Another quintessential Cannes experience is when the lights go down, and a director who thinks he knows what he’s getting takes a complete left turn. It happened to me while watching Arthur Harari’s “The unknown.” This is Harari’s first competitive feature as a director. His “Onoda”, the story of a Japanese soldier who spent decades living in the Philippine jungle, refused to recognize that World War II is over, opened the category of Un Certain Regard in 2021, and wrote the competition entries “Sibyl” (2019) and “Anatomy of Fall” which won the Palme (2023) with his partner Justin Triet, director.
But there’s none of those movies like the moody leaps into episodic identities that work in “The Unknown.” Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” is an obvious influence, and there may be shades of Roman Polanski’s “The Tenant,” too.
The source is actually a graphic novel, “The Case of David Zimmerman,” which Harari wrote with Lucas Harari, his brother. Niels Schneider plays David, a frustrated, thin, slightly depressed photographer who goes through life with a ghostly presence and a small Bible skull. We learn that his family is worried about him. At the party, he makes eye contact with Eva (Léa Seydoux); Harari closes her eyes-and happily, they both rush to the basement to have sex, as if possessed by anger. The love-making seems very romantic to Eva, who walks in a daze and has to be helped into a taxi. He returns to David’s place and, after a confused self-examination, realizes that he is David—in Eve’s body.
“The Unknown” doesn’t shy away from the humor found in its transsexual conceit. Seydoux’s character searches the Internet for “changing bodies” and “an experimental new drug.” After a short nap, he finds Schneider (whose body was then taken over by a third character). The best joke allows them to write a message board post looking for others in their situation—”to make a documentary.”
But “Unknown” is more serious, even serious (Andrea Poggio’s piano score has shades of both ’70s thrillers and “Eyes Wide Shut”) in terms of exploring the psychological impact of alienation, both from a physical and cultural perspective. In one scene, the occupants of Schneider’s and Seydoux’s bodies have sex again, although each person’s mind is used for different gender instruments. Throughout the film, Seydoux, who starred in the festival’s “Gentle Monster” last week, is excellent at elevating the constant state of shock.
Although the film presents some of the problems of the detective image, Harari is not interested in explaining the body modification. The film abandons any genre it has been following in favor of existential questions. The latter part, of course, straddles the line between serious and pretentious. But Harari did something few directors managed to do at Cannes this year: He pulled off a surprise.
Jeanne Herry, the screenwriter-actress director whose credits include the Corsica-set “The Kingdom,” which screened at Un Certain Regard two years ago, is also making her directorial debut this year. His film is called “Garance” in France but “Another Day” in other places. Why would anyone want an international title that people can remember?
Garance (Adèle Exarchopoulos) works in a theater company and is reliably the center of chaos: She verbally abuses, casually drops big news (“But, I’m pregnant,” she tells a man she’s been seeing. “On Thursday’s scheduled abortion”), and has an obvious habit of being found in the bathroom.
Drunkenness turns out to be the root of many of Garance’s problems. His team sees this and chases him away, urging him to get help. Garance takes on the job of copying but, because of his addiction, he lacks the precision required for the job. He begins a relationship with a woman, Pauline (Sara Giraudeau), who cannot keep up with his drinking.
Perhaps in the screenplay’s shameless attempt to give Garance some motivation to get sober, Garance’s sister (Mathilde Roehrich) receives a leukemia diagnosis six months into her pregnancy. He insists that Garance needs to be clean in order to be there for his nephew.
It’s when “Another Day” goes from a character study to a full-on rescue drama that it goes from pointless to mildly offensive. Of course being drunk from the beginning of more than a dozen drinks a day is not as easy as it is made to look at here. The curtain line, which is meant to lift, is felt prematurely.
