CANNES OPENER “FINAL CUT” (COUPEZ!) IS BLOODY FUNNY

Michel Hazanavicius’s Final Cut is arguably the funniest, bloodiest opening film at the Cannes film festival since, well, ever. Not that there have been many comedies, let alone, zomby comedies, that have opened the prestigious cinema soirée in the past. On the other hand, movies about the making of movies have frequently made their international debut on the screen of Cannes’ Grand Theátre Lumiére. However, this one takes that genre one step further. It’s a movie about the making of a movie about the making of a movie.  For the first half-hour or so, the audience is subjected to a shlocky, harebrained flick about how the cast and crew of a remake of a Japanese zombie movie titled Z become infected with a mysterious force that transforms them into the living-dead killers they are portraying. No American International Pictures monster B-movie of the ’50s ever doused its actors with so much fake blood or subjected its audience to such clunky dialog. And it’s a relief when the closing credits begin rolling mercifully at what seems like about an hour later. But wait, it really has been only a half hour. And as those credits roll, the words “Three Months Earlier” appear on the screen, and the audience is treated to the rollicking story of how the movie came about and how it was filmed.  In the London Telegraph, film critic Robbie Collin observed that, like the Japanese original, Final Cut “is a film about the beauty of blood-sweat-and-tears collaboration, and a heartening paean to the value even slightly shoddy art can have to its creators.” The Wrap‘s Steve Pond commented that Hazanavicius “somehow manages to fling body parts and bodily excretions at the audience for almost two hours, and yet you leave feeling as if you’ve seen a feel-good movie.” Similarly, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond concluded, “If Cannes was looking for a feel-good, highly entertaining comedy to kick things off in coming fully back to normal after a devastating couple of pandemic-affected years, it has found it in Final Cut.”