“Hope,” a wildly ambitious blockbuster about a hopeful alien invasion of a South Korean mountain town, woke the Cannes Film Festival to six minutes of applause on Sunday night.
Directed by Na Hong-jin, this big-budget epic combines a gritty survival story with an original sci-fi mythology, and no one knew what to expect from this title, which was distributed domestically through Neon.
Judging by the audience reaction at its Grand Palais premiere, it seemed to tick a little bit of everything. The film’s first 40 minutes feel like a continuous cut of increasingly bloody action, with the climax leveling an entire town. A foul-mouthed police officer and a group of mountain folk try to deal with a mysterious creature that has torn their house to shreds.
As the mystery unfolds, an alien race with unclear intentions emerges. The film features perhaps one of the wildest moments Pare has ever seen. It depicts an old man encountering an alien while defecating in the forest. He explained to the officers the measures he was taking to avoid diarrhea, trying to make no noise on either side. More crazy? The audience loved the movie, wearing black tie and haute couture and laughing out loud as they sat inside the theater, which has been described as a “movie palace.”
“Hope,” starring Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Hoyoung Chung, as well as Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Taylor Russell, and Cameron Britton, is director Hong-jin’s fourth film to bow at the Cannes Film Festival, but his first in competition.
Even before the Cannes Film Festival, Hope had emerged as one of the most talked-about films to be screened at the festival. This was underlined when Neon, who has now won six consecutive Palme d’Ors, acquired film rights in North America, the UK and Australia. A few days later, Mubi raided the film in multiple territories, including Latin America, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Turkey.
Hong-jin first came to Cannes in 2008 with “The Chaser,” which premiered out of competition. He returned in 2011 with The Murderer (The Yellow Sea), which was entered in the Un Certain Regard category, and again in 2016 with Goksung, which was screened out of competition. Among the cast members, Fassbender, Vikander, and Jung-min have participated in film festivals many times (Fassbender first appeared in the blockbuster “The Hunger” in 2008), while this will be the first film for Ho-young, Russell, and Britton. In the official selection.
