoers.