Cannes at Home: Love in the time of COVID

by Cláudio Alves Could Koji Fukada's THE REAL THING have been a Palme contender in 2020? The second day at Cannes came and went, and the race for festival gold is on. Not just the prizes chosen by Park Chan-woo’s jury, mind you. In a rare move by the programmers, the Main Competition opened with two films that are also up for the Queer Palm. They are Koji Fukada’s Nagi Notes and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s A Woman’s Life. Neither was effusively received, but there are pockets of praise, even love, here and there. The latter has been getting especially high praise for Léa Drucker’s performance. And yet, this Main Competition might mean even more to the Japanese auteur who was among those selected for the festival edition that never was in 2020. At the time, Fukada was included among the returning cineastes and would’ve likely experienced his first go at the Palme d’Or if not for the COVID lockdown. So, it only seems appropriate to consider his film that would’ve played at the…