CANNES 2024 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES 2024 - first overview.
SOURCE (https://variety.com/2024/film/global/cannes-film-festival-2024-lineup-1235966528/).
The 77th edition runs May 15-25, 2024
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[Excerpt from the VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/global/cannes-film-festival-2024-lineup-1235966528/) intro:].
In what looks to be another robust year in the making, the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will bring together several iconic filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola with “Megalopolis” starring Adam Driver, George Miller with “Furiosa” starring Anya Taylor-Joy, as well as George Lucas who will be feted with an honorary Palme d’Or. Kevin Costner will also be on hand with the first installment of his Western epic “Horizon, an American Saga.”

Some of the high-profile films in the pipeline for this year’s competition include Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” a stylized three-part story set in the present that reunites the “Poor Things” helmer with Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe; Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” with Richard Gere, based on a novel by the late Russell Banks (“Affliction”); Jacques Audiard’s musical melodrama “Emilia Perez” starring Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez; Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” with Gary Oldman; and David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds” starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger. There’s also Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” a female-powered horror film starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley from Universal Pictures and Working Title Films.

Beyond the major studio titles, one of the features attracting the most attention on the Croisette could be Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” which sees Sebastian Stan take on the role of a Donald Trump in a biopic examining his time as real estate businessman in the 1970s and ’80s. Outside of competition, Irish director Lorcan Finnegan leaps from Critics’ Week (where he screened “Vivarium” in 2019) to official selection with the midnight movie “The Surfer,” featuring Nicolas Cage in the title role.

International movies slated for Cannes’ competition include Karim Aïnouz’s “Motel Destino”; Jia Zhang-Ke’s “Caught by the Tides”; Magnus von Horn’s “The Girl With the Needle” and Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov: The Ballad.”

More will be added to the Competition list, festival director Thierry Frémaux says.

As previously announced, Greta Gerwig will head the Competition Jury. Xavier Dolan will head the Un Certain Regard one.

[Chris Knipp]

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The whole Cannes 2024 lineup

SOURCE (https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/press/press-releases/the-films-of-the-official-selection-2024/)

SEE "THE OSCAR EXPERT" INTROS TO SOME OF THE MAIN FILMS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xovi6XAoJM)


OPENING FILM

LE DEUXIÈME ACTE (THE SECOND ACT) by Quentin DUPIEUX – Out of Competition

COMPETITION

THE APPRENTICE by Ali ABBASI
MOTEL DESTINO by Karim AÏNOUZ
BIRD by Andrea ARNOLD
EMILIA PEREZ by Jacques AUDIARD
ANORA by Sean BAKER
MEGALOPOLIS by Francis Ford COPPOLA
THE SHROUDS by David CRONENBERG
THE SUBSTANCE by Coralie FARGEAT
GRAND TOUR by Miguel GOMES
MARCELLO MIO by Christophe HONORÉ
FENG LIU YI DAI (CAUGHT BY THE TIDES) by JIA Zhang-Ke
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT by Payal KAPADIA
KINDS OF KINDNESS by Yórgos LÁNTHIMOS
L’AMOUR OUF by Gilles LELLOUCHE
DIAMANT BRUT (WILD DIAMOND) by Agathe RIEDINGER | 1er film
OH CANADA by Paul SCHRADER
LIMONOV – THE BALLAD by Kirill SEREBRENNIKOV
PARTHENOPE by Paolo SORRENTINO
PIGEN MED NÅLEN (THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE) by Magnus VON HORN

UN CERTAIN REGARD

NORAH by Tawfik ALZAIDI | 1st film
THE SHAMELESS by Konstantin BOJANOV
LE ROYAUME by Julien COLONNA | 1st film
VINGT DIEUX by Louise COURVOISIER | 1st film
LE PROCÈS DU CHIEN (DOG ON TRIAL) by Laetitia DOSCH | 1st film
GOU ZHEN by GUAN Hu (BLACK DOG)
THE VILLAGE NEXT TO PARADISE by Mo HARAWE | 1st film
SEPTEMBER SAYS by Ariane LABED | 1st film
L’HISTOIRE DE SOULEYMANE by Boris LOJKINE
THE DAMNED by Roberto MINERVINI
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL by Rungano NYONI
BOKU NO OHISAMA (MY SUNSHINE) by Hiroshi OKUYAMA
SANTOSH by Sandhya SURI
VIET AND NAM by TRUONG Minh Quý
ARMAND by Halfdan ULLMANN TØNDEL | 1st film

OUT OF COMPETITION

SHE’S GOT NO NAME by CHAN Peter Ho-Sun
HORIZON, AN AMERICAN SAGA by Kevin COSTNER
RUMOURS by Evan JOHNSON, Galen JOHNSON, Guy MADDIN
FURIOSA : A MAD MAX SAGA by George MILLER

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

TWILIGHT OF THE WARRIOR WALLED IN by Soi CHEANG
THE SURFER by Lorcan FINNEGAN
LES FEMMES AU BALCON (THE BALCONETTES) by Noémie MERLANT
I, THE EXECUTIONER by RYOO Seung Wan

CANNES PREMIERE

EVERYBODY LOVES TOUDA by Nabil AYOUCH
C’EST PAS MOI by Leos CARAX
EN FANFARE (THE MATCHING BANG) by Emmanuel COURCOL
MISÉRICORDE by Alain GUIRAUDIE
LE ROMAN DE JIM by Arnaud LARRIEU and Jean-Marie LARRIEU
RENDEZ-VOUS AVEC POL POT by Rithy PANH

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

LE FIL by Daniel AUTEUIL
ERNEST COLE, LOST AND FOUND by Raoul PECK
THE INVASION by Sergei LOZNITSA
APPRENDRE by Claire SIMON
LA BELLE DE GAZA by Yolande ZAUBERMAN

[Chris Knipp]

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The 2024 Directors’ Fortnight lineup

[FEATURES]
THIS LIFE OF MINE by Sophie Fillières Opening Film
IN HIS OWN IMAGE by Thierry de Peretti
CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT by Tyler Taormina
DESERT OF NAMBIA by Yôko Yamanaka
EAST OF NOON by Hala Elkoussy
EAT THE NIGHT by Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel
EPHUS by Carson Lund
GAZER by Ryan J. Sloan
GHOST CAT ANZU by Yôko Kuno & Nobuhiro Yamashita
GOOD ONE by India Donaldson
MONGREL by Chiang Wei Liang & You Qiao Yin
VISITING HOURS by Patricia Mazuy
SAVANNA AND THE MOUNTAIN by Paulo Carneiro (Portugal)
SISTER MIDNIGHT by Karan Kandhari
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED by Hernán Rosselli
THE FALLING SKY by Eryk Rocha & Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
THE HYPERBOREANS by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña
TO A LAND UNKNOWN by Mahdi Fleifel
THE OTHER WAY AROUND by Jonás Trueba (Spain)
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE by Matthew Rankin
PLASTIC GUNS by Jean-Christophe Meurisse [Closing Film] http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20qrs.jpg The old symbol for the series used the word "réalizateurs" for directors; the new image for this year uses the word "cinéastes".
The 2024 Cannes Film Festival runs May 14-25.
The Directors’ Fortnight creative director Julien Rejl announced the program on Tuesday. (Directors’ Fortnight, or Quinzaine des Cinéastes, is the big independent sidebar that presents 'adventurous' works simultaneously with Cannes.)

The 21 Directors' Fortnight feature selections come from 14 different countries including four American films (Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer and India Donaldson’s Good One). There are five French films, two Japanese, one Palestinian, and films from Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Chile (eight films from the Americas). There will be a special screening of Chantal Akerman’s Histoires d’Amérique: Food, Family and Philosophy.

[Chris Knipp]

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Milo Machado-Graner in SPECTATEURS by Arnaud Desplechin

Cannes 2024: newly added films

SOURCE (https://variety.com/2024/film/global/cannes-film-festival-michel-hazanavicius-mohammad-rasoulof-competition-lineup-1235977837/)


CANNES COMPETITION AND OTHER ADDITIONS.

The Festival de Cannes has added over a dozen titles to the Festival including three to the Competition roster. The latter include Michel Hazanavincius' animated feature THE MOST PRECIOUS OF CARGOES and Mohammad Rasoulof's THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG. Hazanavincius' is the first animated feature in Cannes Competition since Ari Folman's 2008 WALTZ WITH BASHIR. It is adopted from Jean-Claude Grumberg's bestselling novel about the Holocaust and WWII. Score by Alexandre Desplat. It will release in France Nov. 20. Voiced by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant with Grégory Gadebois and Dominique Blanc.

Mohammad Rasouloof has previously presented MANUSCRIPTS DON'T BURN and A MAN OF INTEGRITY in Un Certain Regard and his last film, THERE IS NO EVIL (2020), won the Golden Bear in the Berlinale, when he was barred from attending by the Iranian government, which has withdrawn the filmmaker's passport and repeatedly detained him in prison.

To Cannes Premiere has been added MARIA by Jessica Palud, a biopic about Maria Schneider based on the book by the subject's cousin Vanessa Schneider, about the tragic life of the actress who starred opposite Marlon Brando in Bernardo Bertolucci’s LAST TANGO IN PARIS. It costars HAPPENING star Anamaria Vartolomei with Matt Dillon as Brando, also including Alain Attal.

International films joining the Special Screenings lineup include Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye’s untitled documentary feature set against the backdrop of the pandemic; Arnaud Desplechin’s feature SPECTATEURS depicting the filmmaker's youth with ANATOMY OF A FALL child actor Milo Machado-Graner and Mathieu Amalric as his alter ego; and Oliver Stone’s LULA, about Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Added to Un Certain Regard is actress Céline Salette’s directorial debut NIKI, another biopic, about the French-American artist Niki de Saint-Phalle, who is played by Charlotte Le Bon.

Full list of the Cannes additions:

Un Certain Regard
WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS by Rúnar Rúnarsson
NIKI by Céline Sallette
FLOW by Gints Zilbalodis

Cannes Premiere
VIVRE, MORIR, RENAITRE by Gaël Morel
MARIA by Jessica Palud

Special Screenings
SPECTATEURS by Arnaud Desplechin
NASTY by Tudor Giurgiu
LULA by Oliver Stone
AN UNFINISHED FILM by Lou Ye

Out of Competition
LE COMTE DE MONTE-CRISTO by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte

Competition
THE MOST PRECIOUS OF CARGOES by Michel Hazanavicius
TROIS KILOMMETRES JUSQU'A LA FIN DU MONDE by jusqu`A Emanuel Parvu
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG by Mohammad Rasoulof

[Chris Knipp]

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Tsui Hark's classic 1984 comedy SHANGHAI BLUES to be part of this year's Cannes Classics


Hong Kong – April 23, 2024 [From the press release.] – A restored 4K version of Tsui Hark’s SHANGHAI BLUES (1984) will be screened as part of the Cannes Classics program at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

Set against the backdrop of wartime Shanghai in the 1940’s, the film weaves a poignant love story involving a soldier (Kenny Bee) and a young woman (Sylvia Chang) who vow to meet after the war ends, but circumstances keep making them miss their reunion. The film is a blend of romanticism, satirical wit, and whimsical sophistication that showcases Tsui Hark's skill at fusing genres.

The film has been meticulously restored under Hark's supervision with new grading and new dubbing, with each character speaking in their native dialects - Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese and other from various regions to add an extra layer of authenticity and depth to the entertaining script.

SHANGHAI BLUES has a special place for Tsui Hark as the first film of his production company, Film Workshop, established in 1984 with Nansun Shi. Itr also represents the heyday of Hong Kong cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

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Nathalie Emmanuel (in black), Adam Driver (in car), on the set of COPPOLA'S MEGALOPOLIS, Jan. '23. GETTY IMAGES

Is Francis Ford Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS going to be a historic flop - or a sleeper classic?

SOURCE (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2024/05/14/megalopolis-francis-ford-coppola-s-latest-gamble_6671375_117.html?lmd_medium=email&lmd_campaign=trf_newsletters_lmie&lmd_creation=lemonde_in_english_NY&lmd_send_date=20240514&lmd_link=headlines_titre_6&M_BT=117907168640918)

TRAILER (https://www.instagram.com/p/C6jCZZOLdAf/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_video_watch_again)

TEASER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSOWcr8cMh8)

He was aged 80 when he began on it. It was his first film since 2010 when he delivered TWIXT, the third of three "small" (ca. $10 million) commercial failures. He first began writing on it in 1983.

He mortgaged part of his (now successful) Sonoma County vineyards to raise the $150 and it was shot in Augusta, Georgia.

He had long wanted to make this movie. It was a story based on ancient Roman history. Something starring Adam Driver, a struggle to rebuild a destroyed New York-like city.

He invited a handpicked crowd of family and friends and honchos for an exclusive IMAX screening, No US distributor resulted, and reactions were like "experimental," "confusing." Some think a small company like A24 or Neon might pick it up.

Whatever, it's certainly one of the talked-about movies at Cannes. In France response has been more positive: notorious risk-taker Le Pacte has taken it on. Maybe it will be a sleeper, like APOCALYPSE NOW, rejected by the US Press, which co-won the Palme d'Or with Volker Scheendorf's THE TIN DRUM, and eventulaly became acknowledged as a classic after very limited release.

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Coppola on the MEGALOPOLIS set.

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First official image from MEGALOPOLIS released by Coppola.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes begins

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LÉA SEYDOUX AND APHAEL QUENARD IN QUENTIN DUPIEUX'S LE DEUXIÈME ACTE

LE DEUZIÈME ACTE/THE SECOND ACT (Quintin Dupieux). Opening Night film. An amiable meta comedy that breaks down the fourth wall ("constantly folding in on itself, producing one illusion out of the shell of another") and is unlike Depieux's earlier material because it's got famous actors, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon, Léa Seydoux (see Peter Bradshaw's 3 our of 5 star GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/the-second-act-review-cannes-film-festival-quentin-dupieux[), which provides the trailer). It's a lightweight, yet ironic and complex tale - with one of the longest-ever "traveling" (tracking shots) and a great deal of dialogue - of people coming to new roadside restaurant called The Second Act whose first act was probably a gas station, and maneuvering over a woman (Seydoux); her father (Lindon) is coming and her boyfriend (Garrel) wants to turn her over to a new guy (Raphael Quenard). But the point is the actors keep coming in and out of character (see trailer). They are indeed apparently shooting "an unusually banal rom-com" and are disgusted with it, especially Lindon's character. Suzanne Bunburry's DEADLINE review (https://deadline.com/2024/05/the-second-act-review-lea-seydoux-louis-garrel-quentin-dupieux-1235915841/) calls this "a layer, bubbly, film world meta-fest" It's not long but Depieux seems to have lost interest before it ends. Voilà: the 2024 Cannes opening is Quentin-sentially French. (P.s.: A French language video review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7hdUKBRANY) points out this is Dupieux's third feture in less than a year. )

[Chris Knipp]

First films Cannes 2024

DIAMOND BRUT/WILD DIAMOND (Agathe Riedinger)

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MALOU KHEBIZI IN DIAMOND BRUT

First-time actor Malou Khebizi is a 19-year-old waitress from Fréjus (French sticks) who dreams of becoming famous in this "stylish but familiar" (Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/wild-diamond-review-1235899775/)) study of the perils and snares of being an online "influencer" that channels "TikTok energy" (Bradshaw, GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/15/wild-diamond-review-french-agathe-riedinger), 3/5 stars). This is not the first film about the perils of influencer culture to premiere at Cannes, and the director's up-in-the-air ending (does the desperate young protag get the reality show spot or not?) is weak, but there is urgency and a quasi-religious quality to the intimate, loving way she is filmed. (Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/wild-diamond-review-1235899775/)). Xian Brooks in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/cannes-2024-week-one-roundup-greta-gerwig-77th-festival-magnus-von-horn-the-girl-with-the-needle-andrea-arnold-bird-furiosa-mad-max-agathe-riedinger-wild-diamond)finds the film fake and condescending.

[Chris Knipp]

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA (George Miller 2024)

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SCENE FROM GEORGE MILLER'S FURIOSA

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA,World premiered out of competition at Cannes, has gotten generally positive reviews. Somebody wrote it's the best prequel ever. Peter Bradshaw gave it 4 our of 5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/15/furiosa-a-mad-max-saga-review-anya-taylor-joy-is-tremendous-chris-hemsworth) and calls it "immersive, spectacular." But David Rooney apologizing for being a grump in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/furiosa-a-mad-max-saga-review-anya-taylor-joy-chris-hemsworth-george-miller-1235896508/) says it's " a big step down from Mad Max: Fury Road.". Rooney says: "this fifth installment in the dystopian saga grinds on in fits and starts, with little tension or fluidity in a narrative whose shapelessness is heightened by its pretentious chapter structure." He acknowledges that "Anya Taylor-Joy is a fierce presence in the title role" (as Charlize Theron's character young) and that Chris Hemsworth is "clearly having fun as a gonzo Wasteland warlord" (the comic-evil Dr. Dementus), but he thinks that "the mythmaking lacks muscle," and similarly "the action mostly lacks the visual poetry of its predecessor." Though recognizing some viewers finds the new motorcycle nightmare too digressive, Xian Brooks of the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/cannes-2024-week-one-roundup-greta-gerwig-77th-festival-magnus-von-horn-the-girl-with-the-needle-andrea-arnold-bird-furiosa-mad-max-agathe-riedinger-wild-diamond) "really liked it."

Metacritic's review aggregator, based on 24 critics, has come up with a score of 82%, so there is probably not that big a falling off, but there is some, because FURY ROAD got a Metaceritic rating of 90%.

A TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJMuhwVlca4) is being shown in theaters and you can find out for yourself soon, starting next Thursday, May 23, if you are a fan of the "Mad Max" movies.

[Chris Knipp]

THE DAMNED (Roberto Minervini). CANNES: Un Certain Regard.

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IMAGE FROM MINERVINI'S THE DAMNED

The Italian has lived in the US for two decades chhronicling marginal people. I
've reviewed STOP THE POUNDING HEART and WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD'S ON FIRE? His Cannes release this year continues that process in his first period piece, set in the Civil WAr period when the U.S. Army sends a volunteer company to patrol the uncharted Western territories. See Peter Debruge's Variety review: (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-damned-review-1236001620/) he makes the film sound thin in story to put it mildly, but an "atmospheric and unscripted" depiction of young men in the war, mostly not in combat, and a "welcome extension" of the filmmaker's documentary work.

[Chris Knipp]

Today: KINDS OF KINDNESS OH, CANADA; BIRD; MEGALAPOIS


‘Megalopolis’ sparks Cannes frenzy and furious debate
Director Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded, decades-in-the-making $120M movie divided festival filmgoers: "Complete nonsense" vs. "an awesome experience." The article recounts how a crowd of young European cinephiles waited many hours to get in and some reported a film experience they'll remember forever, while others didn't like it or couldn't recommend it. - Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2024/05/16/megalopolis-cannes-francis-ford-coppola/). http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20cpd2.jpg
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA AND ADAM DRIVER AT THE CANNES MEGALOPOLIS PREMIERE.

MEGALOPOLIS (Francis Ford Coppola)

Peter Debruge in his Variety review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/megalopolis-review-francis-ford-coppola-1236005482/) summarizes the story as " a conservative politician and a forward-thinking urban designer clash over a mythic city’s future." He quesitons why $120 million had to be spent to make it; why Coppola insisted the press screening be shown at the Cannes venue's IMAX theater. He says there are so many closeups it would play fine on your iPhone, and because "world building," that "essential element of Hollywood franchises", isn't in Coppola's wheelhouse," this might have worked better as an animated film. He says the cast is "first-rate" but their performances "oddly cartoonish." It sounds dangerously like a colossal flop to me, but big pictures by great auteurs that spur hot debate are great for cinema. Manohla Dargis of the NYTimes (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/movies/megalopolis-reaction-cannes.html), whose Cannes presence is usually fleeting, gives the film straightforward, respectful treatment, calling it "a fascinating film aswirl with wild visions, lofty ideals, cinematic allusions, literary references, historical footnotes and self-reflexive asides, all of which Coppola has funneled into a fairly straightforward story about a man with a plan. It is a great big plan from a great big man in a great big movie, one whose sincerity is finally as moving as its unbounded artistic ambition." So there. But have you learned anything? I'm more swayed by the so often enthusiastic and positive Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/16/megalopolis-review-coppola-sci-fi-adam-driver), who says "Coppola’s passion project is megabloated and megaboring." He gives it a chilling 2/5 stars. Stephen Dalton's summary for The Film Verdict (https://thefilmverdict.com/megalopolis/): "Francis Ford Coppola's long-gestating neo-Roman epic is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas." THE OSCAR EXPERT's "Brother Bro" (Mason Jaeger) has made a video review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgoC4bXM7fY) saying MEGALOPOLIS is "a $100 million-plus indie film that feels like it's going off the rails in every direction," though he suggests you might have fun watching it and he's excited to talk about it. One feels sad for Coppola. He made the film, he said, for his wife, and she died four days later. He looks so small and old. But who knows? The film may be a sleeper that even makes some money eventually, if it gets a cool US distributor like A24 or Neon. May 23: the Metacritic rating (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/megalopolis/critic-reviews/) is out and it's not good: 58%. based on 27 critics' reviews. But some ratings are high. There are 9 in the 80-90 range, mostly 80. Two 70's. Three 67's. Two 60's. Six 40's. One 25. Two 20's.

[Chris Knipp]

KINDS OF KINDNESS (Yourgos Lanthimos)

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IT HAS A NIFTY TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fYtuE_ZJ4E&t=8s)

Bradshaw's 4/5 star GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/17/kinds-of-kindness-review-yorgos-lanthimos-stone-dafoe-plemons) shows he likes Lanthimos' followup to his big hit POOR THINGS (which Emma Stone got the Best Actress Oscar for) a lot. It's three overlapping narratives set in present-day New Orleans. Use of Lanthimos' "company of players" reappearing in each causes the overlapping - which seems underlined in the film poster (above). The three stories Bradshaw summarizes thus (1) "An office worker finally revolts against the intimate tyranny exerted over him by his overbearing boss." (2) "A police officer is disturbed when his marine-biologist wife returns home after months of being stranded on a desert island, and suspects she has been replaced by a double." (3) "Two cult members search for a young woman believed to have the power to raise the dead." Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Mamoudou Athie, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau and Joe Alwyn each get three roles, some "intriguingly similar to each other," others "quite different." I suspect this is a return, after the relatively accessible POOR THINGS, to something closer to Lanthimos' mad Greek Weird Wave cinema manner, but with a new fluency; that he's in his prime and this will be a provocative, challenging watch - if it works for you. Stephen Dalton on The Film Verdict (https://thefilmverdict.com/kinds-of-kindness/) calls KINDS "classic Lanthimos, an English-language throwback to the full-blooded macabre absurdism of his time as a figurehead of the Greek Weird Wave movement." BROTHER BRO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2cQJgPzUjo) has A video review with Brit colleague and Cannes roommate Luke Hearfeld (https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeHearfield). Bro gives it 7/10, Luke, 6.5. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/kinds-of-kindness/)rating: 78%. It takes an early lead in the SCREEN DAILY Cannes jury grid (https://www.screendaily.com/news/kinds-of-kindness-takes-early-lead-on-screens-cannes-jury-grid/5193692.article). Other leads: Andrea Arniod's BIRD and Emanuel Parvu's THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD.

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STONE, PLEMONS, DAFOE IN KINDS OF KINDNESS

[Chris Knipp]

OH, CANADA (Paul Schrader).

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RICHARD GERE, UMA THURMAN IN OH, CANADA

In this Leonard Fife, one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam, shares all his secrets to de-mythologize his mythologized life and meditate about mortality. Based on Russell Banks' next-to-last book, Foregone, this is a meandering interview by film students with a revered filmmaker dying and addled by medications to numb the pain of the not-nice kind of cancer he's dying of. Jacob Elordi plays him young, Richard Gere plays him old. It's Schrader's most experimental formally inventive film in years, but Schrader gets lost in his own experiment, according to Ryal Latttanzio in INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/oh-canada-review-paul-schrader-1235006260/). In his Variety review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/megalopolis-review-francis-ford-coppola-1236005482/) Peter Debruge says this is one of Schrader's "best films in years." Uma Thurman plays the protagnist's much younger wife. Debruge calls the film "profound but slightly scattered." Uma has said in an interview she felt during the making of it that Schrader cared in a very personal way about the film. The film title is the one Banks had wanted to give the book.

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JACOB ELORDI IN OH, CANADA

[Chris Knipp]

More Cannes

See Xian Brooks' roundup of the first week in the OBSERVER (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/cannes-2024-week-one-roundup-greta-gerwig-77th-festival-magnus-von-horn-the-girl-with-the-needle-andrea-arnold-bird-furiosa-mad-max-agathe-riedinger-wild-diamond).

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TESSA VAN DEN BROECK IN JULIE KEEPS QUIET

JULIE KEEPS QUIET (Leonardo Van Dijl)

Critics' Week. After the fun of Luca Guadagnino's entertaining current tennis-based film hit CHALLENGERS, "with its hilariously imagined sexual dynamic between a female coach and male players," Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN likes (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/julie-keeps-quiet-review-tennis-academy-leonardo-van-dijl) this more realistic Belgian film about an elite tennis academy as shown by his 4/5 stars rating. The debut feature's star is an actual talented teen tennis player, Tessa Van den Broeck. This is a restrained film of many silences about how the teen tennis star keeps mum to protect her coach Jérémy (Laurent Caron) when he's accused of misconduct with his female pupils, one of whom commits suicide. More reserved and less explicit than Favrier's SLALOM (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4617) (R-V 2020), which had Jéeémie Renier as the offending coach. A standout film of Cannes Critics' Week. Jonathan Romney provides a detailed Screen Daily review (Jérémy (Laurent Caron)). Produced by the Dardennes and in French and Flemish, this is a realistic drama that naturally includes extended sequences where van den Broeck shows off her "ferocious skills" (Bradshaw).

KINDS OF KINDNESS is early at the top of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid (https://www.screendaily.com/news/kinds-of-kindness-takes-early-lead-on-screens-cannes-jury-grid/5193692.article), followed by BIRD and THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD. Coppola's MEGALOPOLIS is above OH, CANADA on a level with WILD DIAMOND.

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[Chris Knipp]

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THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (Magnus Van Horn)

In Competition. This "arthouse-exploitation picture with a truly hellish theme" (Bradshaw) is loosely based on the Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who helped impoverished women kill their unwanted children. Xian Brooks cals (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/cannes-2024-week-one-roundup-greta-gerwig-77th-festival-magnus-von-horn-the-girl-with-the-needle-andrea-arnold-bird-furiosa-mad-max-agathe-riedinger-wild-diamond) this "an expressionistic black fairytale haunted by the ghosts of the first world war and stumbling across every manner of monster in the shadows." A B&W film set in Denmark in the 1920s. Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/16/the-girl-with-the-needle-review-magnus-van-horne-dagmar-overbye) gives it 4/5 stars; he's impressed and writes "fictionalized true crime nightmare leaves you with a shiver of pure fear." The director is a Swede based in Poland. Guy Lodge in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-girl-with-the-needle-review-1236002246/) describes this as "an adult fairytale abundantly populated with witches and wretches, but where society is revealed as the true monster." Sounds scary, disturbing, possibly infuriating. It's only #4 of 7 on the current jury grid. But Leslie Felperin's more detailed review for the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-girl-with-the-needle-review-1235899841/) draws one in and shows this is a well filmed and edited film that could be watchable and relevant because it's about the exploitation of pregnant women. But if it's as expressionistic and only loosely based on fact as reviews say, does it really make sense for Felperin to call it "almost too much reality to handle"?

[Chris Knipp]

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NIKIYA ADAMS IN BIRD

BIRD (Andrea Arnold)

In Competition.The soulful and critically acclaimed UK filmmaker - of AMERICAN HONEY (2016), FISH TANK (2009) and RED ROAD (2006) - was last in Cannes Competition for her immersive animal-POV doc COW (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5055) in 2021. This new one is about a family, a coming-of-age pre-teen, and a neurodivergent person, played by Franz Rogowski. Barry Keoghan is a totally irresponsible single dad covered with folk art tattoos living in a squat in north Kent. When he, who's scheming to sell hallucinogenic toad slime, gets excited about remarrying to a potential step-mom she doesn't like, 12-year-old daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams) seeks company elsewhere and finds Franz Rogowskii, a fey and rather odd kilt-wearing passionate bird fancier. Making the film was an experience, as an interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuZP2D0yIr4) with Keoghan and Rogowski shows; in her own case a long and painful one, Arnold said in her acceptance speech for the Golden Coach award she received at Directors' Fortnight. Bradshow's 3/5 star GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/16/bird-review-andrea-arnold-barry-keoghan-cannes-film-festival) shows admiration with reservation: a "chaotic social-realist adventure" he calls it, "with big, chancy performances, grimly violent episodes, tragedy butting heads with comedy and physical existence facing off with fantasy and imagination." He concludes it's "a minor Arnold, with fluency and energy." Owen Gleiberman reviews the film for VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/bird-review-barry-koeghan-franz-rokowski-andrea-arnold-cannes-1236006031/) in a very personal way: he loved AMERICAN HONEY but dislikes this film, which, he says, turns a "feel-bad movie" into a "feel-good movie" but he never feels BIRD is a "totally authentic movie." A problem is the show-offy "star' qualities of both Rogowski and Keoghan. The latter (since SALTBURN) "gives off the awareness that he's a star." That was Bradshaw and Gleiberman. Nonetheless BIRD has been #2 or #3 on the jury grid. There was a seven-minute standing ovation after the BIRD premiere, and Leslie Felperin in her HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/bird-review-andrea-arnold-barry-keoghan-franz-rogowski-1235901292/) is glowing, asying it's a film that sends the audience out "feeling giddy and a smidge weepy in the best sort of way." Jason Buda is also featured as Bailey's brother. There is a generally positive but reserved review (6.5/10 - he is unhappy with the ending) from BROTHER BRO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4urqbgArKL8) of The Oscar Expert (Justin Jaeger)

[Chris Knipp]

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CIPRIAN CHIUJDEA, LAURA VASILIU IN THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD (Emanuel Parvu)

A later addition to Competition. Set in a conservative community of the scenic Danube Delta , where a gay teenager's journey of self-discovery clashes with the traditional values upheld by his parents and neighbors. Parvu is Romanian, formerly an actor, featured in GRADUATION by Cristian Mungiu, whose influence (and that of the Romanian New Wave) is evident. Both films begin with the assault on a young person, but THREE KILOMETERS it's a gay bashing, revealing the community's closed-mindedness and homophobia and adding special audience interest. "A disaster unfolding in slow motionsays Wendy Ide in her (favorable) SCREEN DAILY review (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/three-kilometers-to-the-end-of-the-world-cannes-review/5193664.article). The tall, chiseled, handsome, academically high achieving Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) seemingly has everything going for him, then gets brutally beaten, and the social exclusion is worse. The film examines the outcome of the homophobic assault from multiiple perspectives, says Guy Lodge in VARIETY. (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/three-kilometers-to-the-end-of-the-world-review-1236007778/) Several reviews find this third feature from Parvu conventional, though the subject matter and community-spanning coverage is compelling. Parvu's elevation to Cannes competition, says Lodge, "feels a touch premature," but still the film's rank on the jury grid is pretty high so far. Still even Ryan Lattanzio's most detailed, fluent and sympathetic review for IINDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/news/festivals/cannes-2024-who-will-win-the-palme-dor-1235005977/)poins out there is far too little of Adi's POV; the story is "told from all sides but the victim's"; and he gives the film only a C+. Lattanzio's Palme d'Or likelihood ranking so far (Sat., May 18, day 5) is:
1. “Bird”
2. “Kinds of Kindness”
3. “The Girl with the Needle”
4. “Three Kilometers to the End of the World”
5. “Oh, Canada”
6. “Wild Diamond”
7. “Megalopolis”

[Chris Knipp]

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SELENA GOMEZ IN EMILIA PÉREZ

EMILIA PÉREZ (Jacques Audiard)

TEASER TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp3gJBw0E5A)

In Competition. David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/emilia-perez-review-zoe-saldana-selena-gomez-jacques-audiard-1235903402/): "Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and the divine Karla Sofia Gascón light up Jacques Audiard’s fabulous queer crime musical in which a Mexican drug lord enlists the help of a lawyer to undergo gender-affirming surgery in the latest from the French director of THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED, A PROPHET, RUST AND BONE AND DHEEPAN. (For a few years he was my favorite French director. If that changed, it's because he's so open to change himself, genre change - which, in French, could mean sex change, so the theme of this nutty, raucous, semi-comic, half-sung, Spanish language film is a logical step.

See Peter Bradshaw's Cannes vlog (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_l2TTZPhH8) where he tosses off a fluent summary of this semi-musical S.A. gangster-family film, where Bradshaw wonders if the periodic bursts into song of this film aren't maybe designed to mask how far-fetched it all is. He also shows he just got an award for promoting Arab film and is on their Cannes jury this year. Bradshaw is amazing - and seems ageless. Stephanie Bunbury, DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/emilia-perez-review-jacques-audiard-selena-gomez-zoe-saldana-1235922122/): "Jacques Audiard’s musical is crazy, but also a marvel." This got a nine-minute standing ovation. Bunbury sees it as "very much a winner," hinting at Palme d'Or possibilities. Debruge says in this VAIETY review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/emilia-perez-review-selena-gomez-zoe-saldana-1236008567/) that Karla Sofía Gascón "electrifies" in her lead role.) Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez also star.). Gomez wore (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IURanK3Ykbc) a beautifully simple YSL gown and a $3.5 million Bulgari diamond necklace. Netflix has bought EMILIA PÉREZ for $12 million.

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[Chris Knipp]

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NICOLAS CAGE IN THE SURFER

THE SURFER (Lorcan Finnegan)

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRM0Egw8cxM)

In the Cannes Midnight slot. In his element here Nicholas Cage plays a "desperate dad who squares off against Aussie surf jocks in a midnight movie that grows increasingly surreal, says Owen Gleiberman in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-surfer-review-nicolas-cage-1236008782/) who calls the movie a "trippy slapdash comic nightmare." Leslie Felperin in HOLLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-surfer-review-nicolas-cage-1235903180/) notes the film recalls and also "spoofs""vintage Australian New Wave films" like Roeg's 1971 WALKABOUT that dealt with "alienated outsiders." This is an opportunity for Cage to do a performance of rapid, yet carefully calculated decline, starting with an apparently slick Califonia family man and ending with a penniless desperate reject through his pursuit of his useless, too-late dream of becoming a surfer in Australia. Felperin says THE SURFER looks great and is well edited; is "too rollicking and self-parodying to be taken seriously," but "strikes just the right tone" as a festival midnight movie. A good example of Nic Cage doing his thing but perhaps reserved for his fans.

[Chris Knipp]

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BEN WHISHAW IN LIMONOV: THE BALLAD

LIMINOV: THE BALLAD (Kirill Serebrennikov).

In Competition. Quite a range of opinions here, though the "yea's" win. Ben Whishaw plays, brilliantly, says Peter Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/19/limonov-the-ballad-review-ben-whishaw-brilliant-as-russias-outlaw-bohemian), who gives this 4/5 stars, the "rock’n’roll émigré Russian writer and patriot-dissident" Eduard Limonov, "who wound up poverty-stricken in New York at about the same time as Sid Vicious," was an "adulte terrrible" in Paris in the eighties, then later returned to Russia to lead a violent fascist group, the National Bolshevik Party. Kirill Serebrennikov directs "with terrific gusto," says Bradshaw, from a script adapted from the novel by Emmanuel Carrère, who plays a small comic role; Whishaw "gives a glorious performance." Leslie Felperin in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/limonov-the-ballad-review-ben-whishaw-kirill-serebrennikov-1235900569/) finds the film "perplexing,." and also "strange, stilted" and most important "Irritating." Maybe her big problem is the film is 159 minutes long; the other one that she finds the protagonist too unsympathetic, while Bradshaw is amused by him and delighted by Whishaw's fluent performance. So, a matter of taste, perhaps linked with gender, since the boys love it and the girls dislike it. . In VARIETY, (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/limonov-the-ballad-review-ben-whishaw-1236009366/) Jessica Kiang dislikes the pic ("all swagger and no game") and the protagonist ("an aggravatingly self-aggrandizing solipsist"). She helps with the pronunciation of the name: "Lee-MWAH-nov," but the fact that it's not till after two long paragraphs that Kiang even mentions that Ben Whishaw plays the lead shows she's missing something, including a sense of humor. Jonathan Romney in SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/limonov-the-ballad-cannes-review/5193539.article#:~:text=The%20most%20accomplished% 20film%20yet,and%20of%20a%20mesmerising%2C%20prote an) is enthusiastic, calling this "The most accomplished film yet from the Russian director," and writes that "LIMINOV is a bracingly entertaining piece that should draw international attention on the strength of its central figure’s cult repute (he was the subject of an acclaimed 2011 non-fiction novel by French author Emmanuel Carrère) and of a mesmerizing, protean lead by Ben Whishaw." Ryan Lattanzio's INDIEWIRE review (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/limonov-the-ballad-review-ben-whishaw-1235006702/) is summed up: "Whishaw is better than ever as an émigré radical in the Russian filmmaker's recklessly beautiful English-language debut." Obviously this is one to see, whatever the two trade journal leading ladies think.

[Chris Knipp]

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ZHAO TAO AND LI ZHUBIN IN SCENE REWORKED FOR "ANGUISHING VIOLENCE" (DEBORAH YOUNG) IN CAGHT BY THE TIDES

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Jia Zhang-ke)

CLIP FROM THE FILM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSY-JgIj8as)

In Competition. Dazzling, says Deborah Young of THE FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/caught-by-the-tides/), though "its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story." Jessica Kiang in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/caught-by-the-tides-review-jia-zhangke-1236005134/) calls this "an epic, lyrical drama that is both Chinese master Jia's career-retrospective reinvention and a defining portrait of modern China." We must hope that is how it will look to us. Bradshaw (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/18/caught-by-the-tides-review-two-decade-relationship-tells-story-of-chinas-epic-transformation) gives it 4/5 stars and offers high parise. The theme will sound familiar to Jia fans:" The 20-year failed romance between a singer and a dodgy music promoter becomes the vehicle for director Jia Zhangke’s latest exploration of China’s momentous recent history." That history includes breathtaking economic progress alongside some "very old-fashioned state coercion." Events include the success of "mobster-businessmen," the "patriotic ecstasy" of Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics, and all the "unacknowledged pain" caused by the displacement of communities for the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam covered by Jia's Golden Lion winning 2006 Still Life (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=922). In TIDES, Jia's muse and wife Zhao Tao is the woman, his rep player Li Zhubin the disreputable man who uses and leaves her. She goes on an epic journey to find him, to settle things, and, aging, they finally do. Bradshaw finds "a kind of epic power " in the final scene when that happens. The familiar sound makes sense when we learn from Deborah Young that the whole film is constructed from scenes and outtakes of previous work, which can be done because those two actors played related roles in UNKNOWN PLEASURES, STILL LIFE and A TOUCH OF SIN. She points out his weakness for some viewers: his films have always been "strong on music and wordless images but thin on storylines, pacing and emotional expression." Well, that is not always true. This new film sounds potentially confusing and perhaps odd. But in a way, nothing has ever been quite up to his first four films, yet Jia remains central to contemporary Chinese cinema anyway.

[Chris Knipp]

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THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat)

TEASER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-RxVJrLKrk)

In Competition. There is big buzz at Cannes over this provocation. In his Oscar Expert YouTube review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYOANQeNyU0) Brother Bro (Mason Jaeger) points out this is "a genre picture to the bone and also a comedy," and says "that alone makes it quite refreshing to see in the lineup," and concludes "this is one of the entertaining films I have ever seen. Period." (9 out of 10) The director is known for her 2017 French action thriller REVENGE (Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/revenge/) rating: 81%). Demi Moore gamely stars here as an over-the-hill Hollywood star who resorts to extreme measures to get a new body, out of her old one, played by jMargaret Qualley. Dennis Quaid is also featured. In VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-substance-review-margaret-qualley-demi-moore-dennis-quaid-1236009235/) Gleiberman sees in this the "flair of a grindhouse Kubrick" in what he calls "a weirdly fun, cathartically grotesque fusion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Showgirls.." In HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-substance-review-demi-moore-margaret-qualley-1235903533/) Lovia Gyarkye says "a lot is going on" although "not everything works." This new extreme strain in French feminist engagé filmmaking seems over-the-top and not particularly welcome, but has plenty of advocates, hence the Cannes Competition slot. Once again Peter Bradshaw of the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/19/the-substance-review-demi-moore-coralie-fargeat) is game and calls THE SUBSTANCE a "cheerfully silly and outrageously indulgent piece of gonzo body-horror comedy." Another 4/5 stars from Bradshaw. Damon Wise, of DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/the-substance-review-demi-moore-margaret-qualley-1235923616/), argues this film is smart as well as gory. Plus he thinks it extraordinary that Demi Moore has been coaxed into giving "the furthest-out performance this side of Nicolas Cage." The two-hour-and-twenty-minute run-time may make it still more unpalatable for non-genre fans, but if THE SUBSTANCE wins a top prize at Cannes it may turn up at the cineplex. Bought by MUBI for US distribution.

[Chris Knipp]

CANNES - MARKET NEWS
SOURCE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/the-entertainment-system-is-down-a24-deal-ruben-ostlund-movie-1235923552/)


EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation at the Cannes market, A24 is landing an eight-figure deal to acquire U.S. rights to one of the biggest art house crossover projects in town in THE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM IS DOWN, the next movie from two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund.

The deal was struck between A24 and Paris-based Co-Production Office, which has been making the rounds with the project at the Cannes market. The pic recently added Nicholas Braun and Samantha Morton to a starry cast that already includes Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl.

[Chris Knipp]

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CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT (Tyler Taormina)

In Competition. Not much plot in this, but extraordinarily involving and rich version of an Italian American (but not-mafia) family Christmas party. The cast includes Michael Cera, Maria Dizzia, Ben Shenkman and Francesca Scorsese. Damon Wise's DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/christmas-eve-in-millers-point-review-tyler-taormina-magical-freewheeling-indie-captures-the-holiday-spirit-1235920316/)review: "a surprisingly relatable experience, part anthropological study, part nostalgia kick, lit up (literally) like a Christmas tree". Another 4/5 stars from GUARDIAN'S Bradshaw, who says it makes its entire 105 minutes consist of what in any other movie would be "considered background establishing detail, yet it's "unexpectedly beguiling and engrossing, with an almost experimental refusal of narrative in its normal sense." Tim Grierson, SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/christmas-eve-in-millers-point-cannes-review/5193208.article): "Generously mixing comedy, nostalgia, pathos and misanthropy, CHRISTMAS EVE IN. MILLER'S POINT embraces its brood’s rambunctious spirit, resisting the temptation to let any character become the central protagonist." Sheri Linden, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, describes the movie as "Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness, and Taormina’s fondness for the characters is the movie’s beating heart." Bradshaw, GUARDIAN: (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/17/christmas-eve-in-millers-point-review-tyler-taormina-cannes-film-festival) "something weirdly mysterious and even exalted about this film, with its flashes and mosaic-fragments of dialogue and detail. It might resemble other family dramas, but there’s a hum of something strange underneath, a sense that life is about surrendering to the infinite flow of events."

[Chris Knipp]

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ARMAND (Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel)

Un Certain Regard. This Norwegian film starts with a six-year-old schoolboy accusing his best friend of sexual abuse and goes on to other things involving connected adults. It features Renate Reinsve, who won Best Actress at Cannes in 2021 for Joachim Trier's THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4857). She plays Elizabeth the mother of Armand, the accused boy, an actress, and a real drama queen. In SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/armand-cannes-review/5193713.article) Jonathan Romney explains the film "begins as contained chamber piece with comic touches," that is a sort of "terse variation" on "courtroom drama," but has other "abstract, poetic registers" as well. Damon Wise, of DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/armand-review-renata-reinsve-shines-in-halfdan-ullmann-tondel-intense-school-drama-cannes-film-festival-1235922228/), goes into far more specific detail about this absorbing partly comic drama, which he calls "a sprawling film to absorb rather than follow studiously," but to be watched for Reinsve 's performance.

[Chris Knipp]

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MONGREL (Chiang Wei Liang & You Qiao Yin)

Directors' Fortnight. This Taiwanese directorial debut is a "Zen-like tale of compassion and suffering among migrant care workers", says Bradshaw, who gives it 4/5 stars; there is "a feeling that penetrates the film’s fabric like months of steady rain in a rural landscape." The patience and stasis reflects influences of Tsing Ming-liang and the executive producer, Hou Hsiao-hsien. The setting is a province of Taiwan where illegal migrants from Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand are "exploited and abused." Focus is on a caregiver and the bosses who exploit him. "A sombre, sober movie but made with impressive artistry," concludes Bradshaw. John Berra in SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/mongrel-cannes-review/5193473.article#:~:text=In%20a%20remote%20mountain %20area,close%20to%20those%20he%20assists.) explains that MONGREL has "a sense of claustrophobia" through its boxy academy ratio images filmed by dp Michaël Capron.

[Chris Knipp]

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HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER ONE (Kevin Costner).

Out of Competition. The film got a ten-minute standing ovation that left Costner in tears, but produced only boredom and disappointment in the critics. David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/horizon-an-american-saga-chapter-one-review-kevin-costner-1235902918/) calls it "a clumsy slog," that "plays like a limited series overhauled as a movie, but more like a hasty rough cut than a release ready for any format." With his extensive Western experience he should have known better, Rooney says. Owen Gleiberman in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/horizon-an-american-saga-review-kevin-costner-1236009206/) calls this first of four "chapters" both sprawling" and "thinly spread." "The first part of Costner's "Western epic" feels "like the set-up for a TV miniseries," he says. It's set in 1859 and has "a few vivid characters, from settlers to Native Americans," but "jumps around too much and explains too little." Gleiberman points out the flm devotes much of its time to settler-Indigenous violence, and thus "takes it back to the age when American Westerns were flagrantly racist" and while HORIZON isn't that, its dealing "with Native issues" is "not without its problems."Costner "casts himself as wildly desirable cowboy," says Bradshaw, giving HORIZON a measly 2/5 stars in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/19/horizon-an-american-saga-chapter-1-costner-casts-himself-as-wildly-desirable-cowboy). It's "handsome-looking" but "oddly listless" and does't introduce anything exciting to make one anticipate the subsequent "chapters." Its three hours left him "saddle-sore."

[Chris Knipp]

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JEREMY STRONG, SEBASTIAN STAN IN THE APPRENTICE

THE APPRENTICE (Ali Abbasi)

In Competition. Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong as his lawyer play in this film about the early Trump years. The film begins in 1973 when Trump is 27 and VP of his father's real estate company and craving power but soft and sort of a blob when Cohen pounces on him. Later Trump becomes stronger and dumps the closeted Cohen, dying of AIDS. Owen Gleiberman in VARIETY (videos.com/video53657169/hot_young_gay_boy_ass_gangbanged_by_big_cocks-funsizeboys.net)says this film is sharp and scathing, but avoids cheap shots, Strong's he thinks is "a magnetic impersonation of the Roy Cohn who turned bullying into a form of cutthroat vaudeville." This "superb and chilling account" is "first and foremost the story of a Faustian pact," says David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-apprentice-review-sebastian-stan-jeremy-strong-donald-trump-1235904171/). Strong as Cohen, active in the McCarthy trials, is "suitably icy, a fast talker with a withering stare and an almost inhuman intensity." The toxicity that is our everyday reality today is sharply revealed in the "unholy alliance between two men half a century ago," says Rooney. Peter Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/20/the-apprentice-review-cartoon-version-of-chump-in-chief-donald-trumps-early-years) is unimpressed with what he sees as this "cartoon" and "genially ironic, lenient TV movie-style" version of "chump-in-chief Donald Trump’s early years," and gives the film 2/5 stars. The pic "presents young Donald as an amoral narcissist, wastes the talent of Jeremy Strong and includes a grisly rape scene" (of Ivana) "that is quickly glossed over," Bradshaw says. Inferior to Abbasi's earlier work in HOLY SPIDER and BORDER, this film, he argues, is dangerously "obtuse and irrelevant" in taking us back to the harmless "joke Donald." The joke now "is beyond unfunny."

[Chris Knipp]

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CATE BLANCHETT IN RUMOURS

RUMOURS (Guy Madden, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson)

In Competition. A funny and silly (or fanciiful?) dark comedy about politics from the Canadian trio, the brothers working with Madden for the third time, whose cast includes Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Charles Dance and French star Denis Ménochet. Leslie Felperin reviewed if for HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/rumours-review-cate-blanchett-alicia-vikander-guy-maddin-1235903667/). Focuses on world leaders drafting a vapid joint statement. The idea that the Group of Seven can solve some massive world issue by drafting such a statement is "kookily but ruthlessly skewered" here, in what becomes "a wildly entertaining shaggy-dog satire" where the summit devolves "into a murky, muddy and strangely isolated zombie apocalypse," says Guy Lodge in his VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/rumours-review-cate-blanchett-1236009377/) review. This Guy Madden film may be more relevant than usual, but no less eccentric and artistic.

[Chris Knipp]

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VINCENT CASSEL, DIANE KRUGER IN THE SHROUDS

THE SHROUDS (David Cronenberg)

In Competition. The titular cloth is fitted with dozens of tiny cameras so the bereaved can watch the decomposition of the beloved in detail after he or she or they is or are buried. The purveyor of these shrouds is one Karsh (Vincent Cassel, standing in for the director), who runs a restaurant with a hi-tech cemetery attached. Diane Kkruger plays the bereaved Karsh's wife, her sister, and a virtual AI avatar. Giving it his respectful but reserved rating of 3/5 starts, Peter Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/20/the-shrouds-review-cannes-film-festival-2024) describes THE SHROUDS as another example of the filmmaker's "eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief," with his "now very familiar Ballardian fetishes," and lots of "intriguing and exhausting" details in the elaborate plot-line. HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/cannes-premiere-david-cronenberg-the-shrouds-diane-kruger-vincent-cassel-1235904041/) Scott Roxborough and Patrick Brzeski talk about how respectful the Cannes audience was, and reserved. The director is 81; his own wife died six years ago. They say Croneenberg's is seventh film in Competition at Cannes, and his body horror genre "casts a long shadow on the Crousette," reflected ih JULIA DUCOURNAU'S 2021 Palme d'Or TITANE and this year in Coralie Fargeat’s' THE SUBSTANCE, "one of this year’s hottest competition titles," starring Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid and Margaret Qualley.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes Critics Week

SOURCE (https://www.screendaily.com/features/cannes-2024-line-up-guide-critics-week-titles/5193158.article)


Cannes Critics' Week, also known as La Semaine de la Critique, is a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival that focuses on first and second feature films from up-and-coming directors. The French Union of Film Critics created the section in 1962 to support young film creation, highlight first and second features, and discover new talents. Many of the biggest names in international art house cinema got their start at the section

Across The Sea (Fr-Mor-Belg-Qat)
Dir. Saïd Hamich Benlarbi
Following several producer credits including last year’s Un Certain Regard jury prize winner Hounds, this is the filmmaker’s first feature as director to premiere on the Croisette — one of four Critics’ Week titles this year showing as a special screening. The romantic drama (aka La Mer Au Loin) tells the story of a drug dealer and an unpredictable police officer in Marseille. Morocco’s Ayoub Gretaa stars alongside France’s Grégoire Colin and Anna Mouglalis. Sophie Penson produces for France’s Barney Production alongside Morocco’s Mont Fleuri Production and Belgium’s Tarantula, with support from Doha Film Institute. The Jokers Film distributes in France.
Contact: Indie Sales

Animale (Fr)
Dir. Emma Benestan
After making her feature debut with 2021 romantic comedy Fragile, the French-Algerian director shifts gears with this revenge horror about a young woman who experiences disturbing changes after she is mauled on a night out. César-*winning actress Oulaya Amamra (from 2016’s Divines) leads the cast. Closing Critics’ Week as a special screening, Animale is produced by Julie Billy and Naomi Denamur at French outfit June Films, and Titane producers Cassandre Warnauts and Jean-Yves Roubin of Belgium’s Frakas Productions in co-production with broadcaster France 3 Cinéma. Wild Bunch distributes in France.
Contact: Film Constellation

Baby (Bra-Fr-Neth)
Dir. Marcelo Caetano
Among the seven films playing in competition at Critics’ Week, this second feature from Caetano portrays a tumultuous passion between a young man recently released from prison and a male prostitute, who teaches him new ways to survive on the streets of Sao Paulo. Co-*written with Gabriel Domingues, with whom Caetano collaborated on his debut feature Body Electric (International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2017), Baby is produced by Brazil’s Cup Filmes, Plateau Producoes and Caetano’s Desbun Filmes, France’s Still Moving, and the Netherlands’ Circe Films and Kaap Holland Film.
Contact: Quentin Bosschaert, m-appeal

Block Pass (Fr)
Dir. Antoine Chevrollier
This is the anticipated debut feature from Bafta TV Award-nominated Chevrollier, known for hit French series including Oussekine, The Bureau and Baron Noir. Block Pass (La Pampa) reteams the director with Oussekinestar Sayyid El Alami alongside newcomer Amaury Foucher, Les Misérables star Damien Bonnard and Artus (Spoiled Brats, The Madness Express). Set in the world of motocross, Block Pass explores a friendship between two youths, which faces challenges when one boy’s secret is met with intolerance in the community. France’s Agat Films — Ex Nihilo produces.
Contact Indiana Perrier, Pulsar Content

Blue Sun Palace (US)
Dir. Constance Tsang
Wu Ke-Xi, Lee Kang Sheng and Xu Haipeng star in this tale of migrants in the Chinese community of Queens, New York City who bond after a tragedy and search for familial connections. Blue Sun Palace is the debut feature from Tsang, whose short drama Beau was a jury prize winner at the 2021 Directors Guild of America Student Awards. Production took place in autumn 2023 on the feature from Big Buddha Pictures and Field Trip Media, which was financed through private investors.
Contact: Charades (international); WME (North America)

The Brink Of Dreams (Egy-Fr-Den-Qat-Saudi)
Dirs. Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir
The Egyptian directors team up again following 2016 feature Happily Ever After, which documented a faltering relationship in the wake of the Arab Spring. The Brink Of Dreams, originally titled Land Of Women, follows a group of girls in southern Egypt for four years as they challenge tradition by forming a street theatre group. The documentary is produced by El Amir’s Felucca Films and co-*produced by Denmark’s Magma Films and France’s Dolce Vita Films. Further support came from TorinoFilmLab’s 2024 audience design fund, Venice Final Cut and Red Sea Fund.
Contact: The Party Film Sales

Ghost Trail (Fr)
Dir. Jonathan Millet
Millet’s debut feature — opening Critics’ Week as a special screening — is a thriller inspired by true events about a man pursuing the Syrian regime’s fugitive leaders. The journey leads to France, as he trails his former torturer. The French, English and Arabic-language feature is produced by rising French production house Films Grand Huit and stars Harka’s 2022 Un Certain Regard best actor winner Adam Bessa alongside Tawfeek Barhom of Sweden’s 2023 Oscar entry Cairo Conspiracy. Millet’s short Et Toujours Nous Marcheronswas nominated for a 2018 César award and his feature documentary Ceuta, Douce Prison played at more than 60 festivals.


Julie Keeps Quiet (Belg-Swe)
Dir. Leonardo Van Dijl
(Already covered in this thread HERE (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?5455-CANNES-2024-remote-notes&p=41836#post41836))
This is the Belgian director’s feature debut after his short Stephanie was selected for Cannes’ short films competition in the Covid year of 2020. The drama surrounds a tennis star who refuses to speak out when her coach is suspended while under investigation. Real-life tennis player Tessa Van den Broeck leads the cast alongside Belgian TV star Koen De Bouw. The Dardenne brothers’ Les Films du Fleuve produces in collaboration with Belgium’s De Wereldvrede, Hobab and Film i Väst from Sweden, and French-US outfit Blue Morning Pictures.
Contact: Katarzyna Siniarska, New Europe Film Sales

Locust (Tai-Fr-US)
Dir. KEFF
The first feature film of Taiwanese-American multidisciplinary artist KEFF follows a quiet young man in Taiwan who leads a double life — working in a family restaurant by day and running with local gangsters at night. The cast includes Liu Wei Chen, Rimong Ihwar and Devin Pan. Anita Gou, producer of Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, produces through her Los Angeles-based Kindred Spirit, alongside France’s mk2 Productions. KEFF’s 45-minute NYU thesis film Taipei Suicide Story was chosen for the Cannes Cinéfondation selection in 2020 and won a grand jury prize at Slamdance in 2021.
Contact: Alya Belgaroui, mk2 Films

Queens Of Drama (Fr-Belg)
Dir. Alexis Langlois
This feature debut — playing as a special screening — follows several short films from this rising star of the French new queer cinema, including The Demons Of Dorothy, which won a Silver Leopard of Tomorrow prize at Locarno in 2021. Musical comedy Queens Of Drama follows a turbulent romance between a 2000s pop star (Louiza Aura) and a queer punk idol (Gio Ventura), while the cast also includes Asia Argento, Alma Jodorowsky and singer/songwriter Bilal Hassani. France’s Les Films du Poisson, Greece’s Filaro House and Belgian outfit Wrong Men North produce.
Contact: Charades

Simon Of The Mountain (Arg-Chile-Uru)
Dir. Federico Luis
After his short film The Nap premiered in 2019 Cannes, Buenos Aires-born Luis returns with his first solo feature, about a 21-year-old man who finds renewed purpose after befriending a group of disabled youngsters. Lorenzo Ferro, best known for his breakout role in Luis Ortega’s Cannes 2018 Un Certain Regard entry El Angel, stars, while Luis co-writes with editor Tomas Murphy and actor/filmmaker Agustin Toscano (2018 Directors’ Fortnight entry The Snatch Thief). Argentina’s 20/20 is the lead producer in association with Planta, Mother Superior and Twelve Thirty Media.
Contact: Luxbox

[Chris Knipp]

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JOAO PEDRO MARIANO IN BABY

BABY (Marcelo Caetano)

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_kJZKpi4Ps)

Critics' Week. The followup to the director's well received 2017 BODY ELECTRIC according to Jonathan Holland in SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/baby-cannes-review/5192834.article) BABY is "a tenderhearted, quietly affirmative take" on a teenage boy’s "search for family" set mostly in São Paolo, Brazil's "mean streets," where the filmmaker does "a terrific job" at "eking out gentleness" in "the most unexpected of places." Though ostensibly an LGBT+ film, this fits into a larger context, Holland says. Wellington (João Pedro Mariano) is released from two years in juvie only to find his family has disappeared for him; his father, a cop, rejects his homosexuality. He falls in with old friends who're buskers, but then meets and hooks up with 42-year-old male escort Ronaldo (Ricardo Teodoro) in front of a porn theater and the connection "part sexual, part father-son, and part sex worker/manager," becomes "the film’s emotional core." SORTIR A PARIS (https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/what-to-do-in-paris/cinema-series/articles/312101-baby-by-marcelo-caetano-selected-for-critics-week-2024-our-opinion) says it's "a conflicting passion, oscillating between exploitation and protection, jealousy and complicity." Somehow Wellington, who adopts the moniker Baby, has good experiences. Ava Cahen (https://www.semainedelacritique.com/en/articles/about-embabyem) was "Blown away by this novel of a film." Olivia Popp in CINEROPA (https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/462648) calls BABY "a refreshing normalisation of contemporary urban life and all of its complexities," and Caetano’s direction "never indulgent, and sometimes even understated." She describes further plot and cast details and " the "drum-heavy sound design" and "bouncy, pop-infused original soundtrack" that contribute to the upbeat feel.

[Chris Knipp]

From INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/news/festivals/cannes-2024-who-will-win-the-palme-dor-1235005977/)
Cannes competition entries ranked so far by likelihood of winning the Palme d’Or:

1. EMILIA PÉREZ
2. BIRD
3. THE SUBSTANCE
4. KINDS OF KINDNESS
5. MEGALOPOLIS
6. LIMONOV: THE BALLAD
7. CAUGHT BY THE TIDES
8. OH, CANADA
9. THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE
10. THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
11. WILD DIAMOND

On INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/news/festivals/cannes-2024-who-will-win-the-palme-dor-1235005977/) Ryan Lattanzio thinks Ben Whishaw has a good chance of Best Actor for LIMINOV.

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20nor.jpg

ANORA (Sean Baker)

VIDEO CLIP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQnSqMFlzII)

In Competition. Remember Baker scored high with his iPhone-shot TANGERINE (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3106) about two "working girls" in 2015. ANORA could be seen as a much more realistic version of PRETTY WOMAN, spinning out a "whirlwind sex-work romance," says Peter Debruge in his VARIETY review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/anora-review-sean-baker-1236011025/), that "sparkles like the tinsel in its leading lady's hair." She's a New York stripper and he's the "reckless son of a Russian oligarch." The film that has a Safdie brothers flavor Debruge calls "compulsively entertaining, 80-proof emotional ride." Anora or "Ani" (MIkey Madison) is part Russian and speaks a bit of the language learned from her grandma, and shares a small house in Brighton Beach with her sister. It's at the Manhattan strip club, HQ, where she's an escort and lap dancer that she gets sent to the table of young big spender Ivan, aka Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), and Ivan and Ani, close in age, click at once. The next day he brings her to his nearby mansion; she negotiates for $15K up front when he wants her to stay. 138 minutes "race by" (though a few could be lost) in a "full-throttle tragicomedy of romance, denial and betrayal," Peter Bradshaw says in his 4/5 star GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/21/anora-review-stellar-turn-from-mikey-madison-in-sex-work-non-love-story), A "a non-love story which finds its apex in a Las Vegas wedding chapel in the middle of the night, "slaloms downwards into the most extraordinary, cacophonous uproar of recrimination unfolding in what is more or less real time." David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/anora-review-mikey-madison-sean-baker-1235905037/) says "Sex workers have been a big part of Baker's gallery of outsiders," and this makes ANORA "a fine addition to his terrific body of work." Ani has "a sweetness that humanizes even the most transactional situations" as well as "a defensiveness that makes her dangerous when threatened" - i.e., like when Ivan's dad sends goons to break up this mismatch, Ivan bolts, and Ani does a stand-off. Vegas is for the wedding, but they spend a lot of time at Brighten Beach-adjacent locales with Vanya and his "retinue of Russian-speaking locals," in Coney Island, "a pool hall, a video game arcade, Tatiana Grill on the boardwalk," etc. shot in 35mm with anamorphic lenses thus a messy but "satisfying watch." The leads are "terrific" (Madison) and "watchable" (Eydelshteyn) and " Baker’s film-making is muscular and fluent" (Bradshaw). In an enthusiastic Oscar Expert YouTube review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YH4nQjuRwg) Brother Bro (Mason Jaeger) calls ANORA, which he gives 9 out of 10 "the best film I've seen at Cannes" and predicts it will go on to collect many laurels in the US awards season with multiple Oscar noms including Best Actor and Best. Actress for the leads. WINNER OF THE PALME D'OR. A Neon release.

[Chris Knipp]

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CELESTE DALLA ;PORTA, STEFANNIA SANDRELLI IN PARTHENOPE

PARTHENOPE (Paolo Sorrentino)

In Competition. Newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta stars in this story tracing the life of a Neapolitan woman as a reflection of the city itself, also featuring Stefania Sandrelli, Gary Oldman and Silvio Orlando, but the director's taste for "baroque VIRTUOSITY" makes the film "too rich to digest," says David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review. (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/parthenope-review-paolo-sorrentino-1235903750/) HAND OF GOD, Sorrentino's touching and fun, most personal and best movie, "shimmered with the director’s memories of his youth." But the "deeply personal nature and intimacy of that film are drowned here by ostentation," says Rooney. The titular character (Sandrelli) carries the 8th century BC Greek name for the city of Naples. But the more time we spend with her the more remote she becomes. By Siddhant Adlakha reviewing for VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/parthenope-review-paolo-sorrentino-1236011840/) is a much more favorable view he calls the film "an exquisite treatise on cinematic beauty." She is born in 1959; Celeste Dellla Porta plays her in 1968 when she, her brother, and the maid's son go to Capri in a golden summer that ends abruptly. David Erlich in INDIEWIIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/parthenope-review-paolo-sorrentino-1235007725/) finds this a "superficial meditation n the relationship between youth and beauty." Sorrentino "is back on his proverbial bullshit with another sprawling flesh parade that’s more consumed with abstract ideals than it is with the stuff of life itself," says Erlich. S. is "a middle-aged man who almost drives himself insane trying to imagine what life would be like as an unbelievably hot woman." Things swirl around through time rathr than tell a story, says sERlich. Parthenope meets the alcoholic, closeted Aierican writer John Cheever (Gary Oldman) and they bond, due to the relief for her of a man not wanting to have sex with her. A24 is releasing the film.

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CELESTE DELLA PORTA IN PARTHENOPE

[Chris Knipp]

Current SCREEN DAILY Jury Grid

The Jury Grid of SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/cannes-jury-grid) is a running poll of 12 people who give scores that are averaged. You can find HERE (https://www.screendaily.com/cannes-jury-grid). It will include all the Competition films. It won't tell you who will win the Competition prizes but it is some indication and more complete than the two INDIEWIRE lists I've posted so far.


2.7 THE SUBSTANCE
2.6 CAUGHT BY THE TIDES
2.5 EMILIA PÉREZ
2.4 KINDS OF KINDNESS
2.3 BIRD
2.3 THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
2.2 LIMONOV, THE BALLAD
2.2 THE SHROUDS
2.2 THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE
2.1 MEGALOPOLIS
1.8 OH, CANADA
1.7 THE APPRENTICE
shown, not yet socred:
ANORA (Sean Baker)
MARCELLO MIO Christophe Honoré)
PARTHENOPE (Paolo Sorrentino)
GRAND TOUR (Miguel Gomes)
MOTEL DESTINO (Karim Aïnouz)
BEATING HEARTS (Gilles Lellouche)
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia)
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Mohammad Rasoulof)
THE LOST PRECIOUS CARGOES (Michel Hazavincius) I knew EMILIA PÉREZ, THE SUBSTANCE, KINDS OF KINDNESS and BIRD were high but didn't realize Jia Zhang-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES had done so well.

[Chris Knipp]

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CHIARA MASTROIANNI IN MARCELLO MIO

MARCELLO MIO (Christophe Honoré)

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIi8zAYomZk)

In Competition. Chiara Mastroianni is the daughter, born 1972, of Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve. She has often played in Honoré's films in secondary roles, but this time is the center of one as a version of herself: taking on the faux identity of her famous father. Cate Blanchett wearing a similar drag to play Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' I'M NOT THERE was brilliant, but that was something quite different. Bradshaw giving it only 2/5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/22/marcello-mio-review-catherine-deneuve-chiara-mastroianni-christophe-honore) calls this film a "twee" and "unconvincing and tiresome piece of cine-narcissism" redeemed only slightly by a "droll Catherine Deneuve," the best thing" in this piece of "Mastroianni family whimsy." Jordan Mintzer in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/marcello-mio-review-chiara-mastroianni-christophe-honore-1235890759/)review shows this film to be sprinkled with arcane references to European film history - for Chiara, who played her first big role at 21 in André Téchiné's MY FAVORITE SEASON, subsequently worked not only frequently for Honoré but sometimes for Raúl Ruiz, Arnaud Desplechin, Manoel de Oliveira, and Claire Denis. Guy Lodge in a VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/marcello-mio-review-1236011634/)review, noting MARCELLO MIO features a "bevy of A-listers as themselves," describes the film as "a vastly indulgent but gossamer-weight bit of frippery" that was "probably more fun to make than it is to watch." Honoré has excelled at lightweight movies like LA BELLE PERSONNE or LOVE SONGS/LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR, but this, says Bradshaw, is merely "an indulgent doodle of a film, a self-admiring industry in-joke, an earthbound flight of fancy, unconvincing on a literal level, and unenlightening on a metaphorical level." Including Fabrice Luccchini, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia et al. as themselves doesn't help. "Yet Deneuve," says Bradshaw, "puncturing her daughter’s affectations and delusions with a wry and bemused smile, injects some real humor."

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20stlu.jpg
OLIVER STONE (RIGHT) INTERVIEWS THE BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT IN LULA

LULA (Oliver Stone, Rob Wilson)

Special Screenings. A documentary about the amazing rise from poverty, disgrace and imprisonment-fall, and rise again of Brazilian leader and current president (for the third time) Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is thorough and fast-paced, Jordan Mintzer says in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/lula-review-oliver-stone-1235904074/) review, and makes much use of THE INTERCEPT as a source (though one must consult that publication itself for full details) and interaction with its co-founder Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil. An "illuminating and accessible" film, says Stephanie Bunbury in her DEADLINE review (https://deadline.com/2024/05/lula-review-oliver-stone-rob-wilson-documentary-1235923639/). " You could come to this film with zero knowledge of Lula," she says; but that is a disadvantage for some, Mintzer points out: he says the first half is obvious to anyone knowledgeable about Brazilian politics. (This is tyical of Stone films.) Mintzer also points out that Stone "isn’t a journalist, but a filmmaker with certain convictions, whether political or thematic, that he tries to convey in every movie he makes." It's a little suspicious that Stone likes so much hanging around with "powerful men," even the likes of Putin; that every one of his films seems "an Oliver Stone film in all senses of the term." One wants to see Stone films, but handles them gingerly. Perhaps that's why the neutral "Special Screenings" status at Cannes. (There is a Cannes interview with Stone in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/news/oliver-stone-cannes-documentary-lula-donald-trump-trials-hugo-chavez-1236008565/) by Brent Lang.)

[Chris Knipp]

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ELIN HALL IN WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS

WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS (Rúnar Rúnarsson)

Un Certain Regard (opener)..VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/global/cannes-un-certain-regard-movie-when-the-light-breaks-oscar-nominated-icelandic-runar-runarsson-1236010366/)points out its premiere was "buzzy" and has "sold to a raft of territories." It is enthusiastically reviewed in a short video by Justin Jaeger, Brother Bro of The Oscar Expert on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8upyZGnZtQ). Brother Bro says he has not seen young people "grappling with grief" in "such detail" and that the Icelandic director is a "master" of his craft as a director in every aspect, and this makes him want to see every one of his films and recommend any film student do so. It "may be a hard film to love" for some people because of its difficult subject matter, but he says he does not "expect to see a better performance at Cannes" than that of Elín Hall in the lead role. BRO'S recommendation of this film is heartfelt and detailed. Lovia Gyarkye in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/when-the-light-breaks-review-1235900557/) bluntly reveals upfront central details of the film perhaps best not known in advance. She is ostensibly approving, but more lukewarm, saying "An appreciation for grief’s minor moments coupled with a striking visual language elevate this slender drama." In his VARIETY review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/when-the-light-breaks-review-1236000079/) Guy Lodge calls it a "quiet but intensely felt miniature, carefully describing how it unfolds during one long dayat once blurred and intensified by grief.

[Chris Knipp]

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CRISTA ALFAIATE IN GRAND TOUR

GRAND TOUR (Miguel Gomes)

TEASER TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN0wM9QLu3c)

In Competition. GRAND TOUR, another "beguiling and elusive" film from the 52-year-old Portuguese auteur, "takes the viewer on a dreamy ride through colonial Asia in 1918", explains Deborah Young in her FILM VERDICT review (https://thefilmverdict.com/grand-tour/) of the director's new film, which is fanciful, not realistic."Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), civil servant, flees fiancee Molly (Crista Alfaiate) on their wedding day in Rangoon, 1917," IMDb explains. "His travels replace panic with melancholy. Molly, set on marriage, amused by his escape, trails him across Asia." But the present day "often pushes through the whimsical story," says Young. Gomez's mix of narrative and experimentalism divide audiences between the visionaries and the unconvinced, she says. Bradshaw gives it a 4/5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/22/grand-tour-review-cannes-film-festival), but notes its oddity: British characters speak Portuguese; voiceovers are in the language of the country being visited, which include Bangkok, Saigon, Manila and Osaka. Bradshaw calls GRAND TOUR "six parts beguiling to one part exasperating." "Beautiful and bold, if not always believable," is the "bottom line" of Jordan Mintzer's HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/grand-tour-review-miguel-gomes-1235906438/). Finding Gomes's three-part 2015 ARABIAN NIGHTS (NYFF) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?4022-New-York-Film-Festival-2015&p=33909#post33909) to be hard going, I described the director as "an uneven but original and imaginative filmmaker." I described his breakthrough film, TABU (NYFF 2012) (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3341-New-York-Film-Festival-2012&p=28552#post28552): "The story like a Somerset Maugham short story without the punch line, or Hemingway one without the moral complexity. It's a bit shallow; but it's nonetheless beautiful, stylish, and inventive."


GRAND TOUR has come to #2 on the SCREEN DAILY jury grid with 3.0, with San Baker's ANORA at the top at 3.3 now. MARCELLO MIO is at the bottom with 1.4. MOTEL DESTINO (Karim Ainouz) is at 1.9, just above OH, CANADA.

[Chris Knipp]

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NATALY ROCHA, FABIO ASSUNCÃO in MOTEL DESTINO

MOTEL DESTINO (Karim Aïnouz)

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ9h-JZSF80)

In Competition. David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/motel-destino-review-karim-ainouz-1235905553/) says "Karim Aïnouz’s tropical noir conjures a potent atmosphere of heat, desire and danger even if the payoff loses steam." A young man has conflicts with his criminal comrades and holes up in a seedy beachside (love) motel in Brazil's northeastern coast. There's a love triangle that seems torridly queer but it turns out they're all s "ostensibly straight" (they're not). There are "intoxicating visuals" in tis sunlit noir in grainy 16mm by Hélène Louvart to keep you "glued." Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/22/motel-destino-review-cannes-film-festival) calls this a "terrifically acted Brazilian erotic noir thriller" and gives in 4/5 stars. Bradshaw's plot summary: "A young man on the run from a mob boss lands an unlikely job in a brutally functional love motel and starts a passionate affair with the manager’s wife." Some reviews, like the one in DEADLINE (https://deadline.com/2024/05/motel-destino-review-karim-ainouzs-neon-noir-cannes-film-festival-1235923583/), think "narrative contrivance" detracts, but grant that direction and cinematography "crowning achievements." Fionnuala Hallligan, in SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/motel-destino-cannes-review/5193923.article#:~:text=Motel%20Destino%20may%20no t%20make,who%20sniff%20hungrily%20around%20her.), compliments the score and sound design too as adding notably to the lushness and sensuality. If one gets into this setting and action as Bradshaw, Justin Chang of the NEW YORKER, the Cannes reporter for SCREEN INTERNATIONAL, and Robbie Collin of DAILY TELEGRAPH do, this will be a great watch. The Cannes premiere reportedly received a 12-minute standing ovation.

[Chris Knipp]

BEATING HEARTS/L'AMOUR OUF (Gilles Lelouche)

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STILL FROM EARLY IN L'AMOUR OUF/BEATING HEARTS

TRAILER (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2TzP-riRBY&t=27s)

In Competition. The plot starts with two teenagers, a girl from an upper-middle-class family and a boy from the working class, who fall madly in love only to have that doomed when the boy becomes involved in crime and serves a decade in prison; but later they reunite. This is an "operatic French gangster film," Bradshaw says (it's full of great 80's and 90's hits) starring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos, that "suffers from bloat" in what he says "aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy" but "buckles under the weight of its own naivety." He gives it a damning 2/5 stars in his GUARDIAN review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/23/beating-hearts-review-operatic-french-gangster-film-suffers-from-bloat). The French title uses the slang word "ouf," which means roughly "wow," so it means "wow love." Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini adopted Neville Thompson's novel called Jackie loves Johnser OK? set near Dublin and said to be full of local slang and lingo, and transferred it to northern France. Guy Lodge in VARIETY (Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini) says it's "way too long at 165 minutes but never dull," and "best when it gives in to its wildest urges." Lodge says it takes the "slender plot of innumerable B-movies" about how "time and crime collaborate" to "derail the pure-hearted romance between two pretty young things" and blows that up "to a dizzily grand scale." The latter part is a semi-musical. The ensemble cast includes Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, and Élodie Bouchez, among others. Tim Grearson on SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/beating-hearts-cannes-review/5193961.article) says the first half is better when the less known, younger actors play the mad teen love story. As the film "starts to lose its luster," Grearson writes, "eventually bogged down in Clotaire’s criminal enterprises and Jackie’s convoluted complications regarding her husband, the moony atmosphere and rocking tunes fail to provide adequate compensation. The best musicals feel lighter than air," Grearson concludes: "BEATING HEARTS strains to create the illusion of effortlessness." A French review comments it's not "amour ouf" but "amour bof" - not wow love but meh love.

[Chris Knipp]

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ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia)

In Competition. India's first Cannes Competition film in 30 years, says S.M Kaufman in INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/all-we-imagine-as-light-review-1235008070/), 'is a sensual triumph." "Dreamlike and gentle," says Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/23/all-we-imagine-as-light-review-payal-kapadia), finally giving a film here 5/5 stars. The film is the story of three Mumbai hospital employees in monsoon season, two nurses and a cook, all originally from small towns, two of whom are roommates, the younger one causing scandal by having in ill-concealed Muslim boyfriend, a rejection of arranged marriage. The eldest of the women is threatened with eviction due to an oversight of her late husband. Jessica Kiang in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/all-we-imagine-as-light-review-1236014776/) says with just two features (this is the second, the first fiction) Kapadia "has established her rare talent for finding passages of exquisite poetry within the banal blank verse of everyday Indian life." The eldest decides to quit the hospital and go back to her home village and the other two women accompany her. DP Ranabir Das gives all sorts of light, Kiang says, a "gorgeous glamor." The portrait of the city is "unusually rich," so it's "almost a wrench" when the second half moves to the country but the new setting focuses more on the women's developed "bonds of mutual support" that burn brighter. And the Muslim boyfriend has secretly followed. Kapadia won the documentary award at Cannes in 2021 for her film in Directoers' Fortnight, A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING. Fionnuala Halligan of SCREEN DAILY (https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/all-we-imagine-as-light-cannes-review/5193937.article), who also uses the word "gentle" as well as for the latter part "mystical," says there's "a strong romantic streak" in the depiction of Mumbai that "calls to mind Wong Kar-wai's great love affair with the city of Hong Kong." Bradshaw notes up front a "languorous eroticism" and "something epiphanic in the later scenes and mysterious final moments." 114 mins. ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT has jumped to the top of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid with a 3.3 rating, on a par with Sean Baker's ANORA.

[Chris Knipp]

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ARIELA MASTROIANNI IN GAZER

GAZER (Ryan J. Sloan)

Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalizateurs). Critics seem enthusiastic about this intense little US debut, a "stylish noir" (Angie Han, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/gazer-review-ryan-sloan-1235900814/)) that makes one think of early Christopher Nolan, "and of course FIGHT CLUB" (Peter Bradshaw video review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58mV4bqQtbc)). It stars Sloan's co-writer, Ariella Mastroianni. It has a grim industrial New Jersey setting, and a brittle heroine. It is a "brilliantly paranoid debut" (Christian Zilko, INDIEWIRE (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/gazer-review-1235007171/)),a "grimy, paranoid thriller shot on 16mm on the streets of Jersey City" (Bradshaw). Frankie (Mastroianni) is an impoverished young single mother who has neurological problems and suffers from dyschronometria. She lacks a normal sense of time and can "zone out." She is also something of a voyeur. To make $3,000 she offers to get a car for a woman called Page so she can escape from an abusive brother, but it's risky, complicated, and there is a danger she will zone out while carrying out this maneuver. This is like BABY DRIVER if it were "a tragic, music-free exploration of mental decay," says Zilko, who calls GAZER "the kind of debut that should restore your lost faith in independent cinema," even if it "it remains something to be admired from a distance rather than felt viscerally" (Han). Jacob Stolworthy in THE INDEPENDENT (UK) (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/cannes-film-festival-gazer-christopher-nolan-b2550865.html) calls GAZER "psychological drama that's a cult-hit-in-waiting." Sloan reportedly made this film shooting on nights and weekends over two years while working at his regular day job as an electrician in New Jersey (work he has done since the age of 13) and Mastroianni worked in programming at Angelika Film Center in New York. One thinks of PRIMER: this kind of offbeat DIY film can be very memorable and original - even as, in this case, it plays with many noir conventions. Glazer talks about the "voyeur" theme HERE (https://www.tiktok.com/@deadline/video/7371805427459181866). Interviewed at Cannes, he cited REAR WINDOW, THE THIRD MAN, and Lee Chang-dong's BURNING as influences, also citing BLUW-UP and BLOW-OUT. He consciously sought to make a film like Carol Reed's classic, that can be watched more than once, Stolworthy reports.
(Other Directors' Fortnight films described on this thread: MONGREL and CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER'S POINT.)

[Chris Knipp]

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THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Mohammad Rasoulof)

In Competition. (Original title: دانه*ی انجیر معابد) Rasoulof, Iran's most political filmmaker, has now fled Iran after receiving another prison sentence, this time of 8 years. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, "shot clandestinely and set for the most part in one somber Tehran apartment," is "a dark and sprawling 3-hour family drama" that "is very much about Iran’s draconian legal system and what it does to the human psyche, which is obviously a subject Rasoulof knows intimately," says Jordan Mintzer (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig-review-mohammad-rasoulof-1235907982/)). . It's a "powerful indictment of Iranian oppression through the eyes of one family's breakdown," says Mintzer, "With the brutal 2022 killing of Mahsa Amini by government hands as his launching point," says Ryan Lattanzio (INDIEWIRE) (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig-review-mohammad-rasoulof-1235008351/#:~:text=With%20the%20brutal%202022%20killing,peop le%20it%20claims%20to%20protect.),the film is a "gripping allegory" about "the corrupting costs of power" and oppression of women "under a religious patriarchy that crushes the very people it claims to protect." The father here is a newly appointed almost-judge now expected to condemn a man without mercy.. His two daughters participate in the anti-hijab demonstrations by taking in a young woman who has been arrested and shot in the face. As part of his higher status the father is issued a pistol, which disappears. He starts accusing people, and violence ensues. It winds up being a horror movie, says Mintzer. And the director "has decided to focus on the very kinds of people who have been making his life hell." Bradshaw in the GUARDIAN (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/24/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig-review-mohammad-rasoulofs-arresting-tale-of-violence-and-paranoia-in-iran) gives the film 4/5 stars and calls it "a brazen and startling picture which, though flawed, does justice to the extraordinary and scarcely believable drama of his own situation and the agony of his homeland." In a later GUARDIAN Cannes roundup (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/24/the-most-political-apolitical-festival-ever-heres-how-cannes-2024-went-and-who-will-win) where he describes political films in the festival, Bradshaw wrote of SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, "It attempts to intuit the nightmare experienced by dissenting women by taking a downbeat political and domestic drama and progressively escalating it to a violent confrontation that resembled a pueblo shootout by Sergio Leone." The Cannes premiere received an almost-fifteen-minute standing ovation.

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ORIGINAL POSTER WITH THE TITLE & DIRECTOR'S NAME IN FARSI

[Chris Knipp]

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THE MOST PRECIOUS OF CARGOES (Michel Hazanavicius)

SHORT FILM CLIP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjrNKvs_Ppg)

In Competition. (Original French title "La plus précieuse des marchandises.") An animated feature that follows the fate of a Jewish baby thrown from the window of a death-camp train and rescued from the snow by a poor lumberjack and his wife who live in a deep Polish forest. They are childless and adopt the baby. As noted in the intro to this thread, this is the first animated feature in Cannes Competition since Ari Folman's 2008 WALTZ WITH BASHIR. It is adopted from Jean-Claude Grumberg's bestselling novel about the Holocaust and WWII and has a score by Alexandre Desplat and is voiced by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant with Grégory Gadebois, Dominique Blanc and Denis Podalydès. With Rasoulof's SACRED FIG, it was a late addition to Cannes Competition (hence its scheduling at the end). Hazavincius has said "It's about people who saved lives." In his VARIETY review (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-most-precious-of-cargoes-review-1236015379/) Peter Debruge says the film, "blending the heavy lines of early-20th-century woodcuts with the gentle pastels of watercolor painting," finds a "poignant way to address not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but the kinds of kindness that combatted it. Hazanavincius has crafted "an indelible parable destined to be watched and shared by generations to come." Debruge contrasts this "gut" approach to the Holocaust with the "abstract intellectual" one of Glazer's ZONE OF INTEREST. The Dardenne brothers are among the producers. This went right to the bottom of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid. The last Competition feature shown at the 2024 Cannes Festival.

[Chris Knipp]

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LOU YE'S UNFINISHED FILM

CANNES 77 , 2024: roundups and awards

In Bradshaw's GUARDIAN Cannes roundup (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/24/the-most-political-apolitical-festival-ever-heres-how-cannes-2024-went-and-who-will-win), he shows this year wasn't apolitical at all, though sex and love were also featured. And his guesses at what the awards will be, though only guesses, are logical from festival reports.

Number one on the political list, which is not only spectacular but also its director just escaped with great difficulty from his country, is Mohammad Rasoulof's THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG. This film came out at the top of the SCREEN DAILY jury grid. There was a #MeTo French short film, MOI AUSSI. Bradshaw calls SEED "a brazen and startling picture about [Rasoulof's] country’s misogyny and theocracy. He summarizes that it "attempts to intuit the nightmare experienced by dissenting women by taking a downbeat political and domestic drama and progressively escalating it to a violent confrontation that resembled a pueblo shootout by Sergio Leone." It still is hard to picture how that works in person, but certainly makes one curious to see the film. Attempts to show the growth of fascism had various degrees of success, Bradshaw said. The portrait of the young Trump by Ali Abbasi THE APPRENTICE is weak. LIMONOV, a portrait of the poet turned far-right Russian nationalist Eduard Limonov starring Ben Whishaw, was a "satiric black comedy" that was "more successful."

Lou Yee's AN UNFINISHED FILM about China's COVID crisis (Out of Competition) was "in some ways the best thing" in the festival." (Bradshaw's review (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/16/an-unfinished-film-review-china-covid-lou-ye).). Jia Zhang-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES after all was political too, since it runs through all of modern Chinese history.

Love and sex come a lot (whoops!) in Sean Baker's tale of an exotic dancer and the naive son of a Russian billionaire ANORA; there is "much eroticism" in "Payal Kapadia’s sublime ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT; there is group sex in Yorgos Lanthimos’s KINDS OF KINDNESS; and there's "a fairly candid sex scene" between Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger in Cronenberg's THE SHROUDS.

There were also some "slaughtering of sacred cows," Bradshaw says, i.e., famous filmmakers bombing: notably MEGALOPOLIS and Schrader's OH, CANADA. The French "gave us some self-regarding, under-par works," but Jacques Audiard stunned everyone with his semi-musical Latin American gangster/romanc/sex change flick, EMILIA PÉREZ, and Coralie Fargeat "absolutely tore the place up" with her 'feminist body horror satire," which he says does for Demi Moore what the Palme d'Or-winning PULP FICTION did for John Travolta.

Auteurs "showed us how prolific they are," namely Yourgos Lanthimos with KINDS OF KINDNESS and Karim Aïnouz with MOTEL DESTINO.

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JACQUES AUDIARD WITH HIS EMILIA PÉREZ STARS AT CANNES

Bradshaw's predictions of the Cannes prizwinners:
Palme d’Or Emilia Pérez
Grand Prix Anora
Jury prize The Substance
Best director Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Best screenplay Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine As Light
Best actor Ben Whishaw for Limonov - The Ballad
Best actress Demi Moore for The Substance

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MARK EYDELSHTEYN, MIKEY MADISON IN ANORA

[Chris Knipp]

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SELENA GOMEZ IN EMILIA PÉREZ

CANNES AWARDS
SOURCE (VARIETY) (https://variety.com/2024/film/news/cannes-film-festival-2024-palme-dor-prizes-awards-1236016498/)

Palme d'Or: ANORA (Sean Baker)
Grand Prix: ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Payal Kapadia)
Jury Prize: EMILIA PÉREZ (Jacques Audiard)
Best Screenplay: THE SUBSTANCE (Coralie Fargeat)
Best Actress: Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofía Gascón, Adriana Paz (EMILIA PÉREZ)
Best Actor: Jesse Plemens (KINDS OF KINDNESS, 3 roles)
Special Award Mohammad Rasoulof (THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG, which also won the Competition FIPRESCI Prize)
Best Director Miguel Gomes (GRAND TOUR)
Caméra d'Or (Best First Feature): ARMAND (Halfdan Ullman Tondel)
Special Mention: MONGREL (Chiang WEi Liang, You Qiao Yin)
SEE VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/news/cannes-film-festival-2024-palme-dor-prizes-awards-1236016498/) FOR THE DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT AND CRITICS' WEEK AWARDS

This will be good for Sean Baker during US awards season, according to Brother Bro of The Oscar Expert. The female-majority jury showed sisterhood in choosing not one but four best actresses, one of whom is a trans person. THE SUBSTANCE, the satirical" body horror film which there was so much fuss, got a small prize, the Screenplay award. Francis Ford Coppola handed out several of the awards, but got nothing. Jia Zhan-ke's CAUGHT BY THE TIDES didn't get mentioned. Bradshaw wrote (https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/25/anora-is-a-vivacious-cannes-victor-and-a-fitting-end-to-a-radically-romantic-festival) that this was "a radically romantic festival" and claims that Sean Baker has always had his own unique approach to sex workers, and that ANORA is his best film yet. It sounds like his most entertaining one. The GUARDIAN head film critic says "Many in Cannes will have been deeply disappointed that the Palme didn’t go to THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG," which certainly is a whole lot more serious and a political statement. (Then he would have to say this was a political festival, not a "radically romantic" one. (It's not quite clear that ANORA is a "romantic" story, but I haven't seen it.). Was this a great Cannes Competition year? Can this roster of winners compare with last year's ANATOMY OF A FALL, THE ZONE OF INTEREST, FALLEN LEAES, PERFECT DAYS, ABOUT DRY GRASSES, THE TASTE OF THINGS, and MONSTER? WE'll have to actually see this year's winners to say.

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SEAN BAKER,MARK EYDELSHTEYN, AND MIKEY MADISON AT THE CANNES PREMIERE OF AMORA

Sean Baker reacts to winning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alUlnigaOp8) the top prize for his film, ANORA.

[Chris Knipp]

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ABOU SANGARE IN THE STORY OF SULEYMANE

THINGS WE MISSED FROM CANNES - 'THE STORY OF SULEYMANE'

THE FILM VERDICT (https://thefilmverdict.com/cannes-2024-the-verdict/) has a nice summary of this year's Cannes Film Festival (title: "Women's films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema's elder statesmen fell out of favor.") Click on the link (https://thefilmverdict.com/cannes-2024-the-verdict/) to read the whole piece. It covers the whole 2024 festival by regions of the world, festival sections, awards in the individual sections like Un Certain Regard, and new offerings. The thoroughness of the piece will be shown by its concluding paragraphs, which include links to their reviews:
From the troubled Middle East, emerging and veteran filmmakers won awards and a sweet part of the spotlight. Nearly all the films selected explored the themes of hope and resistance in diverse contexts. In addition to the Iranian political thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig’s (https://thefilmverdict.com/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig/) Special Prize in the main competition, Saudi newcomer Tawfik Alzaidi’s tribute to artists and art in closed-minded societies, Norah, received a Special Mention in Un Certain Regard. In the Critics Week, the Egyptian documentary The Brink of Dreams championed female emancipation and won the esteemed L’Oeil d’Or. Two other titles of note that won critics’ and audiences’ acclaim were Palestinian Mahdi Fleifel’s masterfully told ode to exiles, To A Land Unknown (https://thefilmverdict.com/to-a-land-unknown/), in Directors’ Fortnight, and Somali director Mo Harawe’s film about hope and solidarity in a post-war country, The Village Next to Paradise, (https://thefilmverdict.com/the-village-next-to-paradise/) in Un Certain Regard, making Harawe the first Somali filmmaker to compete at Cannes.

Love poured forth across the official selection at Cannes, but the love for a mother in Boris Lokjine’s The Story of Souleymane may be this year’s most touching depiction of love. Lokjine’s hero is motivated to hustle and to become French because he understands his troubled mother needs him to take care of her. That need takes him from Guinea to Libya to Europe. For his moving performance in the film, first-time actor Abou Sangare, who broke down in tears following a screening at the Théâtre Debussy, deservedly received the Best Actor award in Un Certain Regard (the film also took home a Jury Prize and a Fipresci award.) Sangare was one of two black Africans honoured with awards in that section, the other being the UCR Best Director Prize to Zambian director Rugano Nyoni for her semi-surreal drama On Becoming A Guinea Fowl. Black Africa doesn’t show up too much in Cannes, but four wins at one edition is not a bad return.

Cannes Classics, the strand showcasing restored films and documentaries about cinema, celebrated its 20th anniversary and opened in style with the highly anticipated world premiere of Napoléon, Abel Gance’s 1927 silent epic, now back in its original seven-hour glory. Cannes screened the first half of this opus. With its usual cunning blend of stone-cold classics and less seen (but no less interesting) works from the past, the section expanded throughout the Palais, mainly in the smaller Salle Buñuel but also in larger auditoriums like the Salle Debussy, which hosted the 40th anniversary screening of Paris, Texas with Wim Wenders in attendance.

After Venice, Cannes became the second of the big three European festivals to give immersive works and virtual reality their own dedicated section with the brand new Immersive Competition. An intriguing initiative, albeit one that is likely to remain more niche than Venice’s similar section. The reason: Venice’s Immersive Island is less than two minutes away from the Lido by boat, while Cannes’ Cinéum multiplex is a good half-hour bus ride from the Palais, making it a daunting prospect for attendees with tight schedules.
Boris Lojkine's third feature THE STORY OF SOULEYMANE (L’Histoire de Souleymane), about an African's struggle to gain legal status in Paris, was reviewed by Jessica Kiang in VARIETY (https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/the-story-of-souleymane-review-1236016122/) and Jordan Mintzer in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-story-of-souleymane-review-1235903997/). Mintzer compares Lojkine's film favorably to Vitorio De Sica's Italian neorealist classic BICYCLE THIEVES. Kiang says the film "electrifies" and has a "superb lead" in first-timer Abou Sangare.

[Chris Knipp]

http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20GHTS2.jpg
ADAM BESSA IN GHOST TRAIL/LES FANTÔMES

In Critics' Week: Jonathan Millet's GHOST TRAIL/LES FANTÔMES

FRENCH/ARABIC TRAILER (https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=300935.html?hid=5f70cddb0d8315 71b14fadd208963e92b9f51bf59450c76965136018f22ddc2b&utm_campaign=nl_lesindes&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wbdcrm)

Ghost Trail’ Review (Jon Frosch, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER): "A Tense, Terrifically Acted Thriller About Syrian Exiles in France - Premiering in Cannes' Critics' Week sidebar, Jonathan Millet's film stars Adam Bessa as a Syrian refugee tasked with tracking down his former torturer."

Looks exciting! (Just found it on the French movie website AlloCiné (https://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=300935.html?hid=5f70cddb0d8315 71b14fadd208963e92b9f51bf59450c76965136018f22ddc2b&utm_campaign=nl_lesindes&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wbdcrm))


BY JON FROSCH, Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/ghost-trail-review-adam-bessa-tawfeek-barhom-jonathan-millet-1235898864/)


MAY 15, 2024 1:15AM

A stirring, expertly judged thriller powered by a pair of blazing performances, Ghost Trail (Les Fantômes) kicks off Cannes’ Critics’ Week sidebar in first-rate form.

Revolving around a Syrian exile tracking down his former torturer in France, French director Jonathan Millet’s feature-length fiction debut is a work of visceral intensity and formidable control, pulling you into a tight grip and holding you there. The cat-and-mouse premise and brisk, nerve-jangling execution are familiar from numerous other geopolitically timely spy/manhunt tales on big and small screens. But if Ghost Trail doesn’t necessarily buzz with novelty, it boasts a bracing sense of craftsmanship and purpose — of “understanding the assignment,” as the kids might say — both behind and in front of the camera.