At Cannes, Michel Franco’s ‘Chronic’ Looks Death in the Face
At Cannes, Michel Franco’s ‘Chronic’ looks Death in the Face – Death is something we’d all like to avoid. But director Michel Franco thinks a reluctance to look at the end of life is unhealthy.
The Mexican filmmaker’s Cannes Film Festival entry “Chronic” stars Tim Roth as a homecare nurse to the dying. It’s an unflinching film — no music, sparse dialogue — that plants the camera in bathrooms and bedrooms where Roth’s character, David, shares his patients’ most intimate moments. Many reviews of the film have included the word “challenging.”
Variety noted that the film asks “audiences to do the heavy lifting required to arrive at a meaningful emotional response.”
“Chronic” is Franco’s English-language debut, shot in Los Angeles with a mostly American cast. The director said working in the US film industry meant resisting the urge to supersize his small, simple film-making style.
