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This review was originally published on May 23, 2024 out of the Cannes Film Festival.
We are recirculating it now thatUniversal Languageis in theaters.
At Cannes, Directors Fortnight and Critics Week are the two best known of these.
And some of these are extraordinary movies.
Hell, it was whereMean Streets(1973) andAguirre, the Wrath of God(1972) played.
This is Winnipeg, and these are ordinary Canadian kids.
But inUniversal Languages slightly tilted version of the world, Winnipeg and Iran have melded.
They sing Persian songs.
They drink their tea by putting a sugar cube in their mouth first.
(This turns out, eventually, to be true.)
A woman works as a lacrimologist at a local cemetery, offering Kleenex to the mourners.
I realize this all sounds aggressively hyperreferential and like ironic har-har.
Rankins mastery of tone throughout prevents any of these disparate elements from sticking out.
The different stories ultimately connect in surprising ways.
As Matthew returns home, he finds an unfamiliar new family living in his old childhood house.
In Rankins short, Rankin himself plays an impostor posing as the not-so-famous Winnipeg filmmaker Matthew Rankin.
