Scorsese leaves the Cannes Film Festival with his new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon

American director Martin Scorsese returned Saturday to show off his skills as a master of crime drama, with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about a mysterious series of murders that rock the indigenous community of Oklahoma in the 1920s.

For this movie, which keeps you glued to your seat for three and a half hours, the 80-year-old veteran director enlisted two of his favorite actors, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Scorsese is a legend of American cinema and a qualified historian of the darkest part of the country: the mafia, the famous murders, the social or racial drama.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” deals with the unexpected oil boom on the Osage Indian Reservation, lost in a corner of Oklahoma in the early 1900s.

Overnight, the Osages became millionaires with oil concessions. Their women became the objects of greed of white men, willing to marry them by all means to keep the money.

Produced by Apple, the film will hit theaters in October (the 19th in Portugal), more than time to compete for the Oscars, but its format seems perfect for television, as if it were a miniseries (that’s what the critic from Variety magazine called) with potential Taking breaks in a dense story full of twists.

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Red carpet sensation

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Ernest Burckhardt, who marries an Aboriginal woman, Molly (Native actress Lily Gladstone), and is manipulated by his uncle, a wealthy businessman (Robert De Niro), in what The Hollywood Reporter called “one of the most outrageous roles of his career.” “).

Words like “beaten,” “triumphant,” and “masterpiece” were commented on by critics who managed to get their hands on a ticket to watch.

IndieWire says DiCaprio gives his “best ever performance”, while The Guardian gives it five stars for a “brilliant epic about America’s bloody rebirth”.

There were some notes to the contrary, with The Times calling it a “dark satire” and Little White Lies saying Scorsese “deprives the story of anything that might tarnish the lofty seriousness of the subject”.

Variety says it is a captivating film, but would be “devastated” if it were under an hour, and laments that no one asked the director to “control himself”. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the master of cinema expands his legacy with “a passionate film that honors victims and survivors alike.”

The presence of the trio of Scorsese, De Niro and DiCaprio again caused a sensation on the red carpet in Cannes, where other Hollywood stars passed, such as Kirsten Dunst (wife of Jesse Plemons, one of the actors in the film), and Salma Hayek. Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire.

Scorsese returned to Croisette, but this time out of competition: in 1976, he won the Palme d’Or with “Taxi Driver”; In 1986, he won the Best Directing Award for New York Outside the Clocks. In 1998, he was Chairman of the Festival Jury.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore

The Flower Moon Killers were shot on location. The argument was held up until the last day of filming, according to Scorsese, who wanted to “do the right thing” with the natives.

The film is part of the long-running list of titles, and is one of the trends in this edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

Among the 21 films competing for the Palme d’Or award, other films with a duration of more than two and a half hours are the Chinese “Youth (Spring)” (3 hours and 32 minutes), and the Turkish “About Dry Weeds” (3 hours and 17), and the French “Anatomy D”. une chute” (2:31 AM).

“May December,” also played by American Todd Haynes, had the difficult task of rivaling Apple’s massive production on the red carpet. For this, the star duo Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, the heroines of the film about the relationship of two actresses, were chosen.

Todd Haynes is the author of the original motion picture, in which he alternates fiction (“Dark Waters”) with biographies (“I’m Not There”, about Bob Dylan, played by various actors) and documentaries, such as the one about the band The Velvet Underground that She performed in Cannes two years ago.

In 2015, he also created a sensation in Cannes with “Carol”, about an impossible same-sex relationship, played by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

French-Senegalese Ramata Tolay Sy, 36, is fresh with her first film “Banel & Adama,” an accurate depiction of a young woman’s rebellion against an entire village in Senegal.