Cannes 2018 Dispatch #2: Donbass, Petra
Speaking of soap operas: Jaime Rosales follows Farhadi’s plunge into the vernacular of Spanish culebrones with a complementary appropriation of melodrama in Petra, an achronological chronicle of one woman’s search for truth, history and her own identity. Starring Bárbara Lennie (who, funny enough, also appears in a significant supporting role in Everybody Knows), the movie intrigues from the outset, playfully opening with a title card announcing Chapter II, along with a concise summary of the key narrative information this chapter will provide (“How Petra enters Jaume’s world”), a strategy that each subsequent chapter also employs. At his characteristically unhurried tempo, […]
by Blake Williams on May 11, 2018
