Cannes 2022: Opening film Final Cut (Coupez!) Review-Entertainment News , Firstpost

Language: English

The 75th edition of Cannes Film Festival opened with French director Michel Hazanavicius’s Final Cut (Coupez!), his retelling of the much-loved blockbuster Japanese indie comedy One Cut of the Dead. Hazanavicius pulled out of Sundance earlier this year and brought the film to show in his home territory on the Croisette where his previous films The Artist, The Search, and Redoubtable made reliable appearances and received resounding reception.

Russia’s appropriation of the letter Z in light of the Ukrainian war for its propaganda and the latter’s appeal to drop Z from the title forced Hazanavicius to change the film’s title from the intended Z to Coupez! Understandably, the changes may have been too late to accommodate because the film’s title card is still emblazoned with Z. As the film rolled in, appearing right after the impassioned speech by the Ukrainian President Zelensky via video link at the opening ceremony, the title does have a jarring effect but could be counted as a result of logistical challenges and time constraints.

Opening nights have been known to bring surprises and as far as zombie comedies go, it’s been known to happen – Jim Jarmusch’s zany comedy The Dead Don’t Die with an ensemble cast rang the opening bells in 2019. It’s not hard to tell why One Cut of the Dead appealed to Hazanavicius whose career has seen more than a few remakes – it’s no frills yet unabashedly original and globally beloved so naturally, the question remains – was a remake entirely necessarily? But Hazanavicius convinces in part, layering the film with his touch and presenting a version that if not an upgrade from the original, features entertainingly imaginative tweaks.

A motely crew of actors and technicians working under a psychotic director are filming a low-budget live action zombie movie in an abandoned building. The director Higurashi, Romain Duris, is having an epic meltdown because even after thirty takes, the film’s lead, Chinatsu, played by Matilda Lutz cannot emote the way he wants her to. In the meanwhile, a production crew member walks out to relieve himself and returns zombie-bitten and after having his hand ripped off. The surviving crew members of three lead actors, along with a cameraman, are left to deal with the rest of the zombie-infested crew while the camera still rolls as a single-take film is recorded.

The first section of the film thus plays out as a confusingly faithful adaptation because all the French actors have Japanese names but when the second section unveils, the truth slowly dawns upon us. A struggling director, Romain Duris as Rémi, gets hired by a questionably wealthy Japanese woman Matsuda, played by Yoshiko Takehara who wants to remake the Japanese original in French. Matsuda who looks terrifying like a porcelain doll with fringes, yet goofy like a Japanese reality star, is so demanding that she wouldn’t even let Rémi change the names of characters.

The film trundles quite sluggishly through in the second section with Rémi, as a small fish director, fighting for approval from his rebellious teen daughter and juggling multiple potentially chaotic circumstances that predate the filming. The third section is where the action lies for it deglamorizes the movie making process and takes the viewer along on a joyride and dismantles the gore and sick of zombie filmmaking – all the while Rémi is running around like a headless chicken trying to get everything in order. It’s as much a behind the scenes as it is part infuriating, part inventive.

For all its dramatic achievement by the actors who have put in backbreaking work, Final Cut suffers from the lack of surprise element because of overexposure to the original. It has the look and feel of an amateur film but easily discernible, palpable lack of originality.

Everyone from Romain Duris as the lost in luck Rémi to Bérénice Bejo as the freakishly methodic actor Nadia to Grégory Gadebois as Philippe who couldn’t control his sick to the foul-mouthed Finnegan Oldfield as Raphaël and the scream queen Matilda Lutz as Ava and the buck-toothed Jean-Pascal Zadi as Fatih who draws in more laughs at his exasperated one-liners than anything in the movie, shines in it. Yet, one couldn’t help but empathize with Nadia when she tells Rémi: “What we are doing is fake. It feels like crap.”

For all these reasons, Final Cut may not appeal to international audience who are already introduced to the Japanese original. But for the French audience in the dark about One Cut of the Dead, the film is nonetheless a madcap entertainer that twists itself into knots initially and spends the rest of the running hour untangling itself – basically a slapstick filled laugh-riot that some might find enjoyable.

Rating: ***

Prathap Nair is an independent culture features writer based in Germany.

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