Unless you were lucky enough to catch it on the 2019 festival circuit, the pandemic unfortunately led to most viewers seeing Pietro Marcello’s stunning drama Martin Eden at home. Thankfully his next feature, the gorgeous fable Scarlet (aka L’Envol), will be primed for theatrical viewing. The Cannes selection will get a U.S. release from Kino Lorber on June 9. An adaptation of Scarlet Sails by Alexander Grin, the tale of a woman’s family and romantic journey stars Juliette Jouan, Raphaël Thierry, Louis Garrel, Noémie Lvovsky, Ernst Umhauer, François Négret, and Yolande Moreau.
As David Katz said in his review, “In his previous film Martin Eden, and now with Scarlet, Pietro Marcello has found a novel way to depict artistic striving, closely tying it with the concept of labor. It’s also something that runs through Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, about the poetry-penning bus driver of the same name: both filmmakers have helped demystify our idea of the artist as a potential ‘great man of history’ and the deification often accorded them. The would-be literary maven of Martin Eden and two artist-craftsmen of Scarlet are engaged instead in a noble struggle, a bit like the eternal workers’ struggle of Marcello’s other chief interest: that of leftist political thought.”
Watch the preview below: