‘Scarlet’ Review: World War I Drama Folds Fact Into Fiction

thewrap.com:

Not quite a musical, sort of a folktale, and almost but not entirely a hardscrabble hunk of post-war realism before all of a sudden changing gears, “Scarlet” – which opened the 2022 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight sidebar on Wednesday – is a tricky project to pin down.

Of course, director Pietro Marcello wouldn’t have it any other way.Shooting in French for the first time, the Italian filmmaker made his name with documentaries before working found and historical footage into the world of make-believe with 2019’s “Martin Eden.” With this more ambitious (if more uneven) follow-up, Marcello continues at a similar pace, folding fact into fiction as he explores both the landscapes of rural Normandy in the aftermath of the First World War and the plight of the working poor, all through the crags of his leading man’s brow.That brow (and those crags) belongs to Raphael (Raphaël Thiéry), who we discover limping home from the front interspersed with historical footage of fellow soldiers doing the same.

A hard man with a soft heart and the features of a ragged John C. Reilly dressed up as the Golem of Prague, Raphael returns to his village to learn that his wife has died and left him to raise the daughter he never knew existed.

Once again, he reports for duty.Before shifting focus to daughter Juliette (played by a number of child actors and newcomer Juliette Jouan as a young adult), Marcello’s 16mm camera lingers on the lumbering veteran, focusing on his calloused hands, his fraught relationship with his fellow townsfolk and his painstaking work as a carpenter, giving the opening act an almost ethnographic feel.Somehow, this seems to be a trend among modern Italian directors.