A roller coaster race with peaks and depths: Elvisa biography film brought by the revelation Austin Butler, in the title role, and Tom Hanks, who plays his manager, was shown Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival.
As in an amusement park, the viewer does not see the 2 h 39 pass of the feature film by Australian Baz Luhrmann, to whom we owe red Mill at Gatsby is wonderful.
The tangled editing and the explosion of colors, the filmmaker’s signatures, are disturbed in the first scenes, before the super-fast rhythm makes its sense. The entertainment industry is a washing machine and the interpreter of Love me ended in custody, died at age 42 in 1977.
American Austin Butler, 30, is brilliant to face the challenge of incorporating Hari for two decades. In a sacred performance: his voice is what we hear in the sequences in which Presley sings.
The Californian, also a model, has appeared in Disney series or even in theaters at Once upon a time in … Hollywood (Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood) by Quentin Tarantino, was impressive at reproducing concerts in the 1970s in Las Vegas.
Just compare to Elvis: That’s right, a documentary made that year by American Denis Sanders. Presley was 35 years old then and he was in the umpteenth relaunch of his career, successful this time. He has only seven years left but is still in good condition, far from obesity, his face swollen from the influence of alcohol and drugs.
Since the dazzling trajectory of the musician from Mississippi is not in any way linear, where the biographical film is well tracked, the second blockbuster announced at Cannes out of competition after Top Gun: Maverick with Tom Cruise.
Born for the stage
The beginning of Elvis Presley’s career was like a fairy tale when Colonel Parker, a circus manager who manages country stars, saw this boy. white man singing like a black man, as depicted in the film. The impresario relies on the born stage beast that puts viewers in a trance, before the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.
Tom Hanks, composed, aging his voice, artificially weighed down by Colonel Parker’s pachydermic silhouette, delivers an impressive performance. He is great as a manipulator for whom show must proceed at all costs (“the show must continue”) And the ark must be filled, and who will offer the best and the worst to his son.
Austin Butler shone as a young Elvis in his early successes, filled his swinging hip in puritan America in the 1950s and quickly saw his illusions shattered by a cynical music industry.
Episodes unknown to the general public are well exploited in the biographical film. Forced to sing with a dog on a TV show, Parker’s bad idea, Elvis paid him off by appearing wearing black leather for a special Christmas show, away from snowman sweaters.
The film isn’t free of flaws – the scenes of Elvis as a child discovering black American music are too intense – but nothing hides a life in the whirlwind of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.
Elvisby Baz Luhrmann, will be released on June 24 in theaters in Canada.
Source: Radio-Canada
